The antithesis of such movements is Atheism. Often presented in its Enlightenment phase as the culmination of human freedom, the premise that Atheism is our human future is simply wrong. People today are moving away from Atheism, not towards it. Moreover, when screening out secularists (= tolerance for all) and agnostics (= doubt about God), Atheism is revealed to be a movement with a tiny number of members. Atheism began sometime in the 17th century and is now flickering out. When looked at through the prism of human experience that begins 40,000 years ago, Atheism is a blip on the radar screen of humanity.First, I think that the line about atheists not imposing their beliefs on others has to be one of the richest ironies I've read in a while, coming from a Catholic. I mean Jesus FUC*ING Christ! These people still try to restrict women's rights, access to contraception, scientific research on stem cells, teaching sound science, censorship of "religiously-offensive" art, et cetera ad nauseum. And what, he's claiming that Catholics don't send out missionaries and try to convert others? Is that a godda&ned joke????
Of course, Atheists will stay with us, and they are welcomed by me as long as they don't try to impose on the rest of us their belief that God doesn't exist. I know that religion, including Catholicism, has had to learn that rule of live-and-let-live to overcome past offenses, but that is not an excuse for Atheists to continually whine about past injustices or to deny the real world of today in which the world's majority believes in God. Besides, the Constitution honors separation of Church and State, not separation of Faith and State. If the majority vote to proclaim "In God We Trust," democracy tells us the elite minority has no right to dictate what others may or may not express about faith (NB: -- without any particular religion attached).
The message of "Watchmen" concerns humanity's need for meaning. False and merely human solutions, no matter how heroic or inevitable they seem, are inadequate substitutions for the transcendent bonds of being on a planet populated by others. We need to watch the self-appointed watchmen who would destroy those bonds. Human heroes in spandex do not replace God.
As for the substance of his article, let's take this apart a little at a time:
(Regarding The Watchmen, a disclaimer: I have never read the books and this was my first viewing of the movie, so for a deeper discussion of the background/plot/characters of The Watchmen see elsewhere.)
While the character of Dr. Manhattan is indeed deified in the movie, it isn't only his power that reminds me of traditional notions of a god. His detachment from humanity's suffering was the real key trait that made him like a god -- even as the world faced imminent destruction, he removed himself to a new planet and did not stop the devastation. It's difficult to argue straight-faced that there is a real effort to propel Dr. Manhattan to YHWH-status -- he isn't omniscient, and is, in fact, tricked by a human, albeit "the smartest man in the world," Ozymandias.
As for the question of whether people are "moving away" from atheism may be objectively answered: not true. If you place all organized religion on one end of a spectrum and atheism on the other, people are clearly and unequivocally moving away from organized religion and towards atheism. Now, they may not be making it all the way to the atheism end, but they are moving in that direction. At best (for religionists), people are moving towards an impersonal God or agnosticism.
Now I've cautioned against the historically-inaccurate "prophecies" that science would necessarily eradicate faith and that atheism would become the dominant outlook of all people, but the fact is, there has been a shift in that direction (see below for polls). It is reasonable to say that between 5 - 15% of Americans reject the idea of a god as prescribed by any religion, and thus would qualify as either an agnostic or atheist. However, there is still a large gap in all polls between the number of people who say that they believe in a god (between 85-95%) and the number who self-identify as an atheist. Many polls show this gap.
Yes, people are moving away from identifying themselves as atheists, per se, as there is a huge gap between people who say they don't believe in a god, or have no religion, and those who self-identify as atheists. I think the "A"-word has a bad rap, and that's clear from many recent polls. People who don't believe in a god still shun that label. There's a lot of atheophobia out there, which leads to fear of discrimination amongst atheists, so they tend to stick with neutral labels like, "non-religious"...
But this is no consolation to religious people. Some bullet-point facts:
- In the largest religious self-identification survey ever done (CUNY ARIS), statistics show that the greatest growth in a religious demographic group from 1990 - 2001 occurred in "no religion": from 8% in 1990 to 14% in 2001. Quote, "the greatest increase in absolute as well as in percentage terms has been among those adults who do not subscribe to any religious identification; their number has more than doubled from 14.3 million in 1990 to 29.4 million in 2001" (more here)
- Pew's new surveys peg the number of nonreligious slightly higher: 16.1%, with 4% atheist + agnostic and 12.1% generally unaffiliated
- From the same CUNY ARIS survey, the growth in the raw number of "no religion" folks swamps the Evangelicals by about 30-fold and non-denoms by about 14-fold. In numerical form, the "no religion" switch from some prior religion increased by approx. 6.6 million persons, and those "switching out" of non-religion (i.e., converting to a religion from none beforehand) were approx. 1.1 million persons = approx. 5.5 million net deconverts. Do the math on this, and you'll see that no other category even comes close. Not one. The next highest number of net converts is 1.4 million for "Christian" (fourfold less) and then 600,000 for "Pentecostal". So I don't see how the data could encourage people to say that people are "moving away from atheism." (more here)
- Also from Pew: "People moving into the unaffiliated category outnumber those moving out of the unaffiliated group by more than a three-to-one margin. At the same time, however, a substantial number of people (nearly 4% of the overall adult population) say that as children they were unaffiliated with any particular religion but have since come to identify with a religious group. This means that more than half of people who were unaffiliated with any particular religion as a child now say that they are associated with a religious group. In short, the Landscape Survey shows that the unaffiliated population has grown despite having one of the lowest retention rates of all "religious" groups."
- In a 2004 Pew Poll, "The study found the highest share of people yet, 16 percent, who said they had no religious affiliation. Some of those were actually nonspecific spiritual seekers or people between denominations, but almost 11 percent of the respondents said they were atheist or secular."
- In a 2006 Harris Interactive Poll, "A Financial Times (FT)/Harris Poll conducted among adults in the United States and in five European countries (France, Italy, Germany, Great Britain and Spain) shows that Americans are more likely than Europeans to believe in any form of God or Supreme Being (73%). Of the European adults surveyed, Italians are the most likely to express this belief (62%) and, in contrast, the French are the least likely (27%)." 14% of respondents in the US self-identified as agnostic and 4% as atheist. Six percent chose, "Would prefer not to say." If you (safely) assume that all of these three categories are probably not religious, that's one in four Americans who either: i) disbelieve in God's existence, ii) doubt the existence of God, or iii) don't really have an opinion either way.
- In a Baylor U. poll in Sept. 2006, "In 2004, the General Social Survey reported that 14.3 percent of the population had no religion, but by using a more detailed measure in the Baylor survey, researchers determined that only 10.8 percent of the population or approximately 10 million Americans are unaffiliated." Although 10.8% of persons are "religious nones", only 5.2% were willing to self-identify as atheists. Others aren't sure.
- In a March 2007 Newsweek poll, "Nine in 10 (91 percent) of American adults say they believe in God and almost as many (87 percent) say they identify with a specific religion. ... Although one in ten (10 percent) of Americans identify themselves as having "no religion," only six percent said they don’t believe in a God at all. Just 3 percent of the public self-identifies as atheist, suggesting that the term may carry some stigma."
- In a Nov. 2007 Harris poll, "The poll of 2,455 U.S. adults from Nov 7 to 13 found that 82 percent of those surveyed believed in God, a figure unchanged since the question was asked in 2005." If 82% actively believe in God, that's 18%, again, who are atheists + agnostics (just like the 2006 poll where it was 4% atheist, 14% agnostic).
- The 2005 global data from Adherents.com suggests that 16% of people globally are atheist, agnostic, or closely related to one of the two.
- Data analyzed by Zuckerman and Paul led them to conclude, "in 1900 expected the massive defections from Christianity that subsequently took place in Western Europe due to secularism…. and in the Americas due to materialism…. The number of nonreligionists…. throughout the 20th century has skyrocketed from 3.2 million in 1900, to 697 million in 1970, and on to 918 million in AD 2000…. Equally startling has been the meteoritic growth of secularism…. Two immense quasi-religious systems have emerged at the expense of the world's religions: agnosticism…. and atheism…. From a miniscule presence in 1900, a mere 0.2% of the globe, these systems…. are today expanding at the extraordinary rate of 8.5 million new converts each year, and are likely to reach one billion adherents soon. A large percentage of their members are the children, grandchildren or the great-great-grandchildren of persons who in their lifetimes were practicing Christians...
In the 1940s and 50s 1-2% usually responded no asked if they believe in God, up to 98% said yes. A Harris study specifically designed to arrive at the best current figure found that 9% do not believe in a creator, and 12% are not sure. The over tenfold expansion of Amerorationalism easily outpaces the Mormon and Pentecostal growth rates over the same half century...
America's disbelievers atheists now number 30 million, most well educated and higher income, and they far outnumber American Jews, Muslims and Mormons combined. There are many more disbelievers than Southern Baptists, and the god skeptics are getting more recruits than the evangelicals."
- there is a large age gap in those who are not religious: 35% of 18-29 year olds reported "no religion" in the CUNY ARIS survey while only 8% of those 65+ did
- this is also true of Pew Polling, which found, "The survey finds that the number of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith today (16.1%) is more than double the number who say they were not affiliated with any particular religion as children. Among Americans ages 18-29, one-in-four say they are not currently affiliated with any particular religion."
- this is also true internationally, with a third of the 18-29 year-olds in Spain being nonbelievers and half of Australian youths.
- Now, if you want to present a depressing case for Evangelical Christianity's growth, Christine Wicker, author of The Fall of the Evangelical Church (hyperbolic and premature in its proclamation), has some neat stats on her website, culled from various source.
- I've put much the same sort of thing together before a few times.
- I've also said I think there are problems with atheism and dealing with existential issues is difficult.
[Regarding Prothero's newest book, Religious Literacy] The book is repetitive in spots and, perhaps as an indication of how fast the religion conversation in America is moving, can feel outdated. "The hard-core atheist," Prothero writes, "once a stock figure in American life, has gone the way of the freak show." Well, except for Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, whose books on atheism have topped the best-seller lists for two years.Yeah, right...keep on dreaming. Science won't ever kill off religion, but money may:
But before you point out the considerable effect religion has on U.S. society and politics, let's change the lens to account for a basic insight multicountry surveys offer: a population's religiosity level is strongly related to its average standard of living. Gallup's World Poll, for example, indicates that 8 of the 11 countries in which almost all residents (at least 98%) say religion is important in their daily lives are poorer nations in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.Also see this on the same issue.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, the 10 least religious countries studied include several with the world's highest living standards, including Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Hong Kong, and Japan. (Several other countries on this list are former Soviet republics, places where the state suppressed religious expression for decades.)
Here are a couple of pictures:
1) From Paul and Zuckerman - growth of atheism in the 20th C
2) From Paul and Zuckerman - rates of atheism by country
3) Wikimedia assorted maps
