The U.S. Is Retreating from Religion

[Suppressed]

The U.S. Is Retreating from Religion
By 2030, say projections, a third of Americans will have no religious preference 
By Allen Downey on October 20, 2017
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-u-s-is-retreating-from-religion/

Since 1990, the fraction of Americans with no religious affiliation has nearly tripled, from about 8 percent to 22 percent. Over the next 20 years, this trend will accelerate: by 2020, there will be more of these "Nones" than Catholics, and by 2035, they will outnumber Protestants.

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In fact, there are reasons to think these predictions are conservative:

• Survey results like these are subject to social desirability bias, which is the tendency of respondents to shade their answers in the direction they think is more socially acceptable. To the degree that apostasy is stigmatized, we expect these reports to underestimate the number of Nones. As the visibility of nonreligious people increases, they might be more willing to be counted; in that case, the trends would go faster than predicted.
• The trends for Protestants and Nones have apparent points of inflection near 1990. Predictions that include earlier data are likely to underestimate future trends. If we use only data since 1990 to generate predictions, we expect the fraction of Nones to exceed 40 percent within 20 years.

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[Suppressed]

I think many conservatives haven't given enough thought to how their political philosophy will hold up in a post-religious America.

[thackney]

The U.S. Is Retreating from Religion
By 2030, say projections, a third of Americans will have no religious preference 

Any comparison to similar predictions a few decades ago to current data?

[jmyrlefuller]

I think many conservatives haven't given enough thought to how their political philosophy will hold up in a post-religious America.

Take a look at how quickly the entire alphabet soup lobby agenda, pushed by bullies so fervent I can't even mention any popular name for it in a public forum for fear of being found in a search engine and publicly shamed, has been embraced by the "millennials." If they can't handle a basic biological truth of male and female, what makes them think they'll believe anything a higher power says?