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Conservatives Have Lost the Culture War
(washingtonmonthly.com)
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this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023
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I feel like statistics on religion are largely useless, especially in Western, mostly Christian nations. So many people follow the "I said a prayer when I was 10 so now I won't go to hell" version of Christianity that a huge chunk of those yes responses are actually functionally atheists and have been for a long time.
I don't mean to imply anything negative about atheists here. I just think the only thing really changing is that younger people don't see the point in pretending to be religious anymore. They're at least casually familiar with the tenets of Christianity and are pretty aware that what their parents are doing is not religion but some sort of weird social and political club with little resemblance to the religion it's supposedly based on. In fact, I'd argue that the percentage of people who take religion seriously on a personal level has always been much lower than official numbers like this would indicate.
Church attendance has been down, and that has probably been a better metric. Congregations are a great way in getting people to comply with the church even if they don't believe. That you don't even have to pretend to go to church is a big sign of religion's lack of control over society.
Memes is all it takes now to sway people's beliefs.
I think the reverse is much more likely true. People are more likely to have deeply held religious beliefs and just not belong to an institution or identify with organized religion. See: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/12/07/spirituality-among-americans/
Atheism is certainly on the rise, particularly "soft" atheism or apathetic agnosticism among younger people, but it's much harder to distinguish between people who have a deep conviction that there is nothing supernatural in reality and those who believe that, for example, there is a loving god or gods, but that god or gods cannot be explained scientifically. Members of both of those groups would nevertheless draw a hard, firm line between them, and that line would be easy to miss if the only thing you're counting is how many people claim membership in an institution.
I agree that consequently, while data about religious affiliation might essentially be accurate, it probably paints a misleading picture about religious and spiritual belief. I just think the number of folks who believe in something immaterial is more likely to be higher than numbers portray--not lower.
There is also the "New to Q Pipeline". Spiritual people are being sucked into Q Anon and other far-right beliefs.
The Wellness to QAnon Pipeline
Conspirituality Podcast
Is there a pathetic agnosticism? I feel I would fit there better.