Are Christians losing or have lost the debate?

[Jagella]

Question for Debate Are Christians losing or have lost the debate with atheists?

Christianity is shrinking in developed nations including the USA. Creationism has lost almost every court battle it has waged against science. Intelligent Design's true agenda has been publicly exposed. The view that Jesus never existed is growing and more academics admit their doubts. The large majority of scientists are now atheists. The corruption in the Christian church is being exposed online and in the news. Christian apologists are becoming outraged as their arguments are shredded by atheists in online debates.

Think about all that as you answer the question for debate.

[Mithrae]

As Christianity declines in the US and other western nations, Apologists fall back on claiming that the faith is growing in China.

It's a rather trivial point of course. But if hypothetically there were an equilibrium 'natural prevalence' of Christianity in developed secular countries with good education and religious freedom, and if that natural rate were somewhere around 50-70% (cf. Canada 72%, Australia 67%, France, UK, Germany, Russia, Sweden etc. 63-76%) that would be quite surprising and impressive, and obviously very much undermine any claims that irreligion or atheism are naturally superior and/or on a winning trajectory: Yet we would nevertheless expect to see decline of Christianity and growth of irreligion or alternative religions in countries where Christianity historically had been institutionally promoted, but increases of Christianity in countries where it had not and/or where economic development, education and growth in religious freedoms are still under way.

Personally I'd be more inclined to suspect that there's a natural prevalence of religion of any kind rather than Christianity specifically (eg. India 99% religious but only 2.5% Christian; Singapore 84% religious but only 18% Christian; South Korea 54% religious but only 29% Christian; Japan 43% religious but only 1.6% Christian), which would undermine both Christians' and atheists' appeals to popularity and "bragging rights."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religions_by_country

[brunumb]

The transcript below is from Through the Wormhole S05E01 and concerns analysis of religious census data from around the world. The whole episode focuses on God, but the part referred to below starts at around the 19 minute mark.

Danny Abrams* is an applied mathematician at Northwestern University. Religious affiliation has been tracked via census reports in many countries for up to 250 years in some cases and we can see how the sizes of religious groups have grown and shrunk. We looked at 85 regions around the world and in every case, every place where its ever been measured, the fastest growing religious minority is the non-affiliated, the group of people who dont affiliate with any religion at all. To find out if this trend will continue, Danny plugged census data from nine different countries (Australia, Canada, Finland, Ireland, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Austria, Netherlands, New Zealand) into his mathematical models and made a surprising prediction. Religion is heading towards a tipping point. According to Danny, by the year 2050, in 6 out of the 9 countries he studied, religiously affiliated people will be a minority. The wheels of society are making people align. A non-religious majority looks set to emerge.

* https://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/ ... iel-CV.pdf