Why is the atheist movement in decline?

[historia]

Consider these recent comments from several prominent atheist activists:

You know lately when I look around on social media, and in the media in general really, I see these proclamations. Proclamations that the atheist movement is on life support. It's dying. It's probably beyond saving.

. . .

As an atheist activist myself, I can understand myself why some activists have just left the party. They just got tired of it. All the politics and the posturing and the trolls and the bad faith operators out there. They have seen first hand that atheists are not immune to scandal, to ugliness, to irrationality, to this unhealthy rage.

If you look at the major atheist groups right now -- like the national groups, the ones that are doing the real activist work, like American Atheists or Secular Coalition -- they are not bringing in the kind of donations they used to. Most of them are starved for cash. They're downsizing left and right, because people aren't just giving like they used to.

And I talked to a lot of the major donors out there and they said, "Well, we're kind of tired of seeing the atheist community just fight amongst itself and not really get anything done. We'd rather not give money if we don't think it's going to go somewhere."

It is a hard time to be an atheist activist . . . We are suffering a level of defeatism that I've never seen before . . . I have heard "it's over" so many times it makes me sick . . . This apathy is infecting us and it's hurting us . . . That has resulted in a splintering and a faction-ing of the movement that I've never seen before . . . We're in a bad situation and it's getting worse.

Atheism has squandered its momentum on a defensive old guard and apologists for neglect of events happening in our world. I’m going to have to suggest that we all abandon it.

Question for debate: Why is the atheist movement in decline?

[historia]

Wow ... that's a big one ...!

On the contrary, this is not controversial at all. Were you laboring under the misapprehension that the religiously unaffiliated are mostly atheists?

You know the drill from here on in ...

Evidencing or dodging.

See post 50.

But don't forget to mention WHICH version of "God" most people who are religiously unaffiliated believe in.

I'm not familiar with any survey data that goes into that level of detail.

[StuartJ]

[Replying to post 51 by historia]

Informative survey ...

http://www.pewforum.org/religious-lands ... ous-nones/

Especially the statistics you didn't mention

And that the surveys were from 2 small samples in the US only

Only 27% of Nones are "absolutely certain" they believe in "God"

40% are ambivalent

And 33% are sure they don't.

72% say the biblical writings are not the "Word of God"

And so forth ...

The BIG one that you didn't mention is that ...

[b]Belief in "God" amongst the unaffiliated has declined between the 2007 survey and the 2014 survey[/b]

Absolutely Certain: 36% in 2007 is DOWN to 27% in 2014

Do NOT believe in "God": 22% in 2007 is UP to 33% in 2014

Could this be a case of omission ...?

Your own evidence tells you the opposite of what you seem to be telling us here.

How would that 60% stack up in Sweden, or China, or Australia ...?

Or, say, India, for that matter ...

The good folks at Pew would have to do rather a lot of clarification when it came to which version of "God" they meant when they asked an Indian if they believed in "God".

Because, you see, there is every bit as much good, hard evidence for the 33,000,000 versions of "God" for Hindu faith-based belief, as there is for the 3 versions of "God" for Christian faith-based belief.

And every bit as much evidence that their "scripture" is the "Word of God" ...

As far as I know.

[historia]

[Replying to StuartJ]

I'm afraid you're simply confused.

As I already clarified, my comment about the religiously unaffiliated mostly believing in God was in regard to the United States. That was the context of my original reply to Polonius.

You asked me for evidence to support that specific claim. The Pew survey cited above, as you can readily see, backs up my claim. That survey is, of course, taken in the United States, as that was the region we were discussing.

The claims I've made elsewhere in this thread regarding worldwide demographic changes are not derived from this survey.

[StuartJ]

[Replying to post 53 by historia]

73% either don't believe or are ambivalent about your version of "God". (I too can lump numbers together to make my point.)

And the percentage has increased.

Why is the religious movement in decline ...?

[NervyGuy]

Sure. By "movement" I mean "an organized effort to promote or attain an end," so Merriam Webster. So the atheist movement would be the loosely organized efforts of various organizations, activists, and online influencers to promote atheism, as well as the people supporting them. I take that to be the same definition used by the authors in the OP.

OK. So you're claiming that a loosely organized effort by various entities... has declined worldwide?

And then you're asking why it declined?

OK, I guess. Now that your question looks more focused to me, I've got to say that it seems less interesting. Way too many Maybes. Maybe it's government repression against freethought. Maybe a god-concept has shifted so radically among some huge population that it doesn't seem worthy of opposition anymore. An angry, white-bearded, smiting-capable God might be worth opposing, while a vague "warm feeling" which we label as 'God' -- that wouldn't be worth opposing.

I could go on and on, but unless you have any comments or questions, I guess I'll step out of this dialogue.

A handful of people have made the tangential claim that the percentage of the world's population that is atheist is on the rise, but that is erroneous.

Just to be clear: I don't believe you at all about that.

In my view, we aren't capable of sorting 'atheists' from theists in any useful way. Think about the Muslim countries. There's just no way for us to know how many of those citizens actually believe and how many are pretending. And that's just one minor objection I'd have to any worldwide "atheism survey".

Point taken. But we can reasonably estimate the percentages of people world-wide who self-identify (through a census or a survey) as atheist, agnostic, or with a particular religious tradition.

I think not, really. Send that survey around in Egypt and you'll get 99.99% proclaiming their theism. But I don't think 99.99% of Egyptians are theists.

And think of the Hindus. I've known bunches and bunches of Christians who insist that Hindus don't really believe in God at all.

It all looks too messy to me, so I'll step away. Thanks for the dialogue.

[NervyGuy]

These are all irrelevant questions, as the demographic data does not depend on my conception or definition of anything.

If we don't know the meaning of God, what possible use is a survey of those who believe/disbelieve in God?

[wiploc]

Question for debate: Why is the atheist movement in decline?

Perhaps because we've won, or are so close to winning that it doesn't seem to matter.

When I was young, I didn't know any other atheists. I could read about the Russians and Madalyn Murray, but--as far as I knew--there were none in my city.

And I thought I had to pass for a Christian to appear normal.

Now we have the internet. Now we have huge numbers of of people who are openly atheist everywhere.

When I came out as an atheist in Houston, my headlights were smashed, and I had thirteen tires slashed. That kind of thing just doesn't come up as much anymore.

We suffer less hatred and unfairness. We have role models in every community. We no longer have to go to an atheist meeting to meet atheists.

In all ways, our need for an atheist "movement" is reduced.

[historia]

In the 2016 census, 29.6% of Australians (or 6,933,708 people) described themselves as having "no religion".

Australia constitutes 0.3% of the world's population. You'll need to account for the data from the other 99.7% of the global population to draw any meaningful conclusions about worldwide trends.

[historia]

A handful of people have made the tangential claim that the percentage of the world's population that is atheist is on the rise, but that is erroneous.

I don't know about the entire world, but atheism is on the rise in America and in Europe.

Actually, Europe as a whole has, over the past two decades, seen a steady decrease in the percentage of the population that identify as atheist or agnostic due to the resurgence of Christianity in Eastern Europe.

But it is certainly the case that Western Europe and the world's English-speaking countries, including the United States, have seen an increase in the percentage of their populations that are religiously unaffiliated.

Those two regions together only constitute 17% of the world's population, though, so they don't tell us much about worldwide trends.

[historia]

By "movement" I mean "an organized effort to promote or attain an end," so Merriam Webster. So the atheist movement would be the loosely organized efforts of various organizations, activists, and online influencers to promote atheism, as well as the people supporting them. I take that to be the same definition used by the authors in the OP.

OK. So you're claiming that a loosely organized effort by various entities... has declined worldwide?

Not quite. I'm simply noting in the OP that prominent atheist activists themselves say that the atheist movement is in decline, without much consideration as to geography. I'm asking why that is.

Several people in this thread have made a separate claim about percentages of the world's population that are atheist or religiously unaffiliated. I'm responding to that tangential topic by pointing out that the worldwide demographic data does not support their claims.

I guess I'll step out of this dialogue.

As you like.

A handful of people have made the tangential claim that the percentage of the world's population that is atheist is on the rise, but that is erroneous.

Just to be clear: I don't believe you at all about that.

In my view, we aren't capable of sorting 'atheists' from theists in any useful way.

I understand your concern here, but it is running a bit beyond my argument. Let me reiterate that I am responding to a claim made by others, noting that their claim is erroneous.

Most of the people here are trying to support the claim that atheism or religious un-affiliation is increasing by citing survey and census data from the Pew Forum and other sources. But, as we've seen, they are only looking at data for parts of the world.

I'm pointing out that, if we look at this same type of data, but for the whole world, we see that the worldwide trend is actually the opposite of what these forum members are claiming.

Think about the Muslim countries. There's just no way for us to know how many of those citizens actually believe and how many are pretending.

That is a concern. We face the opposite problem in China, however, which is actively repressing many Christians and Muslims. It may be a bit of a wash, actually.

All of that just means we can't be certain about the overall religious trends. But that is often the case with worldwide demographic data. And, as no one here is claiming certainty, I think this concern is a bit overblown.

If we don't know the meaning of God, what possible use is a survey of those who believe/disbelieve in God?

I'm not sure I understand your concern here.

If Pew conducts a survey in the United States asking people who are religiously unaffiliated whether they believe in God, and 33% of those people say they don't believe in God, are you saying that statistic is somehow meaningless because "we don't know the meaning of God"? What does that mean?