One-Third of Americans Under 30 Have No Religion — How Will That Change the Country?
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One Response to “One-Third of Americans Under 30 Have No Religion — How Will That Change the Country?”
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Here we go again. LOL. Let’s set aside the “spin” and look at the facts. Yes, there is no question that believers are leaving the organized, mainstream, hierarchical churches: all studies and polls done over the past decade bear this out. But it is a misnomer to suggest that one-third of Americans under 30 “have no religion.” Rather, they have no “official” religion; i.e., denomination. However, as even the Pew study found (and the article clearly states), “more than two-thirds of the unaffiliated believe in God; nearly four in ten say they are ‘spiritual’ but not ‘religious’; more than one-fifth say they pray every day.”
So it is not really as if 33% of the American populace under 30 are atheists, or even agnostic. They are a combination of atheist, agnostic, deist and theist – with an apparently larger number in the latter two categories.
Researchers, pundits et al have been talking about the “end of faith” or the “death of God” or what have you for decades. Yet there is no support for the idea that faith – and even deist/theist “religion” (even if non-mainstream) – is somehow “dying.”
It is fine that atheists and agnostics seem to be finding their voice – sometimes unified, sometimes not. But doing so on the strength of hyperbolic statements about faith and religion is at best insupportable, and at worst willful ignorance.
Peace.
Posted on 25-Sep-13 at 2:23 pm | Permalink