2029: The Year Non-Religious Americans Will Definitively Outnumber Catholics

[NeoGreen]

https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/10/24/2029-the-year-non-religious-americans-will-definitively-outnumber-catholics/

2029: The Year Non-Religious Americans Will Definitively Outnumber Catholics
By Hemant Mehta, October 24, 2019

We know the number of non-religious Americans remains on the rise while the number of Protestants and Catholics continue dropping.

It leads to a fairly straightforward question: When will the “Nones” outnumber any single religious group?

Any answer is speculative, of course. You would have to assume the demographic trends continue as expected, and there’s no 9-11-like event again, and that religious groups won’t suddenly fix their problems and become super-popular again. Religion, like politics, can experience serious shifts in short amounts of time even if the trends appear to be heading in a certain direction.

But Professor Ryan P. Burge of Eastern Illinois University decided to speculate anyway. He used data from the 2018 General Social Survey, traced data from 1980 onward, and used statistical software to see what religion might look like a decade from now.

With all the caveats in mind, and the reality that future predictions obviously have higher rates of error, he looked at the more conservative end of the non-religious numbers and the more optimistic end of the religious ones. He wanted to know when the lines (even with error bars) stopped overlapping.

The answer? 2029.

(snip)

This is a fun statistical parlor game, but “winning” would only matter to me if it translated into political power.

https://religioninpublic.blog/2019/10/24/american-religion-in-2030/

[eppur_se_muova]

1. AND evangelicals, which is probably more important, since e's are more loudly intrusive.

(Of course, that's just saying Catholics are sneakier -- Opus Dei, I'm looking at you ...)

[MineralMan]

2. Trend lines tend to continue at the same angle.

What we are seeing is a new generation of people who are learning something other than the old superstitions and fables. The adults in their lives are not beating religion into their heads quite as firmly as was common at one time. As more and more adults drop away from being active in religion, they spend less time indoctrinating their offspring in the old stories and beliefs. They're less likely to drag their children to church on a weekly basis, too, so less time is spent in indoctrination there, as well.

As the old fade away and the young increase in their percentage of the population, religion is fading in its hold on people. As science continues to learn more, more is taught to young people in their schools. It becomes more and more difficult to convince youngsters that old fables and myths have more truth than the evidence that things happened in a different way.

So, if anything, those trend lines will more likely increase their current angles on the chart, accelerating the changes.

There is hope that facts will overpower myths in the not too distant future. The momentum of truth is increasing.