Trinity College of Hartford Connecticut has released its American Religious Identification Survey for 2008. The results have been posted all over the internet in one form or another. For those who haven’t read it, the link to the actual report is below. Yes America is becoming more secular! Atheists and Agnostics have increased more than any of the religious groups – 6.8%. The biggest losers were mainline Protestants with a reduction of 5.8%. Specifically, the report categorized Atheists as having a presence in the United States of 0.7%, or 1,625,000 people. Those listed as none/no religion (which includes Atheists) is a whopping 15% of the population, or 34,169,000 people!

Many Christian sites have been crying that a more secular America means a decline in values. Far from it! This is wonderful news. I would argue that the United States is becoming “more moral,” rather than less. A more secular America means more people are accepting the reality that this life is the real and only life they will ever have. So, perhaps they will take better care of it instead of vesting most of their time fantasizing about an after life that will never come. A more secular America can lead to less hatred, prejudice, repression and all of the other “gifts” that religion bestows upon humankind. More and more people are leaving mainline religions and questioning the very concept of a personal god. Most importantly, more and more people are realizing that they do have control over their lives. They need not be slaves to ill-conceived superstitions written thousands of years ago by barbaric tribal elders.

http://b27.cc.trincoll.edu/weblogs/AmericanReligionSurvey-ARIS/reports/p1a_belong.html