Excerpt #71 from my book, Religion, An Obstacle to Human Progress
In 1993, two-thirds of American adults, according to the General Social Survey, that they “know God really exists” and had “no doubts about it.”
As recently as 2008, this certainty of belief in God topped 60 percent.
But during the 2010s faith in a higher power eroded at an unprecedented rate.
By 2016, the share of confident believers had fallen to 57 percent.
And by 2021—the most recent year with available data—unwavering faith in God fell below 50 percent for the first time, wrote journalist Christopher Ingraham.
Faith in a higher power is declining most rapidly among the young, Ingraham notes.
Among 18 to 34-year-olds, the share with no doubt in the existence of God fell from 64 percent in 1993 to 38 percent in 2021.
That current generation of doubt and disbelief will settle down and form families of their own, raising children who never set foot in a traditional church, virtually guaranteeing further erosion of belief and an increasingly secular nation.
Declining belief is concentrated primarily on the left and, to a lesser extent, among political independents.
Unwavering faith among Democrats fell from a high of 69 percent in 2000 to 39 percent in 2021.
Republican faith, on the other hand, hasn’t changed much—it stood at 74 percent in 1998, compared to 66 percent today, writes Ingraham.
If God has spoken, why is the world not convinced? – Percy Bysshe Shelley
One might be asked ‘How can you prove that a god does not exist?’ One can only reply that it is scarcely necessary to disprove what had never been proved. – David A. Spitz