by Zoë Pollock
Atheists are now 13% of the world population, according to WIN-Gallup's recent poll, the Global Index of Religion and Atheism 2012 (pdf). Adam Lee welcomes the results:
In 2005, when this poll was last conducted, 69% of Irish defined themselves as religious, 25% as non-religious, and 3% as convinced atheists. In 2011, those same numbers stood at just 47% religious, 44% non-religious and 10% atheist. In other words, in just six years, one in every five Irish people has given up religion, which is enough to vault Ireland into the top 10 nations worldwide with the most atheists. This is less a demographic tide than a demographic earthquake. And it's easy to guess why. In per-capita terms, Ireland suffered more from the Catholic child-rape scandal than any other nation in the world, and the Vatican's response has consistently been one of denial, arrogance and condescension. … The church authorities have acted as if they were immune from the law and even from public opinion, and that all they had to do was hunker down and wait for everything to blow over. They seem to have forgotten that simply leaving the church is a choice that fed-up people can make.
In the U.S. people who say they are "religious" dropped from 73 percent to 60 percent and the number of Americans who say they are atheists rose, from 1 percent to 5 percent. Kimberly Winston parses the numbers:
The seven years between the polls is notable because 2005 saw the publication of “The End of Faith” by Sam Harris, the first in a wave of best-selling books on atheism by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and other so-called “New Atheists.” … “For a very long time, religiosity has been a central characteristic of the American identity,” [sociologist of religion Ryan Cragun] said. “But what this suggests is that is changing and people are feeling less inclined to identify as religious to comply with what it means to be a good person in the U.S.”
Hemant Mehta wonders when politicians will take note:
For America, where only 60% of the population calls themselves “religious,” and an additional 30% calls themselves “non-religious,” politicians are making a big mistake by ignoring us during election seasons. As philanthropist Todd Stiefel pointed out in an email, “they go after Jews (1%), African Americans (12.6%) and Hispanics (16.3%) like crazy, but [the] non-religious+atheist crowd (35%) is larger than those three groups combined (29.9%).”
The Dish 