Atheist Retention Rates

We live in an era where almost 50% of the citizens in some Western European countries don't believe in God and a solid majority of those in Japan and Vietnam are nonbelievers [Top 50 Countries With Highest Proportion of Atheists / Agnostics].

According to some polls, about 30% of Canadians don't believe in God [Religion in Canada] and in the USA the number of nonbelievers is about 12% of the population {Atheists in America].

A recent survey by The PEW Forum on Religion & Public Life looked at the religious belief of Americans as adults and how they were raised as children. There were 1387 people who self-identified as atheists but only 131 of these were raised as atheists. Thus, 90% of the atheists were raised in a religious household but later on abandoned their belief in God(s).

That's pretty remarkable in a society that's as religious are the USA. It's not surprising that there are so many first generation atheists because a generation ago the number of atheists in the USA was less than 1% of the population.

On the other hand, there were 432 respondents who said they were raised as atheists. Only 131 of these respondents are still atheists so that means that the retention rate for atheism is only 30% and that makes it the worst "religion" at retaining childhood beliefs. The figure and the data are from Mark M. Gray who blogs at Nineteen Sixty-four. He writes ...

What these findings reflect is that in the U.S. Atheists are for the most part "made" as adults after being raised in another faith. It appears to be much more challenging to raise one's child as an Atheist and have them maintain this identity in their life. Of those raised as Atheists, 30% are now affiliated with a Protestant denomination, 10% are Catholic, 2% are Jewish, 1% are Mormon, and 1% are Pagan.

This is perceived as good news by the IDiots who were happy to pass along the information on Uncommon Descent: Why do atheists have such a low retention rate?.

Some of us are tempted to wonder whether they just grow tired of the society of Darwin’s tenure bores and the atheist troll in the mailroom. Or of the uproar around the Skepchick. Re that latter individual, at some point, surely a normal dude must wonder, what is in this for me, long term?

He might be better off with a cute, decent girl who offers free coffee and cake in the parish hall, not sexy pics. But to meet her, he has to sober up, shave, shower, and go to church … so …

So, … maybe it’s just the facts of life that catch up with some of them?

I think there's a better explanation. As we all know, many evangelicals are proud of advertising that they were raised as atheists but were "born again" as teenagers or adults. Perhaps they "misremember" certain aspects of their religious upbringing and "forget" that their parents believed in God? If a few hundred of them declared, incorrectly, that they were raised as atheists then the real retention rate would be much higher.

In any case, religion is in trouble everywhere, including the United States. In many countries, there are millions of second and third generation atheists who will never believe in imaginary supernatural beings. Those who are making a big deal of this apparent retention rate among Americans are a lot like the passengers who concentrated on rearranging the deck chairs while the Titanic was sinking.

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