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A Gallup poll of Americans' attitudes towards religion released on Christmas Eve found significant recent increases in those responding either that they have no religious preference, that religion is not very important in their lives, or that they believe religion "is largely old-fashioned or out of date."

Only 78% of Americans now identify as Christian, while 22% describe their religious preference as either "other" or "none."

Most of these changes have occurred since 2000 and represent the first significant shift since a sharp decline in religious adherence during the 1970s. Over the last nine years, the number with no religious preference has grown from a level of around 8% to 13%. The number for whom religion is not very important has climbed from just over 10% to 19%. And the number who believe religion is out of date and has no answers for today's problems has jumped from slightly more than 20% to 29%.

-Article continues off site, courtesy Rawstory.

DAVIE, Florida (AFP) – When South Florida atheists held their first meeting, they were just five friends, having a beer at a bar.
Four years later, they've moved to a bigger place -- still a bar -- to hold their weekly meet-and-greets. Membership is up to almost 500, Darwin Day is in the planning stages and bumper stickers are on sale.
"There is no God, but ice-cream is great," reads one. "What schools need is a moment of science," reads another.
Atheist groups are growing all over the United States, challenging stereotypes and confronting what they consider a big backslide in the separation of church and state.

-Ariticle continues off site.

At the Lake Hypatia Advance, a social gathering hosted by the Alabama Freethought Association, a frequent metaphor was "coming out" as an atheist. "I am out to my parents." "A few people are still in the closet." "We had several people in our community come out to us." One man said he came out to his parents twice, first as a non-Christian, years later as an atheist. ("Not in my house!" his mother said.) One woman told of an argument with her evangelical family in which "I outed my dad."

In much of the American South and Midwest church membership and religious faith are assumed. (In my hometown of San Francisco, as in Manhattan, faith is more apt to evoke surprise.) People have often never met an admitted atheist. "Literally people think that we do have horns, or that we're mean, or that we do not have kids," said a Kansan. Even in a city like Atlanta, some people feel religious pressure. Ed Buckner, president of American Atheists, said the Atlanta Freethought Association has members who "never saw any need [to gather with others] until they came to Atlanta – and people behind you in line in the grocery store say 'Do you know Jesus?' And your boss asks what church you attend."

(Because of such pressure, some people at Lake Hypatia asked that I not use their names or identifying information.)
 
-Article continues off site, courtesy Alternet

It’s hard to exaggerate just how widely Darwin’s ideas on natural selection and the evolution of human kind traveled in the cultural milieu of his day, even in the age of stagecoaches and month-long journeys across the Atlantic. Artists of all shades reacted to his revolutionary theories, and this exhibit attempts to capture their range of responses in all sorts of mediums, including paintings, photographs, sketches, and sculptures. Sprinkled amidst 200 works of art are historical collections of natural wonders like beetles, fossils, gems, stuffed birds, and plated flowers. These items give visitors a distinctly visual sense of what artists—and Darwin himself—grappled with during the Victorian era, as academic science began to challenge the subjective nature of romantic art.

The exhibit categorizes Darwin’s artistic influence into tidy themes like the Darwinian “struggle for existence,” the ancient history of earth, the kinship with other animals, the origin of man, and the nature of beauty as a product of sexual selection. But perhaps the most eye-opening aspect of Endless Forms—an allusion to the ending of his 1859 masterpiece On the Origin of Species—is the revelation of how art influenced Darwin. Just as Darwin introduced Victorian sculptors and French impressionists to scientific order, artists helped the young naturalist draw a connection between details in nature and his bubbling ideas on evolution.

Article continues off site, courtesy SEED.

There is one thing that is not allowed in American national politics – and that is atheism. “In God We Trust” is on the currency; and the number of congressional members who avow no faith at all are about as plentiful as those who are openly gay (none in the Senate; five in the House).

Under the last president, religious faith – evangelical Christianity or Benedict-style Catholicism – was a prerequisite for real access to the inner circle. But the requirement is not just Republican. Among the more excruciating campaign events of last year was a faith summit for the Democrats in which candidates vied with one another to express the most piety. Barack Obama’s Christianity – educated, nuanced, social – is in many ways more striking than that of, say, Nixon, Truman or Eisenhower.

Americans are losing faith, though; and those who have it are moving out of established churches. The nonreligious are now the third biggest grouping in the US, after Catholics and Baptists, according to the just-released American Religious Identification Survey. The bulk of this shift occurred in the 1990s, when they jumped from 8% to 14% of the population – but they have consolidated in the past decade to 15%.

-Article continues off site, courtesy The Times Online (UK)

As seen at The Amazing Meeting!





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