‘The UK is coming into its first atheist age,’ say researchers

The proportion of atheists within the UK has grown to such an extent that it’s now potential to talk of the nation’s “first atheist age”, a bunch of researchers has mentioned after publishing the findings of a serious examine into atheism.

The ‘Explaining Atheism’ mission, led by Queen’s University Belfast, surveyed practically 25,000 individuals throughout Brazil, China, Denmark, Japan, UK and USA with the goal of uncovering why some people are atheists and why some nations have increased percentages of atheists than others.

Figures from this examine and a previous analysis mission, Understanding Unbelief (2017–2021), have been converged with information from the British Social Attitudes Survey and World Values Survey to say that the UK now has a relative majority of atheists. Christian Today requested a breakdown of figures however these weren’t provided by the point of going to press.

According to the 2021 British Social Attitudes Survey, whose figures have been compiled within the yr 2019, over half of respondents (52%) mentioned they didn’t belong to any faith, whereas 1 / 4 mentioned they didn’t consider in God.

Polling by the World Values Survey between 2017 and 2022 discovered that UK respondents have been evenly cut up between those that believed in God (47.7%) and those that didn’t (48.5%). Four many years in the past, in 1981, three-quarters of Britons mentioned they believed in God, a stark image of how a lot religion within the UK has declined.

The 2021 England and Wales Census confirmed an identical decline, with 37.2% of the inhabitants now figuring out as having no faith, up from 1 / 4 in 2011, whereas the variety of individuals figuring out as Christian fell to a minority for the primary time, at solely 46.2% of the inhabitants.

The Explaining Atheism analysis mission concerned a number of UK universities, together with Brunel University of London and the University of Kent.

Commenting on the examine’s findings, Dr Lois Lee, from the University of Kent’s Department of Religious Studies, mentioned: “The UK is coming into its first atheist age. Whilst atheism has been distinguished in our tradition for a while – be it by way of Karl Marx, George Eliot, or Ricky Gervais – it is just now that atheists have begun to outnumber theists for the primary time in our historical past.”

The examine discovered that the strongest influences on perception are parental upbringing and societal expectations concerning perception in God.

“While anti-religious dad and mom don’t considerably affect whether or not their kids consider in God, they do strongly affect whether or not their kids are morally against faith,” researchers mentioned.

Curiously, most atheists and agnostics have been discovered to have some form of perception within the supernatural.

The ‘Explaining Atheism’ mission spanned three years and was funded by the John Templeton Foundation.

Lead researcher, Professor Jonathan Lanman from Queen’s, mentioned: “Our massive cross-cultural surveys reveal that whereas many components might affect one’s beliefs in small methods, the important thing issue is the extent to which one is socialised to be a theist.

“Many different standard theories, akin to intelligence, emotional stoicism, damaged properties, and rebelliousness, don’t stand as much as empirical scrutiny.”