Hallelujah! What great news, but it isn’t necessarily new news as the death of gods and religion has been happening for decades, or centuries. Of course a long time ago religions did not exist at all, until one day someone decided they knew better, or in reality knew nothing at all. At some point culture or cults became religions, and new cults (now religions) grew, i.e. Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witness, unScientology, and fundamentalism which seems to be on the rise. Sigh. There will probably be a tug-of-war for some time to come, but ultimately cults and new religions, organized and disorganized, will experience death. The ultimate hope is that in the future there will be no chance of cults/religions being born, no fertilization, because there is indeed nothing fertile, rich, good, nor sacred about cults and religions. Fingers crossed, and good riddance! May Humanism and the fertile idea/ls of science, rationalism, and anti-speciesism flourish.
A. I think that a lot of it has to do with the perceived political entanglement of religion, especially Christianity. Really, when we are talking about people leaving religion, we are talking about people leaving Christianity. When you look at the numbers, the growth of the religiously unaffiliated is almost entirely related to people leaving Catholic and Protestant churches.