A survey argues that atheism aka “no religion” is rising. That’s only because they didn’t offer categories of belief systems that are effectively religions. When these are accounted for the number of believers may have increased.
The behavioral clues are everywhere. Celibacy is on the rise. Not for traditionally Christian reasons, but for reasons of intersectionality. “The analysis found that since 2008, the % of men under 30 reporting no sex had nearly tripled to 28 %, compared with an 8 % increase reported by women in the same age bracket. It found that 18 % of women between the ages of 18 and 30 reported no sex in the past year.”
Cultlike behavior is everywhere, especially on campuses. Ritual diets, virtual signaling, zealotry, laws against blasphemy tricked out as measures against hate speech. There’s an obsession with ‘mindfulness’ and ‘centering’. Yet withal a kind of terrible anomie has descended over everything.
How many people, for example, belong to the church of climate change? We are not living in an irreligious age. On the contrary there have never been so many cults.