Researchers say ‘The UK is entering its first atheist age’
The Queen's University Belfast ran a project called 'Explaining Atheism'. They analysed around 25,000 people across Brazil, China, Denmark, Japan, UK and USA to find out why some countries have higher proportions of atheists.
The ‘Explaining Atheism’ research project incorporated numerous UK universities, including Brunel University of London and the University of Kent. The study concluded that parental influences and norms, societal anticipation and beliefs have a major impact on religious faith.
A precedent project called Understanding Unbelief, which ran between 2017–2021, in association with data from the British Social Attitudes Survey and World Values Survey provided ample information to declare that the majority of people in the UK claim to be atheists.
The 2021 British Social Attitudes Survey published the figures they gathered in 2019. Based on this, over 52% of interviewees said they did not have any religion, and a quarter said they did not believe in God at all. The World Values Survey conducted between 2017 and 2022 concluded that the population of the UK were split between those who believed in God – 47.7% – and those who did not – 48.5%. As a comparison, back in 1981, three-quarters of British people said they believed in God.
The 2021 England and Wales Census also published their figures, according to which 37.2% of the people claim to have no religion. This has increased from a quarter in 2011. The number of Christians suffered a steep decline in the past decade, becoming the minority at only 46.2% of the population.
According to Dr Lois Lee, from the University of Kent’s Department of Religious Studies: “The UK is entering its first atheist age. Whilst atheism has been prominent in our culture for some time – be it through Karl Marx, George Eliot, or Ricky Gervais – it is only now that atheists have begun to outnumber theists for the first time in our history. While anti-religious parents do not substantially impact whether their children believe in God, they do strongly influence whether their children are morally opposed to religion.”
Professor Jonathan Lanman from Queen’s, who is one of the lead researchers, stated: “Our large cross-cultural surveys reveal that while many factors may influence one’s beliefs in small ways, the key factor is the extent to which one is socialised to be a theist. Many other popular theories, such as intelligence, emotional stoicism, broken homes, and rebelliousness, do not stand up to empirical scrutiny.”
Source: https://www.christiantoday.com/