Is atheism in decline or on the rise?
The figures are ambiguous. Globally, more people may claim to be atheists today than ever before, but proportionately they are fewer because more religious societies are growing more quickly.
The countries with the highest proportion of atheists are Sweden, Vietnam, Denmark, Norway and Japan (in that order). This list itself undermines simple explanations. The second highest is Vietnam, not a Western developed state like the United States or Ireland (both with low levels of atheism). The fifth highest, Japan, has the oldest population of any nation while atheism barely registers in any of the countries with the youngest populations (all of which are in Africa).
Making sense?
Cambridge Phil Zuckerman in The Companion to Atheism points out that the problem of making sense of the numbers is even harder when we take into account the surveys upon which they are based. The political and cultural climate of a nation, access to the survey, and the willingness to participate all compromise the value of the responses. Of particular note, one cannot equate non-belief and atheism.
For example, to take the case of Norway, a survey revealed that 41% of the population do not believe in God but only 10% of the population identify themselves as atheists. This is a common pattern and indicates that many people have abandoned what they consider traditional forms of faith without any intention of being grouped among the atheists.
In fact, the major surveys of non-belief tend to group together atheists, agnostics, and those who do not believe in a ‘personal’ God. That is a very wide definition and inflates the figures for atheism.
Faith despite the pressure
Atheism has had a long century in which to make its impact felt and yet God continues to stubbornly refuse to go away. The communist bloc countries sought to impose atheism on its populations. In 1918 the Bolshevik revolution banned public religious teaching of children outside the home, in 1921 it banned such teaching in the home. Even Richard Dawkins has argued that the religious teaching of children ought to be understood as a form of child abuse and quotes a colleague approvingly: ‘We should no more allow parents to teach their children to believe, for example, in the literal truth of the Bible … than we should allow parents to knock their children’s teeth out or lock them in a dungeon’ (The God Delusion, p.326). Stalin would have been pleased. Yet for all such attempts to crush religion, faith persists.
An atheist’s son
In 1960, atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair found out that her son William had been praying in school. Failing to force the school to exempt her son she ultimately took the school to the American Supreme Court who ruled in her favour. Bible reading and prayers were now banned from public schools. It also gave O’Hair an incredible public platform as an atheist. She founded American Atheists, a national magazine, and a radio show. Her many TV appearances are still viewed on the Internet. The controversy over prayer in American schools continues.
However, in 1980 Madalyn’s 34-year-old son, William, came to faith in Christ. He went on to become a Baptist minister and chairs the Religious Freedom Coalition which seeks to aid Christians living in totalitarian regimes. He even published a book in 1995 pleading for prayer to be reintroduced into American schools. This atheist had moved on.
Sadly, his mother had not. Hearing of his conversion to Christ she declared: ‘One could call this a postnatal abortion on the part of a mother, I guess; I repudiate him entirely and completely for now and all times. He is beyond human forgiveness.’
A grim ending
O’Hair died tragically, along with her son Jon and William’s daughter Robin, when a former employee of the American Atheists kidnapped, murdered and mutilated them. Nick Spencer, in a detailed overview of the history of atheism, observes: ‘It was a grim ending to a story that had put atheism on the map in America, if not in the way that most American atheists wanted.’ (Nick Spencer, Atheists: The Origin of the Species, p.229).
