More people in UK are atheist than believe in God: report
The number of people in the United Kingdom who identify as atheist is greater than those who say they believe in God, according to a research project examining why people reject religion.
Explaining Atheism, a three-year program overseen by Queen’s University Belfast in collaboration with other academic institutions launched in 2022, presented interim findings earlier this year on the levels of atheism in multiple countries, including the United Kingdom.
According to the research project, from 2008 to 2018, the number of Brits who don't believe in God rose from 35.2% to 42.9%, leaping ahead of belief in God, which dropped from 41.8% to 37.4% during the same period. Additionally, those who say they don't know if God exists dropped from 21.7% in 2008 to 18.2% in 2018.
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This means that the U.K. — England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland — countries whose monarch serves as head of the Church of England, has a population in which a “relative majority,” or plurality, do not believe in God.
Professor Jonathan Lanman, assistant director of the Institute of Cognition and Culture at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, is a member of the core team at Explaining Atheism.
In comments to The Christian Post on Friday, Lanman said that “we are limited in what we can claim” as to why this shift occurred, but they believe that “socialization” is a major factor.
“Our results show that the extent to which one is socialized to be a theist (mainly by parents, but also by wider society) is the key determining factor,” said Lanman. “Socialization is known to be important to what we think about the world and the values we hold.”
“While many other factors may in some smaller way be relevant, such as sex, education, and cognitive biases, these are much less relevant than socialization.”
Lanman also told CP that many factors people normally claim play a role in if one believes in God, such as being intelligent or living a secure life, actually do not have considerable influence.
“Further, many common claims, such as people becoming atheists because they are more intelligent or educated (often made by activist atheists) or people becoming atheists because of broken homes, absent fathers, or a desire to rebel (often made by conservative religious commentators), are all shown to be false based on our results,” he continued.
“There’s a significant literature on the role of existential security and religious belief and participation, arguing that as security increases, religion fades. Our findings suggest that while there’s some truth to this, the effect is small and much less important than socialization.”
As to why changes in socialization are leading more people in the U.K.to identify as atheist, Lanman told CP that the project “does not have data” on “why they happened.”
Lanman cited the work of the late American researcher Ronald Inglehart of the University of Michigan, who argued that shifting to “individual-choice norms” from “pro-fertility norms” plays a part.
“The major world religions had presented pro-fertility norms as absolute moral rules and firmly resisted change. People only slowly give up the familiar beliefs and societal roles they have known since childhood, concerning gender and sexual behavior,” wrote Inglehart in 2020.
“But when a society reaches a sufficiently high level of economic and physical security, younger generations grow up taking that security for granted and the norms around fertility recede.”
Regarding how this growth in the atheist population in the U.K. might impact the nation in the long run, Lanman told CP that “predictions of a massive negative impact due to a loss of moral conviction or sense of meaning and purpose are likely incorrect.”
“Most atheists and agnostics endorse objective moral values, human dignity, and inherent rights, as well as a ‘deep value’ for nature, at similar rates as the general population,” he said.
“Atheists and agnostics are also similar to the general population in seeing ‘family’ and ‘freedom’ as very important for finding meaning in the world and in their own lives.”
Over the past several years, multiple reports have shown that Christianity, in general, and the Church of England in particular are experiencing considerable decline in the U.K.
For example, a 2017 report found that, during October 2016, around one-quarter of Church of England congregations did not have any children present for worship services on average.
Additionally, the National Centre for Social Research found in 2019 that only 38% of Brits identified as Christian, the lowest total in around three decades of polling.
Last December, a bill was introduced in Parliament by Liberal Democrat lawmaker Paul Scriven to sever the government's ties to the Church of England. It is listed as being in first reading in the House of Lords.
