Reading Time: 7 minutes On May 2nd, 2022, the Haven, Kansas city council voted to remove decals from police cars that said “In God We Trust.” They did so in a sensible effort to recognize the separation of church and state. Sixteen days later, after an intense backlash from conservative citizens in Haven, the city council reversed that decision. […]
Research
Research from a secular perspective at OnlySky, a secular community for nonreligious Americans.
Posted inPsychology
Is religion rooted in childhood gullibility?
Reading Time: 13 minutes The vast majority of people who ever lived have believed in the existence of one god or another. What are the evolutionary forces that made our species—and our species alone—a religious one? Evolutionary thinkers have spilled much ink trying to answer questions like this. Some answers have proven to be much more successful than others. […]
Posted inViolence
The one unbeatable trait of the aspiring mass killer
Reading Time: 9 minutes CN: Sexual assault, homicide I had a passion for serial killers in college. The topic, not the people. Armed with an investigative mind and a passion for the intersection of psychology and crime, I was seriously pondering a career in forensic psychology as a way to marry my knowledge of violent criminals with my desire […]
Posted inEducation
Chart: Educational attainment by religious affiliation
Reading Time: < 1 minute Half of all adult nonbelievers have a bachelor’s degree or more. This is second to the Jewish population, at 64%, and on par with other non-Christian religions at 49%. The religiously unaffiliated are on par with Catholics at 31%. Only 16% of Baptists have a bachelor’s degree or more, the lowest of any group.
Posted inNonreligious News
In 2022, atheists make up only 0.09% of the federal prison population
Reading Time: 4 minutes There are 157,064 people in the U.S. federal prison system, and exactly 134 of them identify as atheists. Those self-described atheists made up a mere 0.09% of the federal prison population. That’s according to a Freedom of Information Act request I filed earlier this year with the Federal Bureau of Prisons. I made similar requests […]
Posted inResearch
Maybe religion isn’t dying, but it’s definitely not well
Reading Time: 6 minutes In their recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Byron R. Johnson and Jeff Levin, referring to a paper they recently published in the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion (IJRR), argue that religiosity is not declining in the US but rather, “Americans are becoming more religious, and religious institutions are thriving.” This claim is incredible in […]
Posted inGen Z Rising
A Gen Z shock: Among Zoomers with no religion, women outnumber men
Reading Time: 3 minutes Not since Madalyn Murray O’Hair has the image of non-religiosity been defined by a woman. That may change with Generation Z. A new analysis of data by sociologist Ryan P. Burge finds that, among people born after the year 2000, known as Gen Z, more women than men identify with no organized religion. The Zoomer […]
Posted inResearch
Approval for keeping teacher-led prayer out of public schools
Reading Time: < 1 minute When asked if they approve of the 1962 SCOTUS ruling that teachers and school officials should not lead prayers in public schools 84% of religious nonbelievers approved. This is more than any other religious affiliation but not unusual for non-Christians. Christians are far more likely to approve of teachers being allowed to lead classroom prayer. […]
Posted inPolitics
Survey: A record-low 20% of Americans say the Bible is literally true
Reading Time: 3 minutes The good news is that a record-low 20% of Americans believe the Bible is literally true, according to a Gallup poll released today, down from a record-high of 40% in 1984. The bad news is that it feels like every single one of those people is in elected office somewhere… The same poll saw an […]
Posted inReligious News
‘No religion’ is the second-largest faith group in Australia, census shows
Reading Time: 3 minutes The percentage of Australians who have no religious affiliation has jumped from 30.1% in 2016 to an astonishing 38.9% in 2021, marking a rapid shift away from organized religion. That’s one of the major results released by Australia’s Bureau of Statistics, which conducts a census every five years and began releasing 2021 Census data today. […]