You said:

The number of people self-reporting as atheists, agnostics, humanists, and secular together total less than 1% of the population.

Where did this come from?

See this data, which implies that you are quite off on your estimates, as most sociologists agree a minimum of 7% of Americans are either agnostic or atheist. A great number of those who answer “Christian” are obviously nominal in their faith. And there is data available for 1990, it just wasn’t displayed in the study. Lots of data out there.

When you consider the stigma against atheists, it certainly isn’t surprising that a lot of people aren’t “open” and are “closeted” atheists. But who cares? The study proves my point — that those who claim godlessness is on the wane are not supported by evidence.

You have yet to refute that.

The 19th and early 20th centuries witnessed the death of God. At the turn of the 21st century we are witnessing the death of Godlessness. It’s all rather exciting.

I’m afraid that this hopeful assertion is terribly contradicted by recent studies, (ARIS) which rather conclusively showed that the number of people who went from any religion to no religion increased by 23% over the years studied.

In their words, the researchers note:

The top three “gainers” in America’s vast religious market place appear to be Evangelical Christians, those describing themselves as Non-Denominational Christians and those who profess no religion. Looking at patterns of religious change from this perspective, the evidence points as much to the rejection of faith as to the seeking of faith among American adults. Indeed, among those who previously had no religion, just 5% report current identification with one or another of the major religions.

The raw number of “no religion” folks swamps the Evangelicals by about 30-fold and non-denoms by about 14-fold. In numerical form, the “no religion” switch from some prior religion increased by approx. 6.6 million persons, and those “switching out” were approx. 1.1 million persons = approx. 5.5 million net deconverts.

Do the math on this, and you’ll see that no other category even comes close. Not one. The next highest number of net converts is 1.4 million for “Christian” and then 600,000 for “Pentecostal”. So, you may want to start checking the data before baldly asserting that “godlessness” is somehow waning. On the contrary, friend, it is waxing full.

You’re misinterpreting the results. The number of people self-reporting as atheists, agnostics, humanists, and secular together total less than 1% of the population. Those are the godless and its a piddling small group that doesn’t appear to be growing at all, although we can’t tell since (mysteriously and suspiciously) there is no number in the atheist category for 1990. -ds

If you want to check on vote counts I found a very good site for presidential elections results. It is http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/ and at the top are menus for several years for both presiidential years and mid terms for some other offiices. It has results by state and county information too.

DS,
My specious on-line poll reference was in response to turandot’s specious on-line poll reference, which I note you did not feel needed any editorial comment. Wonder why?

Wonder no longer. Coulter’s Godless is the top seller in non-fiction this week according to Nielsen’s and is #3 in all categories. Given her well established popularity the poll Turandot quoted, while not reliable, is probably reasonably accurate. The one you quoted was not. You seem to have a chip on your shoulder. If so take it somewhere else. -ds

Since you are using parts of your review of Ann Coulter on your website here, maybe you should correct something in that review. Namely, that she was right about no Democratic candidate except Jimmy Carter with 50.1% of the vote has gotten a majority of the votes cast since 1964. Since that time Nixon (72), Regan (80.84), Bush (88), Bush (2004) have received majorities of the votes casts.

You have to have your head in the sand if you don’t understand that liberalism in politics doesn’t flow from a philosophical basis. People with differrent philosophical views drift to certain political groups to express these views and also to help with the enactment of these views. Guess who has drifted towards the Democratic party and thus has changed its political message over the years.

Does Ann Coulter make a positive contribution to American political culture?

Total Votes Cast: 4919870

Yes 15.1%
No 84.8%
Don’t Know .1%

NOTE: This is an unscientific, informal survey for the interest and enjoyment of TIME.com users and may not be indicative of popular opinion.

Online surveys are worthless. They’re easily gamed and the respondents aren’t representative of the public. You included the disclaimer but evidently didn’t understand it. Either that or you’re just being argumentative and employing speciousness to do it. -ds

How would you react to conservative commentator Ann Coulter’s new attack on 9/11 widows as self-obsessed and enjoying their husband’s deaths?

• Slap her as vicious, just like Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton did — 24%

• Applaud her bold claim — 65%

• Arrange a boycott of her new book Godless: The Church of Liberalism — 10%

Note: This is not a scientific poll and does not test a representative population sample. The poll continuously recalculates its response percentages as the number of participants increases.

Materialism is philosophical.

Liberalism is political.

Hence the problem with Anne Coulter as a spokesperson.

Does Coulter actually mention ID somewhere? The only thing she appears to be spokesperson for is anti-Darwinism. -ds

I offer you, gentle reader, a selection of Anne Coulter “barbs” all out of context, all from just one chapter of her book (chapter 5), and invite you to imagine the context that makes them “perfectly legitimate”.

*************************************************************
“… all Democratic spokesmen these days are sobbing, hysterical women.” – Page 101
“One wonders how exposing anything about Cindy could discredit her more than the poor imbecile’s own words have. – page 102
“…Cindy Sheehan, with that weird disconnect between the viciousness of her comments and her itsy-bitsy, squeaky voice.” – page 103
“These self-obsessed women seemed genuinely unaware that 9/11 was an attack on our nation …” page 103
“These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arrazzis, I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands death so much. The increasingly rabid widows …” page 103
“… the Democrats were able to ensure a whitewash of Clintons’ utter incompetence, cowardice, and capitulation to enemy regimes …” page 104
“Mostly the witches of East Brunsweick wanted George Bush to apologize for not being Bill Clinton. Like Monica Lewinsky before here, Breitweiser found impeached president Clinton “very forthcoming”.” – page 112
“Out of love for his country and an insatiable desire to have some-one notice his worthless existence, Wilson wrote a column …” – page 115
“He had been sent by his wife , Valerie Plame, a chair-warmer at the CIA who apparently wanted to get him out of the house.” – page 118
“For the really insane stuff you have to go to bush-league newspapers where reporters have all the venom of the big-city newspapers, combined with retard level IQs.” – page 119
“… the only provable conclusion of which is that Joe Wilson is a nut and a liar.” page 119
“… How does a publisher react to some pompous jerk who wants to call his book The Politics of Truth? – page 151
“The Democratic Party’s became Cindy Sheehan, loon.” – page 128
“The only sort of authority Cindy Sheehan has is the uncanny ability to demonstrate, by example, what body types should avoid wearing shorts in public.” – page 128
“Despite having a screwball for a mother, Casey Sheehan was a great American …” page 150
“There is no plausible explanation for the Democrats’ behavior other than that they long to see U.S. troops shot, humiliated and driven from the field of battle. They fill the airwaves with treason… These people are not only traitors, they are gutless traitors.” page 135
“… as long as Democrats are going to be jock sniffers for war veteran’s, let’s at least be equal about it.” – page 137
“I have a right to call Democrats blowhards, moral cowards, and traitors… they are liars and cowards and traitors.” – page 141
“Perhaps liberals will claim Moore is a “covert” agent with the CIA, – assuming a big, sweaty, behemoth like Michael Moore could actually be concealed…” – page 143

******************************************************************

Methinks that is going to take a LOT of context packed into a little 47 page chapter.

Quite an advocate you’ve got there.

Which of these do you imagine need context to be legitimate? -ds