The proportion of atheists within the UK has grown to such an extent that it’s now possible to talk of the country’s “first atheist age”, a bunch of researchers has said after publishing the findings of a serious study into atheism.
The ‘Explaining Atheism’ project, led by Queen’s University Belfast, surveyed nearly 25,000 people across Brazil, China, Denmark, Japan, UK and USA with the aim of uncovering why some individuals are atheists and why some countries have higher percentages of atheists than others.
Figures from this study and a preceding research project, Understanding Unbelief (2017–2021), were converged with data from the British Social Attitudes Survey and World Values Survey to assert that the UK now has a relative majority of atheists. Christian Today requested a breakdown of figures but these weren’t supplied by the point of going to press.
According to the 2021 British Social Attitudes Survey, whose figures were compiled within the yr 2019, over half of respondents (52%) said they didn’t belong to any religion, while 1 / 4 said they didn’t consider in God.
Polling by the World Values Survey between 2017 and 2022 found that UK respondents were evenly split between those that believed in God (47.7%) and people who didn’t (48.5%). Four many years ago, in 1981, three-quarters of Britons said they believed in God, a stark picture of how much faith within the UK has declined.
The 2021 England and Wales Census showed the same decline, with 37.2% of the population now identifying as having no religion, up from 1 / 4 in 2011, while the number of individuals identifying as Christian fell to a minority for the primary time, at only 46.2% of the population.
The Explaining Atheism research project involved several UK universities, including Brunel University of London and the University of Kent.
Commenting on the study’s findings, Dr Lois Lee, from the University of Kent’s Department of Religious Studies, said: “The UK is entering its first atheist age. Whilst atheism has been outstanding in our culture for a while – be it through Karl Marx, George Eliot, or Ricky Gervais – it is simply now that atheists have begun to outnumber theists for the primary time in our history.”
The study found that the strongest influences on belief are parental upbringing and societal expectations regarding belief in God.
“While anti-religious parents don’t substantially impact whether their children consider in God, they do strongly influence whether their children are morally against religion,” researchers said.
Curiously, most atheists and agnostics were found to have some form of belief within the supernatural.
The ‘Explaining Atheism’ project spanned three years and was funded by the John Templeton Foundation.
Lead researcher, Professor Jonathan Lanman from Queen’s, said: “Our large cross-cultural surveys reveal that while many aspects may influence one’s beliefs in small ways, the important thing factor is the extent to which one is socialised to be a theist.
“Many other popular theories, similar to intelligence, emotional stoicism, broken homes, and rebelliousness, don’t get up to empirical scrutiny.”
