The Changing Landscape of Religion in America

I suggest everyone read this Associated Press article that details the changing face of religion in America. It's an interesting read with some pretty suprising statistics. Did you know that atheists in America outnumber Buddhists, Muslims and Jews combined?

Here are a couple paragraphs that relate directly to me:

The majority of the unaffiliated -- 12 percent of the overall population -- describe their religion as "nothing in particular," and about half of those say faith is at least somewhat important to them. Atheists or agnostics account for 4 percent of the total population.

The Roman Catholic Church has lost more members than any faith tradition because of affiliation swapping, the survey found. While nearly one in three Americans were raised Catholic, fewer than one in four say they're Catholic today. That means roughly 10 percent of all Americans are ex-Catholics.

I knew there were a lot of ex-Catholics out there, but 10 percent of all Americans? Wow.

Oh, and if you want to check out a couple stories about the increasing atheist presence (if that sounds ominous to you, then you probably don't know much about atheism) in the US and Europe check these out.

The first paragraph at that link is just down-right silly, but the rest of the story is pretty good.