A small bit of good news

Well, here's some good news.

America Becoming Less Christian

America is a less Christian nation than it was 20 years ago, and Christianity is not losing out to other religions, but primarily to a rejection of religion altogether, a survey published Monday found.

Seventy-five percent of Americans call themselves Christian, according to the American Religious Identification Survey from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. In 1990, the figure was 86 percent.

I know this is going to upset some people, but as far as I can see, the fewer people making decisions by blindly following ridiculous pronouncements in an old book or doing whatever their holy man says instead of using their heads, the better.

Of course, William Donohue of the Catholic League is pretty sure that a new wave of hedonism is behind the whole thing.

"The three most dreaded words are thou shalt not," he told Lou Dobbs. "Notice they are not atheists -- they are saying I don't want to be told what to do with my life."

Because if there's anything that kids want these days is to ignore "thou shalt not kill" and "thou shalt not steal." Those are real bummers, ya know? They're cramping their style.

Unfortunately, the remaining Christians seem to be becoming more evangelical, less mainstream, and thus more radicalized against the rest of the nation.

In the survey, one in five Americans said they have no religious identity or did not answer the question, and more than one in four said they do not expect to have a religious funeral.

The rise in what the survey authors call "nones" is the only trend reflected in every single state in the study, Silk said.

As I said, good news. If we humans manage to kill ourselves, it will be because of unquestioning, irrational, actions inspired by the religious fervor of those who believe that anything they do, however heinous, is God's will. The fewer people subject to this mindset the better off we all are.