The more man puts into God, the less he retains in himself. -Karl Marx¹

I've never hid the fact that I think religion is poison. So, here's some good news:

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. (CNN)

The USA Today article on the study notes an 11% decrease in those self-report as Christian and 15% self-reporting as None.

Don't blame secularism for driving up the percentage of Americans who say they have no religion, says Barry Kosmin, co-researcher for the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS).

"These people aren't secularized. They're not thinking about religion and rejecting it; they're not thinking about it at all," Kosmin says.

A closer look at the "Nones" — people who said "None" when asked their religious identity — shows that this group (now 15% of Americans, up from 8% in 1990) opts out of traditional religious rites of passage. (USA Today)

Of course, a lack of interest in religion doesn't necessarily mean people have replaced faith with a more rational worldview. But, a disinterest in religion and presumably in religiously founded claims on social and political issues can only be good news. One of the best steps this country, and humanity as a whole, can take is to remove religious nonsense from our political discourse.²

Unfortunately the number identifying as evangelical, unarguably the worst type of Christian, is also on the rise, as is association with mega-churches (CNN). So, while there may be fewer Christians, they're apparently becoming more annoying. Great.

There's no reason to think these results will be stable. This stuff changes over time at both the individual and population levels. Hopefully faithlessness will only increase here and elsewhere. It's obvious that the Middle East, for example, desperately needs an anti-religious revolution.³ Hopefully people will continue to realize we don't have to put with religious dogma or be forced to accept their views.