This means that the U.K. — England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland — countries whose monarch serves as head of the Church of England, has a population in which a “relative majority,” or plurality, do not believe in God.
A new research project examining why people reject religion has revealed that the number of people in the United Kingdom who identify as atheist is greater than those who say they believe in God.
Explaining Atheism, a three-year program overseen by Queen’s University Belfast in collaboration with other academic institutions launched in 2022, presented interim findings earlier this year on the levels of atheism in multiple countries, including the United Kingdom.
According to the research project, from 2008 to 2018, the number of Brits who don’t believe in God rose from 35.2% to 42.9%, leaping ahead of belief in God, which dropped from 41.8% to 37.4% during the same period. Additionally, those who say they don’t know if God exists dropped from 21.7% in 2008 to 18.2% in 2018, The Christian Post reports.
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This means that the U.K. — England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland — countries whose monarch serves as head of the Church of England, has a population in which a “relative majority,” or plurality, do not believe in God.
Professor Jonathan Lanman, assistant director of the Institute of Cognition and Culture at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, is a member of the core team at Explaining Atheism.
In comments to The Christian Post on Friday, Lanman said that “we are limited in what we can claim” as to why this shift occurred, but they believe that “socialization” is a major factor.
“Our results show that the extent to which one is socialized to be a theist (mainly by parents, but also by wider society) is the key determining factor,” said Lanman. “Socialization is known to be important to what we think about the world and the values we hold.”
“While many other factors may in some smaller way be relevant, such as sex, education, and cognitive biases, these are much less relevant than socialization.”
“Further, many common claims, such as people becoming atheists because they are more intelligent or educated (often made by activist atheists) or people becoming atheists because of broken homes, absent fathers, or a desire to rebel (often made by conservative religious commentators), are all shown to be false based on our results,” he continued.
Find out more on The Christian Post.