In 2038 There Will Be More Atheists Than Believers, According to This Psychologist

It is clear that during the last decades in some countries a level of material well-being has been achieved that has never occurred before in any historical period. This change has not occurred in a vacuum; It has gone hand in hand with migration from the countryside to the cities, environmental wear and tear, the accelerated development of new technologies… And, in addition, a psychological change has occurred: there are more and more atheist people.

But… to what extent will the tendency to not believe in the divine or the afterlife continue to grow? Is there a “ceiling” beyond which atheism cannot continue to grow? According to psychologist Nigel Barber, if it exists, that ceiling is still very far away and, in fact, atheism will beat religions before the year 2038.

Belief in religions declines

There are two fundamental things that characterize atheism today: it is growing rapidly and it is distributed very unevenly by region and by age. Yes in Spain 40 years ago only 8% of the population considered themselves atheists, today this percentage has risen to 25%. In a similar way, if among people over 65 years of age residing in Spain atheists are only 8.3%, among millennials, born in the last years of the 20th century, the percentage is approximately 50%.

Similarly, countries that enjoy a more developed welfare state, such as Sweden or Germany, have a greater representation of the atheist population, while religiosity is hegemonic in countries where there is a lot of poverty. It seems that The expansion of the welfare society causes religiosity to recede. For Barber, furthermore, this is not a dynamic that will be reversed soon.

What is the reason for the expansion of atheism?

in his book Why Atheism Will Replace Religion?Nigel Barber explains that Religion has been for centuries a cultural creation created to appease anguish generated by living in highly unstable and dangerous environments, in which danger and resource scarcity lurk on a daily basis. The idea of ​​death and the feeling of helplessness could be better endured by believing that life itself has to do with a creation full of otherworldly transcendence. In these contexts, it was useful.

But just as certain animal species survive in stable environments like islands, there are ideas that are unrivaled as long as certain conditions exist over centuries and millennia; but when there is a strong change that affects the entire population and that has no precedents, the situation may change. The example the author gives is that of the dodo: when a new element enters the scene, extinction can occur within a few decades.

In this case, “the new” is the possibility of living relatively comfortable lives (at least materially) and access to an education in which logical reasoning and scientifically generated knowledge. This means that meaning can be given to life beyond the fear of extraterrestrial punishments and beyond dogmas.

The new religions

Another thing that may be influencing the expansion of atheism is, according to Barber, the fact that new forms of non-theistic religiosity appear that escape the usual definition of “believer” and “non-believer.” Football, the fan phenomenon and some forms of political activism for example, can lead us to feel part of both a cohesive collective and a system of dogmas and, of course, a sense of transcendence, of something that will remain when we die.

Thus, many people who declare themselves atheists may be channeling forms of quasi-religious reasoning without realizing it. For example, by never questioning certain beliefs thanks to circular thinking, or believing that there are ideas against which “blasphemies” cannot be directed. The difference between these new religions and the old ones is that they do not appeal to fear due to non-compliance with a series of rules, and they can be abandoned at any time without being so afraid of the pressures of the environment.

What will happen in the coming decades?

In any case, it seems that if atheism goes hand in hand with the development and generalization of certain standards of well-being, environmental and economic crises can have a dent in it. What will happen when, due to the lack of energy sources, a collapse occurs that paralyzes the factories? And when climate change forces millions of people to move to other countries and look for drinking water in other places? It may be that in the coming years the lack of belief in religions will experience an all-time high, only to collapse immediately afterwards as poverty and resource scarcity advance. In the end, no prediction is completely reliable, and religion can continue to perpetuate itself as it has done until now.