A research team that included Ryne Sherman from Florida Atlantic University and Julie J. Exline and Joshua B. Grubbs from Case Western Reserve University analyzed data from 58,893 respondents to the General Social Survey, a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults administered between 1972 and 2014. Five times as many Americans in 2014 reported that they never prayed as did Americans in the early 1980s, and nearly twice as many said they did not believe in God.

Americans in recent years were less likely to engage in a wide variety of religious practices, including attending religious services, describing oneself as a religious person, and believing that the Bible is divinely inspired, with the biggest declines seen among 18- to 29-year-old respondents.

Okay, this is pleasant news, but drowning in the current tide of clowns which is our electoral system at work, and religious belief fueling horrendous acts, killing people, and increasing hate and fear, it’s hard to get excited. There’s also the constant tide of idiocy which rather belies any growing secularism in the States:

BOISE – Legislation saying the use of the Bible as a reference in Idaho’s public schools is “expressly permitted” passed the Idaho House on Monday and headed to the governor’s desk – even though the state attorney general concluded such a law is “specifically prohibited” by the Idaho Constitution.

North Idaho Rep. Sage Dixon, R-Ponderay, the bill’s House sponsor, told the House, “The little Supreme Court in my head says this is OK.”

Dixon and other supporters argued that the Bible is nonsectarian and nondenominational, and that the reason the bill mentions only the Bible and not other religious texts is because the Bible alone is “under attack.” “There are many religions that refer back to the Bible in their tenets,” Dixon said.

Boy, does the “little Supreme Court” in my head ever differ. Full story here.