I have argued in my series of posts on Why Atheism Is Winning that religion is in decline and that atheism is on the rise even in the US. However, the last bastion of religion is likely to be rural America where the church is the focus for residents, offering the only outlet for community activities.
Visitors to America from largely secular Europe are often bemused at how hostile rural America is to nonbelievers. Via Greta Christina, I learned of this article by Julian Baggini, a reporter from England. He recounts many poignant tales of nonbelievers who have either kept quiet or come out into the open and been shunned by their communities.
The most extraordinary story I heard was from a woman in Tuscaloosa county, Alabama. She grew up in nearby Lamar county, raised in the strict Church of Christ, where there is no music with worship and you can’t dance. She says her family love her and are proud of her, but “I’m not allowed to be an atheist in Lamar County”. What is astonishing is that she can be pretty much anything else. “Being on crack, that was OK. As long as I believed in God, I was OK.” So, for example, “I’m not allowed to babysit. I have all these cousins who need babysitters but they’re afraid I’ll teach them about evolution, and I probably would.” I couldn’t quite believe this. She couldn’t babysit as an atheist, but she could when she was on crack? “Yes.” I laughed, but it is hard to think of anything less funny.
There are many interesting stories like that in the article.
I find it encouraging that people are still willing to come out even under such situations. It speaks once again to the power of the internet in breaking down that sense of loneliness. You don’t really need your immediate neighbors any more for companionship when the whole world is waiting for you at your keyboard. The fact that a foreign reporter was able to track down atheists in small towns across the country is an indicator that they are no longer totally isolated. As one person said, “I found the East Texas atheist website, and through that the Fellowship of Freethought, the Dallas atheists, the Plano atheists and all these different other groups and I’m like, ‘oh, I’m not alone’ … Just knowing that there are 400-plus people at least, maybe thousands, an hour and a half from here that have similar beliefs is enough that I don’t feel isolated.”
The internet will destroy religion.
I know Reddit’s /r/atheism can be a pretty hostile environment, but it’s also a great place where people, often teenagers in redneck Christian America, can find solace and a place to vent their frustrations. I’ve seen countless stories on there of teenage boys and girls kicked out of home, by their own parents, simply because they were atheist. It’s heartbreaking, and it’s a really tough time in someones’ life to be rejected by their families.
I have just started reading a book about the History of the Freethinker, Britain’s oldest atheist magazine, established in 1881 and still in print today. Those Victorian Freethinkers thought that Christianity was on its deathbed then. The thing is, to some extent they were right, Christianity, as they knew it, is long gone in Britain. Christianity evolved into something else entirely, a more humanist version with stuff about Heaven and Hell swept under the mat. We now have millions of Britons who call themselves Christians but can’t even pick out the first book of the NT from a list of four, Psalms/Genesis/Matthew/Acts.*
I think that you are correct that the internet will hasten the decline of religion. I think that the numbers of adherents to religions will continue to decline but also that the religions that survive will evolve into something less unpleasant. There will, of course be a hard core of each religion that evolves into something more unpleasant but these will die out as sane people refuse to be associated with them.
*This information is of course from the Mori poll that was commisioned by the Richard Dawkins Foundation. It prompted the comment on a satirical news show on BBC radio, that you are not allowed to call yourself a Christian unless you can pass a test set by Richard Dawkins. This made me laugh but misses the point slightly. You can call yourself a Christian but can hardly be expected to be taken seriously if you admit to knowing absolutely nothing about the NT which is the foundation document of the Christian religion.
FYI, Julian Baggini is more than just a reporter; he is the author of several books about philosophy for the non-specialist reader and editor of a philosphy journal. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Baggini)