Is No Religion The New Religion? [View all]
According to a YouGov poll in 2016, here in the United Kingdom, if you are British and under 40 you are far more likely to say you have no religion that to say you are Christian, Jewish, Muslim or of any other faith, add to this the fact that if you do not have a religion there is a 95% likelihood your children wont have one either.
In January 2013 37% of the population of Great Britain reported having no religion. By February of 2015 that had gone up to 42%, and, in a survey undertaken last month with YouGov using the same questions, the figure had increased to 46%.
(EDIT: I am sure it is higher today
.. but these are the latest stats I could find)
Even though we see an increasing demographic reporting having no religion, of those stating they have no religion only a minority of people were certain there was no God. Most people polled think that there may well be something out there.
Only 13% of nones hold anti-religious views in the style of Richard Dawkins. A quarter take part in some spiritual activity in the course of a month, and 11% call themselves spiritual. But 99% do not take part in any religious group or form of collective worship, and many have a negative view of religious leaders and institutions.
The data seems to suggest that as many describe themselves as spiritual rather than religious, that belief structures in something else are surviving despite religious frameworks and structures rather than because of them.
So, no religion, within a spiritual framework, is the new religion? If so is this a bad thing? Can you have a more fulfilled belief structure outside the more rigid and legalistic structure of organised religion?