I was SO excited about the Census... THEN...

I did have a good reason for being so excited about a nosey multiple choice quiz about my life. This will be the first time that *I* can fill out the answers about myself personally, and I was just beaming with the possibility of checking a little box labeled "Atheist." In my mind, this was going to be a landmark year for atheists - more of us in America than ever before! Things are different than they were even 10 years ago and it has become more socially acceptable to admit to being a non-theist. I even had this hazy daydream about my ancestors looking me up on Ancestry.com 100 years in the future and smiling when they came across the first atheist in the family.

THEN, this morning, while looking for 2000's "religious views" numbers to post in this blog, I discovered that the Census does not ask for religious affiliation data citing the separation of church and state. ReligiousTolerance.org explains that the government gets their information from the ARIS study - the "American Religious Identification Survey." (When do I get THIS survey??) Still, things are hopeful for atheists. In the event that any of you are curious about the 2001 ARIS results:

14.1% do not follow any organized religion. This is an unusually rapid increase -- almost doubling -- from only 8% in 1990. There are more Americans who say they are not affiliated with any organized religion than there are Episcopalians, Methodists, and Lutherans combined.

That number rose to 15% in 2008. Admittedly, that last jump isn't quite as dramatic, but it's still moving in the right direction.

And pop-culture trends really help the cause. You know how Will & Grace made it "okay" to be gay on TV? More people than ever were exposed to gay issues in their living room -many of them people who might never have to think about those issues otherwise. Sometimes it seems hard to remember really how groundbreaking that show was. Well, now House and Bones are among the most popular prime time shows - both featuring lead characters who are declared atheists. The shows openly discuss atheist and religious issues. (These shows, in my opinion, deserve their own future blog posts...) Both Brennan and House are brilliant people at the tops of their fields which stays true to the statistical likelihood for educated people to be atheists. Somehow they solve crimes and save lives without any other-worldly help - they are "Good Without God" and not looking back. Hopefully someday it can slip my mind that these shows were groundbreaking as well. Until then, I'll keep my fingers crossed that ARIS gives me a call.