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{{Cquote|...[[sociology|sociologist]] Ryan Burge recently released statistics based on Harvard’s Cooperative Election Study claiming that the rise of the nones has already plateaued. In the following graph, you can see that the percentages of the U.S. population who are atheist (6%), agnostic (6%) and nothing in particular (23-24%) remained stable from 2021 to 2023, totaling around 36%...

{{Cquote|...[[sociology|sociologist]] Ryan Burge recently released statistics based on Harvard’s Cooperative Election Study claiming that the rise of the nones has already plateaued. In the following graph, you can see that the percentages of the U.S. population who are atheist (6%), agnostic (6%) and nothing in particular (23-24%) remained stable from 2021 to 2023, totaling around 36%...

Seeing this trend in three national datasets led Burge to proclaim in his post, “The rise of the nones may be largely over now. At least it won’t be increasing in the same way that it did in the prior thirty years.”<ref>[https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2024/06/08/the-plateauing-of-the-nones/ The ‘rise of the nones’ hits a plateau], Deseret News, 2024</ref>}}

Seeing this trend in three national datasets led Burge to proclaim in his post, “The rise of the nones may be largely over now. At least it won’t be increasing in the same way that it did in the prior thirty years...

 

This may be jumping the gun a bit, since only time will tell if this is just a temporary blip. But if it really is flattening, then why did the plateauing of the rise of the nones happen earlier than anticipated? Burge speculates a bit on that point, stating, “I think the easiest explanation is that a lot of marginally attached people switched to ‘no religion’ on surveys over the last decade or two. Eventually, there weren’t that many marginally attached folks anymore. All you had left were the very committed religious people who likely won’t become nones for any reason. The loose topsoil has been scooped off and hauled away, leaving nothing but hard bedrock underneath.”<ref>[https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2024/06/08/the-plateauing-of-the-nones/ The ‘rise of the nones’ hits a plateau], Deseret News, 2024</ref>}}

In 2022, Pew Research reported:

In 2022, Pew Research reported: