This article was stimulated by two articles and a commentary in a recent issue that the author feels insufficiently noted dramatic declines in religious belief. He offers his arguments and analyzes the data on those declines in this article. Following it we present an extended comment from one of our original authors, James E. Alcock. —The Editors
In the September/October 2018 SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, three articles made related mistakes. One, by James Alcock, was based on the common belief that religion is highly popular and enduring because it is a natural consequence of the way brains work from childhood on up. Gregg
Davidson and company asserted that because little if any progress is being made concerning the popularity of creationist belief versus evolutionary science in the United States, effective methods must be urgently developed and deployed to improve the situation. Third, Lorence Collins stated that nearly half of Americans think our planet is just ten millennia old.