Who has time for religion anyway?
That canned line about being "spiritual but not religious" that everyone spouts is becoming more and more of a reality, a 40-year study recently found.
Dr Jean Twenge of San Diego State University said Americans are becoming more secular, stating that the percentage of Americans who prayed or believed in God reached an all-time low in 2014. Americans in recent years were less likely to engage in a wide variety of religious practices, including attending religious services, describing oneself as a religious person, and believing that the Bible is divinely inspired, with the biggest declines seen among 18- to 29-year-old respondents.
It's always those trendy youths that ruin everything.
The study of 58,893 Americans between 1972 and 2014 finds that five times as many Americans admitted to never praying in 2014 compared to those who answered the same question in the 1980s.
The one exception to the decline in religious beliefs was a slight increase in belief in the afterlife. Dr. Twenge said: "It was interesting that fewer people participated in religion or prayed but more believed in an afterlife."
Like most things that millenials do wrong, she blamed it on how narcissistic everyone is. "It might be part of a growing entitlement mentality — thinking you can get something for nothing."
Because everyone knows you only get an afterlife when you've spent most of your life putting in the long hours, praying to the right bearded people in the sky.
Dr Twenge said: 'Most previous studies concluded that fewer Americans were publicly affiliating with a religion, but that Americans were just as religious in private ways. That's no longer the case, especially in the last few years."
She added: "The large declines in religious practice among young adults are also further evidence that millennials [people born between 1980 and 2000] are the least religious generation in memory, and possibly in American history."
So if things continue along this path, religion just might phase itself out entirely. And that would be terrible … right?
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