This post is authored by Charles Barnes.

The front page story of the November 21, 2013 Post Register, Losing Faith, reported the growing number of atheists in America based on a 2012 Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life report. The article told the story of one young man who had grown up a Mormon, gone on a two-year mission and attended BYU-Idaho, but then left his church. The rest of the article consisted of a few scattered statements about religion and atheism in eastern Idaho.

The complete 80-page report cited in the Post Register article is available for downloading or reading online at http://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise/#_ftn3. The religious trends in this report are based on annual surveys from 2007 to 2012 of an average of about 20,000 respondents per year (ranging from a low of 9,443 in 2007 to a high of 24,764 in 2010). This equates to less than one-hundredth of one percent of the American population. The survey results indicated: (more…)