Atheism in the United States
According to sociologists as of 2022, "the proportion of atheists in the US has held steady at 3% to 4% for more than 80 years." According to the Pew Research Center in a 2014 survey, self-identified atheists make up 3.1% of the US population, even though 9% of Americans agreed with the statement "Do not believe in God" while 2% agreed with the statement "Do not know if they believe in God". Other polling by Gallup in 2022 showed that 17% of respondents replied "No" when asked "Do you believe in God?", and another from 2023 found that 12% of respondents replied they "Do not believe in" God with 14% replying they were "Not sure about" the existence of God. Regardless of question or polling service, there is evidence the number of people not believing in God is increasing.
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 56,000,000 (17%) (answered "No" to the question "Do you believe in God?") (2017) 9,571,112 (3.1%) (self described atheists) (2014) | |
| Religions | |
| Irreligion: (including antitheism, agnostic atheism, apatheism, casualism, counter-apologeticism, debaptism evangelical atheism, freethought/freethinker, ignosticism, implicit and explicit atheism, Marxist–Leninist atheism, negative and positive atheism, nonbeliever, nontheism, post-theism, rationalism, new/scientific atheism, physicalism, metaphysical naturalism, logicalism, secular humanism, skepticism, etc.) Secular religions: Buddhism (including secular Buddhism, etc.) Christian atheism (including Cultural Christian (Cultural Catholic, Cultural Mormon, Nontheist Quakers, etc.), Lapsed Catholic, Recovering Catholic etc.) Ethical movement Hinduism (including Adevism, Charvaka, Hindu atheist, etc.) Jainism Jewish atheism (including Cultural Judaism, etc.) Modern Paganism Muslim atheism (including Cultural Muslim, etc.) New religious movements (including Creativity, Raëlism, etc.) Parody religions (including Church of Satan, Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster/Pastafarianism, Invisible Pink Unicorn, Jediism, LaVeyan Satanism, etc.) Satanism Unitarian Universalism |
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According to the 2014 General Sociological Survey, the number of atheists and agnostics in the U.S. grew over the previous 23 years. In 1991, only 2% identified as atheist, and 4% identified as agnostic; while in 2014, 3.1% identified as atheists, and 5% identified as agnostics.
In 2009, Pew stated that only 5% of the US population did not have a belief in a god and out of that small group only 24% self-identified as "atheist", while 15% self-identified as "agnostic" and 35% self-identified as "nothing in particular".
According to the 2008 ARIS, only 2% the US population was atheist, while 10% were agnostics.
One 2018 research paper using indirect methods estimated that 26% of Americans are atheists, which is much higher than the 3%-11% rates that are consistently found in surveys. However, methodological problems have been identified with this particular study; in particular, it has been posted that many people might not have a binary outlook to the question of the existence of God.
Accurate demographics of atheism are difficult to obtain since conceptions of atheism and self-identification are context dependent by culture.