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".[4] According to the 2014 General Sociological Survey, the number of atheists and agnostics in the U.S. had remained relatively flat in the previous 23 years. In 1991, only 2% identified as atheist, and 4% identified as agnostic. In 2014, only 3.1% identified as atheists, and 5% identified as agnostics.[5]
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".[6] According to the 2008 ARIS, only 2% the US population was atheist, while 10% were agnostics.[7] A survey using binary wording found that around 26% of Americans don't believe in god, but they were not comfortable with directly admitting it. However, methodological problems have been identified with this particular study since people do not have binary relationships to questions on God and instead have more complex responses to such questions.[8]
Accurate demographics of atheism are difficult to obtain since conceptions of atheism and self-identification are context dependent by culture.[9]
Demographics
Age
Lack of belief in god/gods among age groups in the United States (2014)
A June–September 2014 Pew Research Center survey found that 69% of atheist Americans identity as Democratic or lean Democratic, 17% have no lean, 15% identify as Republican, 56% liberal, 29% moderate, 10% conservative, and 5% don't know. Among Americans who don't believe in god/gods, 65% identity as Democratic or lean Democratic, 17% have no lean, 18% identity as Republican, 50% liberal, 31% moderate, 13% conservative, and 6% don't know. That makes atheist and nonbelievers in god/gods Americans as belief groups to be the most politically liberal belief group in America and the least politically aligned belief group with Republicans and conservatism in the United States.[4]
A October 2013 Public Religion Research Institute American Values Survey found 58% of American libertarians report they believe in a personal god, 25% believe god is an impersonal force in the universe, and 16% report that they do not believe in a god. It also found 73% of Americans who identify with the Tea Party report they believe in a personal god, 19% believe god is an impersonal force in the universe, and 6% report that they do not believe in a god. It also found 90% of white evangelical Protestants report they believe in a personal god, 8% believe god is an impersonal force in the universe, and less than 1% report that they do not believe in a god.[20]
^Hout, Michael; Smith, Tom (March 2015). "Fewer Americans Affiliate with Organized Religions, Belief and Practice Unchanged: Key Findings from the 2014 General Social Survey"(PDF). General Social Survey. NORC. The percentage answering 'no religion' was 21 percent in 2014, 20 percent in 2012, just 14 percent as recently as 2000, and only 8 percent in 1990." & "In 2014, 3 percent of Americans did not believe in God and 5 percent expressed an agnostic view; the comparable percentages were 2 percent and 4 percent in 1991. More people believed in a 'higher power' in 2014 (13%) than in 1991 (7%).
^""You can be elected as an openly gay politician in this country, but you can't be elected as an openly atheistic one", said Lori Lipman Brown, who was hired last fall to be the Washington, D.C., lobbyist for an organization devoted to atheist causes, the Secular Coalition for America. She's believed to be the first paid lobbyist for the unbelievers in the nation's capital, the front lines of the culture wars. Now, all Brown is seeking is a constituency willing to go public. "Think of where the LGBT movement was 25 years ago", said Brown, who has worked on gay and lesbian rights issues as a legislator and attorney. "That's where atheists are today." [...] Brown, who is married and was raised a "humanistic Jew", talks about how she "came out" as an atheist several years ago, and how most atheists aren't "out yet" at work. She says atheist kids—like many gay children—are made to feel outcasts at school, and explains that she wants to erase the negative connotation to the word "atheist" just as homosexuals have reclaimed slurs like "queer" and "dyke."" Joe Garofoli, 'Atheists hoping to assert rights in religious era', San Francisco Chronicle, February 20, 2006 (accessed June 16, 2008).
^"I'm an atheist, but I don't believe that science and religion are by definition incompatible." Andrew Zwicker, Reddit AMA, 13 May 2014 (accessed 9 November 2017).
Casey Cep, "Without a Prayer: Why are Americans still uncomfortable with atheism?", The New Yorker, October 29, 2018, pp. 66–71. Discusses R. Laurence Moore and Isaac Kramnick, Godless Citizens in a Godly Republic: Atheists in American Public Life, Norton, 2018; and John Gray, Seven Types of Atheism, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2018, which defines "atheist" as "anyone with no use for a divine mind that has fashioned the world" (a category that includes nontheist religions with no creator god, such as Buddhism and Taoism).
Schmidt, Leigh Eric, Village Atheists: How America's Unbelievers Made Their Way in a Godly Nation, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2016.
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