Ryan Burge: The Rising of the "Nones"

This gives me hope 💜

Great content.

Thank you both for another informative video. Your guest Ryan was very interesting. I was raised in a Southern Baptist fundamentalist family... so great to see a SB preacher doing a constructive thing like writing a book about NIPs and Nones!

A "Post-Christian" America...! 😄
👏👏👏👏👏👏

A very interesting show. Many thanks to everyone. 👍

It means the human species is slowly evolving, but evolution is still painfully slow.

Another enlightening show. Interesting data.

His comment about the the first thing to go, church attendance, and the last thing, belief in god, matches my own experience. There was a gap of 7 years between the two. I'm Gen X.

Thank you for inviting a real expert in statistics. We are not well served by the thousands of statisticians in name only, who forget nuance and detail in favor of simplicity and punch.

The voting trends fascinate me. I agree that the Democtatic party has been coasting on simply being "not the other guy."

Love it! I’m looking forward to my interview with Dan in 3.5 hours! :) Live on our Facebook group! Love what you guys do!!!

Um, definitely don't title anything the NIPS. Haha...

I'm 74, boomer, and my sister and I were brought up in southwestern Pennsylvania in an evangelical religion. In our teens we often spoke about our serious doubts about all the stuff we were taught in Sunday school. When I began working and left home I stopped going to church and celebrating religious holidays. My sister got married and stopped going to church also. For years I guess we just didn't care what we were called and seldom spoke about our atheism. Ultimately, It took us years to deprogram our indoctrinated brains. It's only in the past 15 or 20 years that we have become comfortable talking about our disbelief and calling ourselves atheist. She, unfortunately, passed away in 2020 but she shoved the praying pastor out of her hospital room. I was so proud of her. I would be very happy if, before I die, religion went away and its influence over our political life died along with it. That would be the ultimate freedom for the entire planet.

Thank you for all that you do.

I have never referred to myself as Christian or a god believer.

I count myself lucky for having parents that didn't indoctrinate me into being a myth believer as a child and I have proudly been an none for over 50 years.

Wait the Democrats don't court the growing demographics and rest on their laurels?

Wow. It's like they don't learn.

Religion is an unappealing option of you choose to live your life as a decent human being.

I think JFK was speaking at an event sponsored by preachers. Norman Vincent Peale and others opposed Kennedy's candidacy for the presidency because JFK was Catholic.

Not everyone has the opportunity to attend college but that doesn’t necessarily make them uneducated….those of us who have a zeal for learning find other ways…..I’d rather not be discounted because I didn’t attend college.

Gen X here. Former Southern Baptist. Atheist since 2012. I doubted for many, many years, but the Internet was indeed key to help the final shoe to drop.

good show

When I was young everyone smoked if you didn't smoke people laughed at you. Every time someone gave up smoking that cast doubt in the minds of their social group but it was a slow process.

Twofold reason:
1. Better communication of atheist philosophy
2. Evangelicals drowning themselves in their own BS. Including: Bad arguments, bad epistemology, strawman attacks on atheism, attacks on science, hypocrisy, and supporting corrupt people

Quite professional research and researcher.

Wait until science figures out how to massively boost the human IQ. Then you'll see religion and all other forms of irrationality (science denial, etc.) drop off a cliff.

All babies are born NON Theist ; they have to be told that there IS, indeed, an unseen god, and ALSO told which religion is the One True Religion ™, by their parents, who coincidentally, happen to be the members of that One True Religion ™

A Pastor who refers to people's belief as "the market" - very telling about where these churches really go .

What? No internet when boomers were young? I think Ryan is getting the WWW mixed up with the internet. The internet was already up and running for nearly a decade when I was a teenager in the late 70's. Sure there were no so called "Social media" sites, and besides being slower by far, there were plenty of USENET groups exchanging info, in debates and poking at each other. In the 80's when a Boomer made the WWW (World Wide Web) which is just a more efficient, capable, and faster protocol, the internet became more widely available, and being easier to publish on and opening the doors for anyone to participate, it developed into the great communications system it is now. If anything, Gen X started the social media platforms, the personal data mining market and other ills it has today!

Well, I am still glad it's easier for most people to get the information they are looking for, with a bunch of what they may not, and so find that there are people who think differently, and if they have any brains, can use it to explore it all and with a bit of reasoning and rationality can figure out that skepticism is the better rout to truth than prefab beliefs.

What an advance it is for the people in America that non other than a priest would publish a book demonstrating that we "Nones" are "winning".
N.B. Born/raised a strong Xtian, I've been a highly-moral atheist since 1967 (boy were we a microscopic part of the population back then!)

Seems it is energy that runs the universes, when you need to replace this power with a thinking entity it,s too easily jumped on by power hungry individuals.

Gen-Xer here who has proudly shed religion for good.

To the producers of the ffrf programs: I just wish Annie Laurie would get her mike adjusted so that what she says doesn't sound so muddy or muffled. Please listen to how she sounds on these programs and adjust the sound system so she can be better understood.

I'm a boomer. We're not all "people of faith" ( I hate that term !) I appreciate your show !

Why would you charge to join in this group, while joining in any religious group is free. The membership fee--although it’s a small amount —may have kept people like me from joining in this noble mission.

Just here to enjoy FFRF bringing the "good news" of Christianity loosing rapidly in numbers...

Love you guys...

Given organized religion's habitual overreach for mastery over * everyone * else, Separation of Church and State needs to be so much more than merely maintaining separate lanes for each. Both State and individuals (especially kids and public schools) need active * protection * from * religion * , not just separation. The more “outreach” contact I experience from my local religious extremists, the more obvious this becomes and the further left I go.

Ryan Burge mentioned “the Baptist Tradition” at the end, and how it mainlines going out to make more disciples (paraphrasing). Baptist tradition still includes major anti-government and anti-intellectual/ education teachings. We should all remember that when we talk about Separation of Church and State, and who or what that should really protect as we work to bolster that divide.

Atheism is morally liberating. Any depravity is permissible if no God exists. No moral truth, no moral reality or right and wrong in reality, no moral right or wrong in reality and no basis for free-willed moral choice. We are just soulless chemically determined animals doing whatever the chemicals cause to happen. No good, no evil, just chemicals and chemically determined

Yeah, let's not use the term "nip."

Excellent, illuminating conversation. Thank you, Professor Burge, for sharing with FFRF audience in a good way. Thank you, Annie Laurie and Dan, for a great interview. I appreciate all of you!

Maybe they, (or another atheist channell) will talk to him about why he believes.

I am a late Generation Xer. I feel I connected to millennials bc my older boomer siblings and older generation xer brother. My nieces are millennials and aren't religious. But my older boomer sister got more religious later in life and right wing.

Religion is a threat
to a free thinker.

At 9-10 min: Almost half of Atheists (the 'Nones') in US have a 4-year college degree or more. The most educated group in the country. That tells you all you need to know: Education is the antidote to religion. This is why Dominionists want to pollute it with their propaganda.

When Christians discuss why people leave the church they never consider that the "nones" actually reject the core doctrines of Christianity. They prefer instead to blame anything and everything except the actual Christian beliefs themselves. They refuse to accept that anyone could ever find fault with their precious beliefs.

I never really believed the churches. Although believed there was a god.
The Churches Refused To Read The Stories As They Are!
Why?
Remove scriptures and provide their own interpretation of them.
THIS CAN'T BE OF GOD!
I noticed at 7, 8, a very very young age.
We had SUNDAY SCHOOLS With Printed Teaching Books, Workbooks, And Test!
For stories we never read completely.

It is nice to listen to a Christian that actually understands the significant of data.

Good conversation. But your guest got one thing very wrong. Government doesn't ruin everything. Government and the law enable us to solve our differences and care for one another without resulting to violence. If I believed in one miracle (which I don't) it would be politics. Politics is a kind of miracle. Politics allows us to solve our differences without killing each other. The government solves many problems. Everything is political. I'm really tired of people trashing politics and government. Yes, we can get better. Yes, we can make things fairer. Yes, we can do more. But it never helps to generalize that government sucks. Here's a list of our Democratic accomplishments and platform:
Social security
Medicare
Voting rights
Women's rights
LGBTQ+
Clean air and water
The GI Bill
Environmental protection
Public schools
Medicaid
Gun control
Science
Rule of law
Separation of state and church
Minimum wage
The GI Bill
The fairness doctrine

Vote for Democrats. The Republicans want one thing- to make rich people richer.

We must *defeat* Republicans in elections. We must win elections to get the power to pass more good legislation. Especially taxing the rich more.

"Hispanic" covers so much ground culturally, historically, politically and RaCiaLLy...gotta stop that lumping. Same with Asians