Thursday, November 20, 2008

Mike's Super Awesome Research Paper Topic

I'm sure we've all heard of the surge of books promoting atheism in recent years. Books with titles like "The God Delusion" and "God is Not Great". Would these books have been out as a prime display in Barnes and Nobles ten years ago? Why the sudden surge in this topic's popularity? The percentage of people identifying themselves with no religious belief rose from 8% to 14% between 1990 and 2001. Was it the sudden increase in awareness of fundamentalist terrorist groups brought on by Sept. 11th? What is the historical root of atheism? Is the kind of atheism we see today so new? In a general social and societal context, is it a positive or negative force? 

I ordered like 20 books from OHIOlink just now so let's hope I can answer at least a few of these questions. And write a decent prospectus in time. 

1 comment:

XX said...

Maybe you were just providing a single examples to keep the post short; but, you might want to provide some other events in that eleven year period that could cause the increase of people not identifying with any religious belief. I find it a bit inconceivable the reason behind the 8% in 1990 to 14% in 2001 (a span of eleven years) was caused by an event that occurred three fourths of the way through the last year. And if that was the case, a statistic that showed 8% in the beginning of 2001 and 14% at the end might be stronger support.

I actually think you'll be hard pressed to find any single event that would cause that increase.