Making headlines is a newly released study “conducted by Richard Wiener of the University of Arizona, and Daniel Abrams and Haley Yaple of Northwestern University, took data stretching back 100 years for those nine countries. In a large number of modern secular democracies, there’s been a trend that folk are identifying themselves as non-affiliated with religion; in the Netherlands the number was 40 percent, and the highest number was in the Czech Republic, where the number was 60 percent.” Those countries described include Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Switzerland. Fox further states: “The study concludes that religion in these societies might one day disappear.” But can we determine from this study that religion is going extinct as headlines suggest? If so, what exactly does that mean?
There are at least two reasons to believe the headlines are making hasty choices of wording. First, fox News notes:
The study also found that “Americans without affiliation comprise the only religious group growing in all 50 states.”
“In 2008 those claiming no religion rose to 15 percent nationwide, with a maximum in Vermont at 34 percent,” the study says.
The news agencies are failing to make the distinction between religious-affiliation, and religious-belief. Merely discovering that people are affiliating less with organized religion says nothing per-se of the beliefs of the individuals. Many people abandon a particular religious tradition for a more individualized personal spirituality. The New Age movement would be an example of this transition. So I am not inclined to infer: no religious affiliation = atheism. Granted, that is not necessarily explicit conclusion of the study, but I think it is implied.
Lastly, what would it mean for religion to disappear? On the grand scheme of things, nothing. Whether people believe a particular idea has no bearing on whether or not the idea is true. Even if the people in the 9 countries above were to shift completely to an atheist worldview, that has no bearing on whether God exists. The truth of an idea is not determined by how many people affirm or deny it. It reminds me of something Voltaire reportedly said: “One hundred years from my day there will not be a Bible in the earth except one that is looked upon by an antiquarian curiosity seeker.”
It seems to me that the headlines are preserving the politically correct notion of religious relativism. That religious ideas are only valid or useful if people believe them. But the truth is theists lose nothing (aside from possible persecution) by these or any other country abandoning religion. A country’s people abandoning their religious beliefs says nothing about whether particular religious beliefs are true anymore than the most atheistic country abandoning its atheism in favor of Christianity means atheist’s beliefs are false or fanciful and that Christianity is true. My perception of headlines such as these (and I fully grant that I’m probably looking too much into them) is that they presume religion isn’t something which can really be true. That religious belief is like ice cream flavor preference, true for you, but not necessarily true for me. As if religious belief is nothing more than an individual’s method of finding inner peace or their personal motivation to be a better person.
I suspect skeptics will use this study and the headlines as they did when Pew Research published a study called: U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey. Atheists were all aflutter when they correctly answered an average of .3 questions correct more than Christians. Studies such as these really tell you nothing more than what people think. I suppose that is the purpose. But there is usually considerable implications underlying the way the results are presented. As if Atheists having more general knowledge on religion than theists and Christians prove anything about either worldview. Same with these results, if any country’s people change or abandon a religious affiliation, it doesn’t have any bearing on whether the old or new beliefs are true. Much ado about nothing.
Sifting Reality 
This is just one study and the countries concerned are by no means representive of the world. These countries were included in the study because they had ample records of how people affiliate themselves in religious terms from a long enough period to come to any conclusion. However those records coincide with efficient public schoolsystems, and that is by no means a coincidence. It tells of the general level of scientific approach to society. The level of civilization, if you please. This has a connection to the other study you John Barron Jr, referred to. When people are more aware of the world around them they are less inclined to believe any old fairytales. When people learn about other religions, accepting only one among them seems less obvious. They allmost all dispute each other, and that makes them all less plausible.
The studied countries are not all wellfare states by any measure, but they are more or less western countries, with less people in distress than most other in the world. So, people feel they have less use of divine help in their lives.
What is religion to most people? Set of values or a set of rituals? To me it seems latter is correct. Values are under constant change along the society, sometimes this change is obvious sometimes wery subtle. What binds people to religious behaviour, is the form of society. To the agrarian societies of past days the rituals of any religion was the social arena wich determined the current of life. Religions may have changed but the rituals remain. Harvest ritual is harvest ritual wether it is made in the name of Ukko or Jesus. To the urban culture, the rituals present little more than a nuisance.
It may also be possible that there will be a social order for religious behaviour in the modern cities in the future as people feel lonely in the midst of millions. On the other hand, modern technology is giving more and more ways for people to connect and find other kind of social arenas.
I do not buy into the general secularisation theory. Most people have allways been secular in their thinking and it has allways been a small minority who are interrested in the business of gods. What is changing though, is the world. The worldviews of people are expanding as the world around us is opening and our general understanding of natural phenomenae is growing. Less religious explanation is needed for anything. Terra incognita with its monsters and fancifull creatures is once more shifted further away from human civilization.
Religions flourish in areas where levels of general education is not good, and in areas where people live in constant distress, from generation to generation. Conservative values are at their peak in those societies also, because people are aking for “the good old days”. What may be conservative to a westerner can be seen as ultra radical by the people in the Near-East.