Letters to the Editor
-
Expectations
The 40% is, as others have mentioned, most definately an overestimation. In polls about religion, most people are afraid to state that they aren't believers. 90% of people in the US claim to be religious and yet church attendance is falling off year after year. The megachurches have huge turnovers of members and are mostly just draining other local churches. Chruches are having trouble finding priests, probably another reason for the consolidation into megachurches.
Even so, the number of people that state outright that they are athiests increases every year. Same with agnostics and pagans. Why are the Right Wing Christians braying so loud? They can see they're losing. Same with fundimentalists of every stripe. Hell conservative politicians are in the same boat. They've been losing for hundreds of years, that's why they love lying so much. They have no other way to pretend they're winning in the long run.