Gallup conducts an annual sample survey to guage the religious preferences of people in the USA. This is a market for the question "What is your religious preference -- are you Protestant, Roman Catholic, Mormon, Jewish, Muslim, another religion or no religion?". With special focus on the response "No Religion". In 2022 the percentage of respondents that answered "No Religion" was 21%. What is the prediction for the year 2023?
The market will resolve to the number updated by Gallup. Estimated date for the survey results to be out is Feb 1st 2024.
Context
This poll is to guage where people think USA is headed in religious belief. Historically, religious fervor ebbs and flows. Generally, over timescales of a human lifetime. The current time is no different.
Relgious fervor is in decline. According to the Gallup polls, the number of people identifying as "No Religion" has seen a steady increase since 1948. The number of people who have never been to church has increased from 14% in 1948 to 30% in in 2022. The statistics point towards the fact religion has a lost cultural relevance over the last 70 years, ie. a human liftime. It will be interesting to see if this trend continues or flips over the next 70 years.
Note that I am not claiming that "Religon" is fading away. Rather, it is no longer a major cultural force. Even on a cursory examination of American culture, it is obvious that religion, specifically christianity, continues to run deep inside as an under-current. The most obvious example is that several of the 10 commandments are enshrined into American law - do not work on sundays, do not steal, do not kill and do not bear false witness. Another interesting example is the fun quiz - "Taylor Swift or Lamentations" , where the players have to guess if a quote is from the Bible or from a Taylor swift song. Average score was 62% which slighlty better than random chance, indicating the american culture still echoes of the biblical language and thinking.
However, it also obvious that explicit references to religion are generally not well received as a references to a scientific research. Some factors that may have led to a bad repuation of religion are the acts of terror committned on the name of religion, general abuse of power by religious clerics and refusal of the religious establishment to engage with the wider culture.