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regarding the op, here is a speculation.
i dont think there is any particular movement on the ground called atheism.
i am not sure whether there is any particular increase of non-belief, where it might be happening, how it might be measured.
what you do have happening is an increase in the amount of discursive referencing of atheism.
so let's exclude zeitgeist as an explanation. you can always exclude zeitgeist as an explanation. what is it? "spirit of the time"? what is that? the assumption that there is some animating force that sweeps through history, that unfolds progressively, in stages---something then that you or i could get an image of by looking for stages in history. what is a stage? well, this is where the problems start. a stage is what you want it to be. so if you are inclined to see atheism as a desirable end, and you see an increase in references to the word in the press, say, you could use the notion of zeitgeist to link these references to something in the world like a rise in the number of atheists. but that's circular: what is happening is that you are using a category so that you can see in the world stuff that you want to see in the world.
so that's out.
i think that atheism is primarily a christian category that refers to the reverse of itself.
so over the past few years, we have had to endure the rise to near-legitimacy of a particular variant of christianity---rightwing extremist fundamentalist types--as an element within the rightwing extremist coalition that is responsible for the bush regime.
now you are seeing the crumbling of that regime and fracturing of the coalition that is responsible for it.
it follows that, for the fundamentalist protestant community that identifies itself, its interests, its theocratic political aspirations with the fortunes of the bush administration, the sky is now falling.
since these groups talk about themselves as if they and they alone defined christianity (a lunatic claim, but no matter here), and since it follows from that to see in these groups folk who are wholly incapable of relativizing their own positions, you can imagine that the crumbling of the bush regime and of the coalition for which it stands can be seen as a defeat for god.
the idea that there is any sudden movement toward atheism seems to me little more than a way of expressing this defeat: "we" are god's people, "we" are taking a pounding politically, "we" are loosing ground very quickly--what is left in our wake? the absence of ourselves, the reverse of ourselves. what to call that absence, that reversal? atheism.
so personally, i think this rise of atheism is about as legit as the rise of those pro-smmoking organizations brought to you by philip morris, the fake grassroots mobilizations carried out by the christian coalition via its innovations in phonebank technology, etc. the spiking in usage of this term is a function of the implosion of the collapse of fundamentalist protestant political power, and is a way for those groups to speak to themselves about it and what it means. nothing else.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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