Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins is glad to hear that religion is on the decline in the United States — unless people are abandoning religion only to adopt other irrational beliefs.

During a Skeptics Society’s Conference at Caltech, Dawkins was asked about a recent Pew survey that found the number of religiously unaffiliated adults increased by about 19 million since 2007.

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“That’s 56 million religiously unaffiliated adults of all ages,” Skeptic magazine publisher Michael Shermer noted. “That’s more than Protestants or Catholics. Are we winning?”

“Well, that’s very good news,” Dawkins replied, before lamenting that “nones” sounded far too much like “nuns.”

Shermer and Dawkins noted that many people described themselves as spiritual, but not religious.

“One of the problems is that the so-called ‘nones’ often give up religion for something even worse,” Dawkins remarked. “I mean, they take up Deepak Chopra or something like that.”

Chopra, for his part, feels the same way about Dawkins. Last year, the spiritual guru attacked Dawkins as an atheist “fundamentalist.”

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