by Unity

January 2010 sees the publication of the result of the National Centre for Social Research’s 26th British Social Attitudes study.

As a bit of teaser for the main report, NatCen has released a snapshot of this year’s findings which makes for very interesting reading – or should that be depressing reading, if you happen to be a social conservative.

As a confirmed secularist one of the more cheering aspects of the study’s findings is that religious belief is declining rapidly. In 1983, only 34% said that they did not belong to any religion. In the new study that’s risen to 46% and the study appears to support the view that the decline in the prevalence of religious belief is primarily a function of generational changes in attitudes:

These changes reflect deep-rooted differences between the generations, with older generations (who are the most religious) dying out and being replaced by younger (less religious) ones.

This doesn’t appear to indicate a corresponding rise in number of people who identify themselves as atheists, although it appear that membership of no-god squad now exceeds the number of people who are certain that god exists, although the figures given by Andrew Brown seem to be a bit garbled.

Having given the figures for non-believers and people who have no doubts about the existence of their favourite sky-fairy as being 18% and 17% respectively, Brown goes on to note that:

If you ask whether people believe in God, identify with a religion and attend services, the figure in Britain is only 25%, as opposed to the 31% who do none of these things…

Which seems to indicate that 31% of people do not believe in god, in addition to not identifying with a religion and not attending services.



As Terry Jones noted, when talking about the furore that surrounded the original release of ‘The Life of Brian’, the Python’s found it impossible to take the piss out of the Biblical character of Jesus and the central moral content of the gospels precisely because it does contain a solid core of sound moral philosophy that stands up independently of any appeals to supernatural authority.

Elsewhere in the study it appears that the British population continues to become more liberal in its outlook on a range of moral and social issues.

The number of people who said that they absolutely or mostly disapprove of sex before marriage fell from 28% in 1983 to only 11% today, although its not clear as yet how many answered that question by cracking gags like ‘only if the bridesmaid isn’t up for it’ or ‘only if it holds up the ceremony’.

Attitudes towards the gay community are also improving. In 1983, 62% said that they thought that sexual relations between adults of the same sex were wrong.

Today that figure has fallen to 34% and if, as the evidence for religious belief suggests, difference in attitudes between generations account for most of the change then, even though its not as good as it might be, there’s probably nothing much that couldn’t be quickly sorted out with a decent flu pandemic.

The study also confirms that support for abortion rights is solid, even in the face of the recent, and massively dishonest, anti-abortion campaigns mounted by the Christian Taliban and its fellow travellers (Nadine Dorries). Support for the proposition that a woman who decides herself that she does not want a child should be allowed to have an abortion has risen from 37% in 1983 to 60% today.

Most of the studies main findings are hardly novel or surprising. Young people are more liberal in their outlook than older people and graduates are both more liberal and more likely to interested in and/or engaged in politics than non-graduates.

Education is a truly a wonderful thing, and all more so, from where I’m sitting, for the fact that it seems likely to bode ill for the long-term prospects of the Daily Mail.

Having cracked the half-life gag earlier, I did wonder whether it might be possible to make a similar inference about the currrent readership of the Daily Mail and work out what their half-life might be…

…then I remembered what the comments are like over at the Mail’s site and realised that a half-life in just their normal state of being.