Living in a country where religion is expected to fade into irrelevance . . .

[MrModerate]

Over the next several decades -- Australia -- it's profoundly depressing to look at recent polls that suggest that 92 percent (or whatever embarassingly high number you like) of Americans believe in god.

It also says a lot about the challenges faced by sane people in making their way through a god-struck country. I guess this is not much a departure from American history to date (we've always been overly godly, it seems), but it suggests to me that many of the problems we see in the political system are genuinely intractable precisely because they're based on religious beliefs and the assumption by the majority (a correct one, I'm afraid) that everyone around them also bases their view of reality through the lens of similar fairy tales.

I'm not proposing I have any solution to this problem (I got out of Dodge, myself), but I raise it as an issue. How can America be expected to behave in a rational fashion when the overwhelming majority of people are trapped by superstition?

In any case, the "religion is dying out" article is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197

So perhaps there is some hope.