Perhaps not a rise but more of a coming out?

It is hard for me to comment because I live elsewhere, so I won't comment any further.

In my experience there are many people who have very weak links to any sort of religious affiliation.  They seem to claim affiliation to Christianity and belief in jesus because it is such a common meme.  I think the growth of fundamentalism and what it represents has given some folks a reason to begin pondering why they believe at all.  I suspect most people are alreay non-theists, as they have no active intent or practice in religion.  The more it is accepted socially to reject religious affiliation the more folks will feel comfortable to declare they are atheists.

Apr 13, 2012 -- 11:07PM, rangerken wrote:

Silverman hopes that as nonbelief spreads, atheists can become a "legitimate political segment of the American population," afforded the same protections as religious groups and ethnic minorities.

Rangerken

I doubt atheists as such will become a political segment of the population.  It would be nice however, and I think it is coming rapidly, if an atheist would have the same rights as Mormons, Catholics, and UCC's to run for political office openly.  Not pushing those beliefs on others like the Mormons and Catholics, but able to run as an atheist not as a religious person. 

[...] they argue that the religious Right's politicization of faith in the 1990s turned younger, socially liberal Christians away from churches, even as conservatives became more zealous. The dropouts were turned off by churches' Old Testament condemnation of homosexuals, premarital sex, contraception, and abortion. The Catholic Church's sex scandals also prompted millions to equate religion with moralistic hypocrisy. "While the Republican base has become ever more committed to mixing religion and politics," Putnam and Campbell write, "the rest of the country has been moving in the opposite direction."

Let's hope that's based on well-prepared surveys and is essentially true.

And I'd prefer it if activists in the armed services called for trained counsellors rather than 'chaplains'.  'Atheist chaplain' sounds oxymoronic.

Apr 14, 2012 -- 1:37AM, JCarlin wrote:

 I doubt atheists as such will become a political segment of the population.  It would be nice however, and I think it is coming rapidly, if an atheist would have the same rights as Mormons, Catholics, and UCC's to run for political office openly.  Not pushing those beliefs on others like the Mormons and Catholics, but able to run as an atheist not as a religious person. 

I agree that it would be nice if atheists could openly run for political office, even run for president. Yet I also think that atheists would do well to steer clear of American politics. American politics is corrupt, the gamboling fields of the rich and the arrogant and those with delusions of grandeur, and is little more than an offshoot of American Christianity. In other words, I think that atheists would do well to reject both politics and religion and be not only atheistical but also apolitical. During the last presidential election, I became interested in politics for the first time in my life. Now, four years later, I am concluding that I had made a mistake and that I should have remained apolitical and disinterested in politics and so-called political "solutions."