Philobiblon

A Church of England study has found that the “yoof of today” don’t have a God-shaped hole in their lives, in fact they are perfectly comfortable without any transcendental framework at all.

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu …  writes of a large “mismatch” between the Church and the views of those aged 15 to 25. He says: “The research suggests young people are happy with life as it is, that they have felt no need for a transcendent something else and regard the Church as boring and irrelevant.” …

Nevertheless, young people do not feel disenchanted, lost or alienated in a meaningless world. “Instead, the data indicated that they found meaning and significance in the reality of everyday life, which the popular arts helped them to understand and imbibe.”

Media reports often make much of the rise of fundamentalism in the world, but I suspect that in numerical terms the rise of genuine atheism (if of a not very reflective sort) is still the real modern story. Indeed that lack of reflection of probably a good thing. People aren’t wrestling with the idea of a god, they are simply finding it ridiculous. Which might just be a great step in human evolution.