Sociological Images reports on a fascinating study that you may have missed the first time around — the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey, which reveals much about the U.S. atheist/agnostic/”spiritual-but-non-religious” population (referred to as Nones). Perhaps what stands out most is just how “normal” the average American non-religious person is. Demographically, Nones look just like broader populace — being non-religious cuts almost uniformly across income and education levels and racial groups (disproving stereotypes of, for instance, African Americans as being more religious than other groups).
So what is notable about the non-religious? The None population skews male, skews young, has shifted leftwards politically over the last two decades, and, for some reason, is extremely Irish. People of Irish decent comprise a third of U.S. non-religious despite being only 12 percent of the general population. Click the above links for more data.
