document: God is alive , and likely frustrated with the state of religion GOD IS not dead . But he might just be sick with worry about us . If a team of respected scientific researchers is right , religious belief is headed for extinction in at least nine nations . This projection , somber to some and soothing to others , got a lot of play during the recent annual meeting in Dallas of the American Physical Society . First reported by the BBC , the findings came in the form of a highly technical account of group dynamics based on a mathematical model . They would spark little public interest if the subject were bowling leagues or bocce enthusiasts . Religion , to put it mildly , is different . A fair historian would acknowledge that faith has been on trial since the beginning . The centuries have seen intense , sometimes violent , conflicts among competing creeds . But the most intense conflicts of the 20th century were n't among groups of religious believers , but among political cultures that believed human rights to be of divine origin and others that placed their trust in a state that bowed to no God . States founded on the divine authorship of human dignity and freedom waged defensive struggles against the claims of officially atheistic ideologies such as communism and Nazism . Marx framed his ideology as a permanent end-point of human development in which religion , the opiate of the masses , at last had been destroyed . Hitler envisioned a 1,000-year reich of Aryan supremacy through which the altars of Europe would be stripped of their Bibles and crowned with his racist manifesto , '' `` Mein Kampf . '' '' Western democracies were slow to awaken to the implications , responding only when their own survival was threatened . The abiding faith of Americans , of Britons and free French , of the entire Western enterprise , rose to the surface in these circumstances . At the end of World War II , the people of Great Britain seemed to stand as one to hear '' `` A Song of Thanksgiving , '' '' composer Ralph Vaughan Williams ' stirring choral prayer celebrating the defeat of Hitler . The libretto deployed verses from Isaiah - '' `` they shall repair the waste cities , the desolations of many generations '' '' - to summon a war-torn nation to recovery . Existential threats still have that effect on populaces with a national memory of faith . Remember the fullness of America 's churches in the months after 9/11 ? A profound sense of peril sharpens the spiritual sense , or at least spurs the spiritual search . But the faith that springs up in the dust of calamity may be dispersed in the breezes of better times or the whirlwinds of scientific atheism . The excesses of religion also fuel the revival of cynicism . Scandals of money and sex dispirit millions and destroy entire congregations . The '' `` religious '' '' motivations of today 's worst terrorists provide fodder to celebrity intellectuals anxious to promote the idea that religion itself is the enemy of , and not the answer to , the highest aspirations of humanity . Mao and Stalin certainly disprove that idea . Monstrous deeds come in garb both sacred and secular . So are the researchers with their math model right ? Is religious belief on the rocks ? Strictly speaking , they examined a grand total of nine countries , mostly European . The decline in church attendance there is well documented . But religious tides roam worldwide , and demographics - adherents bearing adherents - still matter . Islam is growing and so are Mormonism and Pentecostalism . What about the United States ? Despite all the noise about surging atheism , more than 60 percent of Americans do not doubt the existence of God . Almost 40 percent frequently attend church . Even with an increase in those who decline to affiliate with a particular faith , the majority of us hold to some religious belief . It 's also debatable whether those claiming '' `` none '' '' on surveys of religious affiliation actually are irreligious . The Pew Religious Landscape Survey for 2007 found that about 16 percent of the U.S. population was nonaffiliated . But only a quarter were either atheists or agnostics . Half of the remainder said religion was either somewhat or very important to them . Perhaps brick-and-mortar churchgoing is in decline , while individual spirituality is not . In such an environment , the future is volatile . Churches that are lax on self-policing might reform . Personal faith may seek sustenance in community . And , as tsunamis and Middle East uprisings remind us , existential threats may arrive at any time . Mathematicians who bring special talents to quantum mechanics ca n't take us any further than others in the quest for meaning . People are not particles . Heaven 's heartaches begin when we act otherwise . Each Saturday the Daily News offers men and women of faith the opportunity to share their words of life and comfort with our readers . If you are a minister , a priest , a rabbi , or the head of another religious organization and would like to submit a faith-based column , contact Lorenzo Biggs at 215-854-5816 , or by email at biggsl@phillynews.com .
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