Surveying the landscape => A paranormal, religious future?

Can probably hunt down more stats, but this seems to be a nice start to wonder about global trends.

Why people with no religion are projected to decline as a share of the world’s population

In projecting the relative decline of the unaffiliated we also factored in religious switching, or conversion, for the 70 countries with reliable switching data. Religious switching has been powering the rise of the “nones” in the United States and Europe, and a net gain globally of nearly 70 million people are projected to join the ranks of the unaffiliated through religious switching between 2015 and 2060. But at the global level, gains made through religious switching are overshadowed by the impact of fertility and mortality.

Some social theorists have suggested that as countries develop economically, more of their residents will move away from religious affiliation, as has been seen in Europe. But there is little evidence of such a phenomenon in Muslim-majority countries. Moreover, in Hindu-majority India, religious affiliation is still nearly universal despite rapid economic and social change.

UK:

Why do we insist on believing in ghosts?

But do you believe in ghosts? A 2017 study by BMG Research suggests that as many as a third of Britons do, with some 40 per cent of believers claiming to have experienced actual paranormal activity.

America:

Paranormal America 2018

Paranormal beliefs have become the norm in the United States, if we examine how many such beliefs a person holds. Using the seven paranormal items included on the Chapman University Survey of American Fears Wave 5 (2018), we find that only about a fourth of Americans (24.1%) do not hold any of the seven beliefs. What this means is that more than ¾ of Americans believe in at least one paranormal phenomenon.

Belief in ghosts is on the rise (Oct 2017)

With Halloween just around the corner, some Americans take a moment to look toward the supernatural, the otherworldly – and for some, even the ghostly. A belief in spirits dates back far beyond recorded history and shows no sign of diminishing from the hearts and minds of humanity.

A recent study from YouGov Omnibus asked Americans about their level of belief in ghosts, in an effort to track how opinions have changed over the past several years. Since 2015, American belief in ghosts is on the rise.

The Paranormal America 2018 report has been making the rounds. Chapman University's motto is "‎Christ and Church" It should be noted that people I have communicated with who are interested in things paranormal are not fearful of the phenomena.* They have a fear of attracting evil spirits -- demons and such as taught by church and media. This is a good example of circular referencing.

‘New Age’ beliefs common among both religious and nonreligious Americans

Claire Gecewicz

Most American adults self-identify as Christians. But many Christians also hold what are sometimes characterized as “New Age” beliefs – including belief in reincarnation, astrology, psychics and the presence of spiritual energy in physical objects like mountains or trees. Many Americans who are religiously unaffiliated also have these beliefs.

Overall, roughly six-in-ten American adults accept at least one of these New Age beliefs. Specifically, four-in-ten believe in psychics and that spiritual energy can be found in physical objects, while somewhat smaller shares express belief in reincarnation (33%) and astrology (29%).

The New Age of Astrology

In a stressful, data-driven era, many young people find comfort and insight in the zodiac—even if they don’t exactly believe in it.

“Over the past two years, we’ve really seen a reframing of New Age practices, very much geared toward a Millennial and young Gen X quotient,” says Lucie Greene, the worldwide director of J. Walter Thompson’s innovation group, which tracks and predicts cultural trends.

Callie Beusman, a senior editor at Broadly, says traffic for the site’s horoscopes “has grown really exponentially.” Stella Bugbee, the president and editor-in-chief of The Cut, says a typical horoscope post on the site got 150 percent more traffic in 2017 than the year before.

In some ways, astrology is perfectly suited for the internet age. There’s a low barrier to entry, and nearly endless depths to plumb if you feel like falling down a Google research hole. The availability of more in-depth information online has given this cultural wave of astrology a certain erudition—more jokes about Saturn returns, fewer “Hey baby, what’s your sign?” pickup lines.

To understand astrology’s appeal is to get comfortable with paradoxes. It feels simultaneously cosmic and personal; spiritual and logical; ineffable and concrete; real and unreal. It can be a relief, in a time of division, not to have to choose. It can be freeing, in a time that values black and white, ones and zeros, to look for answers in the gray. It can be meaningful to draw lines in the space between moments of time, or the space between pinpricks of light in the night sky, even if you know deep down they’re really light-years apart, and have no connection at all.

There have been enough debates on astrology, my favorite dinner conversation rebuttal of it coming from an Idealist who said it was too "scientific" as it it made machinery out of our life... that said I don't want to make this thread about future trends the place to debate astrology but in the interest of [balancing] the varied links debunking it in the article here is Braude giving a lightly suggestive argument that we shouldn't be too quick to rule it out:

 Postscript: Some Thoughts on Astrology

Some info on "Generation Z":

America:

Atheism Doubles Among Generation Z

Australia:

Gen Z is more religious than you think

2017: In U.S., Belief in Creationist View of Humans at New Low

Higher education levels are associated with less support for creationism and higher levels of belief in the evolutionary explanation for human origins. Belief in creationism is 21% among those with postgraduate education versus 48% of those with no more than a high school diploma. Agreement with evolution without God's involvement is 31% among postgrads versus 12% among Americans with a high school education or less.

However, even among adults with a college degree or postgraduate education, more believe God had a role in evolution than say evolution occurred without God.

The US witch population has seen an astronomical rise[?]

Though the data is sparse, what we do know is that the practice of witchcraft has seen major growth in recent decades. As the witch aesthetic has risen, so has the number of people who identify as witches.

The best source of data on the number of witches in the US comes from assessments of the Wicca population. Not all people who practice witchcraft consider themselves Wicca, but the religion makes up a significant subset, as Alden Wicker noted for Quartz in 2016.

Data on Wicca identification is ever sparser in the UK, the other country with a significant Wicca population. A 2011 government census found that there are 12,000 Wiccans in England and Wales, but previous surveys didn’t collect data on the group.

Canada:

Millennials are more likely to believe in an afterlife than are older generations

The older a person is, they suggest, the less likely they are to believe in the literal details of those miraculous stories, like the destroying angel and the hell to which Jesus descended.

It is a counterintuitive finding in a country where religious observance is usually thought to skew elderly. But Canadian millennials are vastly more likely to believe in an afterlife than are older generations, according to new results of a longstanding project to track religious behaviour. The same is broadly true of other supernatural beliefs, like angels, ghosts and communicating with the dead.

[Ninshub]

Canada:

Millennials are more likely to believe in an afterlife than are older generations

This makes it sound as if religious belief, or maybe having been raised in religious beliefs one no longer holds, is more an impediment to belief in the afterlife.

I was struck listening to the Julie Beischel interview with Mishlove when she mentions that the mediums she works with describe themselves, for the most part, as "secular". (Only one of them described herself as a Spiritualist.) So a secular spirituality, if you will.

[Ninshub]

The % are interesting too in relation to belief in contact with spirits or with the dead - pre-boomers are a lot lower than boomers and above, and Gen X are the highest in those categories.