How Popular Is Religion Still?

Religion is one of the most influential things around the world. Many people follow some sort of religion because of tradition. It is something that has been taught all their life by their parents.  According to Durkheim, it is something that surpasses the limits of our knowledge. Things like how we got her, why, etc. Faith, belief-based conviction rather than scientific evidence, is what usually drives religious individuals.

Believe it or not, religion is fairly popular in the U.S compared to other high income countries. Being that the U.S is highly diverse, it makes sense that it is popular. Living in a neighborhood that included many types of cultures, I was able to witness first hand how big religion really was. When my parents use to talk to the different neighbors, the diversity in religion was clear.

On the other hand, it has also been notable that religion is going down in popularity throughout the nation. According to the text book, a study done in 2012 by General Social Survey at the National Opinion Research Center, about eighty percent of U.S adults said they were in some sort of religion. That leaves the other twenty percent having no religious preference. This statistic really makes sense to me when looking back. Being that both my parents are fully hispanic, our family identifies ourselves as catholic. All of my child hood we use to go to church every single Sunday, it was almost seen as a part of our schedule. As the years went by I began to notice that we started to miss more and more days of going to church. When i asked my mother why, her answer was always that we don't have time to go all the time anymore. 

It was clear to me that my families religiosity, the importance of religion in a person's life, was slowly diminishing. Although all of this information makes it seem like religion will soon not exist, people may not be one hundred percent religious. For example, like myself and my family, not practicing my religion as often as a religious person should. Going deeper into the topic of not being fully religious, I still believe in a God and i still identify myself as a Catholic. I feel many around the U.S fall in my case which is why religion may not be seen as big of a deal as it was decades ago.

http://www.is-there-a-god.info/blog/belief/is-religion-dying-out-is-this-inevitable-in-the-modern-world/

http://www.crispinhull.com.au/2009/02/07/religion-slowly-dying-out/