The Atheist Blogger

A the title suggests, I would like to know which state (or area) of the USA is considered the most secular / non-believing. Since I live in the UK I am putting this question out to all my American readers in hope that they can throw back some figures for me.

Why do I want to know? Well, I’m currently going into my second year of university studying Computer Science with Information Security (which is way more interesting to me that it sounds to you). It’s a three year course, and at the end I will weigh up my options before deciding whether to do a PhD in it. Whenever I actually leave university, I have always had plans to emigrate to America. Truth be told, there are far more jobs in the computer industry over there, especially in the areas I want to go into (Gaming and/or Web Technology).

I don’t want to end up in a Bible Belt area for obvious reasons, so I’d like a place where I could feel at ease with my beliefs, and find other secular people to hang out with. California’s “Silicon Valley” is a good place to start, since it has the technology and I know of at least one secular/atheist group for workers there. Amiable Atheist recently made me aware of Arizona which has an increasing number of non-believers.

So, which state do you consider the most secular / atheist? Do you have any figures to show this result? What other aspects of this area would make it desirable for a liberal atheist technology geek like myself?

I await your answers!

An article written by The Atheist Jew (sourced from a Reuters article) reveals that 44% of American adults have changed their religion from the one they were raised up with.

The majority of those people converted from a religion to some form of non-religion (whether it be atheism or a form of theism), and the Jehovah’s Witnesses saw the lowest retention rate, with only 37% of followers staying with the religion in adulthood.

Not surprisingly, the Protestant churches are gaining in numbers due to the relaxed approach, and the Hindu religion (which is also pretty relaxed) is retaining 84% of it’s members.

Some pretty interesting facts and figures.