Grow or shrinkage of any belief system is a little hard to measure accurately. Yes, you could try to quantify it the same way they do most things which is by taking a survey but that does not work well on these sorts of beliefs. Why? It is because it is perhaps the most personal detail that defines us. People are not quick to open up on those. Also there is still a fear of repercussions. Yes, we know in our rational mind there won’t be but that other not-so-rational part of us thinks”well, you never know.”
For these reason the best measure might be our choice in reading material. You might say you go to church or temple every week but you are not going to read the Bible or Torah every day at lunch to look the part. So, when you look at what has been selling very well it is books on Atheism. And this has been a growing trend during this century but why? The answer is simply the Internet.
How has the Internet caused this? That seems like something unrelated. Well. In truth, it is directly related. There are two main reason for it. Although it is unrelated, it is the same two reasons Internet porn became so big. Those are anonymity and dissemination. While the two are totally unrelated drawing the parallel works in a demonstrative sense.
We can start with anonymity. Despite the fact that we live in a “free” society there is still a social stigma involved with Atheism. While this might not bother long time believers in Atheism it did people that were just interested in learning a little more about it. Now anyone that wanted to learn more about the subject could without announcing it to the world. It also gave them a place to talk with other like-minded people. That was hard to do in smaller towns.
Then you have the issue of dissemination. In the last 10 years nearly everyone has Internet access and can find out every thing the ever wanted to know on the subject. Also, with the low cost of having a website and the ease they can be built there are now 10′s of 1000′s of sites and a user can visit any one of them. This Internet boom has done the same with science sites that are often used by Atheists to make a point.
The post-2000 Internet boom has inspired a whole new paradigm in free thinking. Atheism has benefited from it.