Here’s a great tool that you can use to plow through General Conference talks.
I looked for references to words relating to atheism and agnosticism. I used the wild card, so my search terms were atheis* and agnosti*.
And here is the data, converted into a handy chart. (This chart is additive, so the data for atheis* is stacked on top of agnosti*.)
Wow! Look at that spike in the 1960s! Most of this bump is due to talks by Ezra Taft Benson and Mark E. Petersen, who both liked to warn people against ‘godless communism’. Petersen even invoked what he thought was Lincoln’s prophetic warning against atheism:
Masquerading under the cloak of anthropology with great emphasis upon evolution, atheism is weakening the religious faith of the nation, and thus it also becomes an ally of the adversary. Is it any wonder that Lincoln, almost prophetically, looked into our future and foretold the perils that would confront us?
without realising that Lincoln was basically an atheist himself. Oops.
I suppose part of the 1960s bump could also be because more young Latter-day Saints were attending universities at that time, becoming acquainted with secular education, and horrifying their parents on visits home.
I don’t know why, but I’m rather surprised that Orson and Parley Pratt mentioned atheism, back in the 1850s.
As for recent times, notice the lull in a*ism from the 1980s onward. I guess atheism wasn’t on the radar until, say, The God Delusion came out. (All the mentions from the 2000s are post-2006.) That’s quite a drop-off. And it’s not coming up this decade. So far in the 2010s, nothing. (There’s one reference to ‘atheist’, in a footnote.)
So why the tail-off for a*ism in recent years? Here are some possibilities.
It’s not a concern. The numbers might have to climb a bit more before the alarm bells go off.
They dare not speak its name. Perhaps they’re keeping it positive and avoiding the mention of competitors by name. The term ‘catholi*’ has undergone a similar drop-off.
Give it time. The decade is young. If someone decides to make atheism the focus of a GC talk, it may include eight or nine mentions — a whole 80s worth in one go. Double that if it gets two speakers in the next decade, which seems likely.
I find this last scenario to be the most probable.
26 September 2011 at 1:56 am
This is an awesome chart. I love it! Thank you.
22 November 2013 at 8:32 pm
Thanks for the Chart.
FYI, Sociologist Ryan Cragan mines Mormonism data.
Here's an fun update. Apostle Quentin Cook – April 2012 – quotes a Jewish Rabbi speaking to Roman Catholic leaders linking science to atheism!
We also recognize that many individuals are not in tune with sacred things. Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks of England, speaking to Roman Catholic leaders last December at the Pontifical Gregorian University, noted how secular some parts of the world have become. He stated that one culprit is “an aggressive scientific atheism tone deaf to the music of faith."
BTW, I'm enjoying working my way through your blog.