The End of Religion?

It used to be taken for granted among the intellectual elite that the advance of democracy and science would mean the end of religion. Once people became rich, educated, and sexually liberated, so the story went, they would leave irrational beliefs behind and spend their weekends in shopping malls rather than churches, synagogues, or mosques. But things haven't quite worked out that way. Even as the proportion of Americans claiming to be "nonreligious" has grown from a very small base, the proportion of Americans made up of highly committed believers has grown.....