How many atheist live in th US?

Answer 1

This is difficult to ascertain, as the word 'atheist' still carries a social stigma in the USA, and many people don't feel comfortable using it, even when it accurately describes their point of view.

An ARIS study was conducted to find how people self-identified their religious beliefs.

Amongst the estimated results for 2004 were the following:

Atheist: 1,272,986 (0.4%)

Agnostic: 1,398,592 (0.5%)

Non-religious/Secular: 38,865,604 (13.2%)

Despite the low number of people who readily admit to being atheist, almost all of the people who prefer to call themselves agnostic or non-religious are also likely to fit the definition.

From the above figures, it is reasonable to make a conservative estimate of 40million American atheists.

As a side-note, the study also revealed 1.5m Buddhists in addition to a handful of followers of other non-theistic religions.