Pew has released a major survey on religion in America. Big result: people are moving fluidly between religions. And the second biggest religion behind Christian is 'unaffiliated' which translates to 'none'. Not that the unaffiliated don't have religious beliefs, but that they don't belong to an organized religion. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Check out the results, including state breakdowns for the lower 48, here.

As a humanist and free thinker, I find this encouraging. More people are exercising their free will and are breaking out of whatever mold their families may or may not have tried to stuff them into. It makes society less tribal, more thoughtful and more heterogeneous. Maybe Sam Harris was on to something in The End of Faith.

Since atheism is the new gay, maybe the pockets of high 'unaffiliated' will correspond to creative class meccas in the US, a la Richard Florida's hypothesis that the presence of gays in a city is a sign of tolerance, a key ingredient for municipal success. (See 'Creative Class: how cities succeed' link on the right).