Atheists are a dying breed?

This article by Ed West so obviously misrepresents facts or plainly makes them up. His article really has two fundamental points that have to be true in order for his original point to be correct. Atheists have to have low birth rates, which statistics seem to support, but also it has to be shown that atheists, for the most part, only come from atheist parents. That key second point is casually thrown in the article at the end like everyone should know that it is inherently true. There is no source, not even a bad one. One study of American religiosity found that of all the switching of religions that American's do (and it is quite a lot), about 27% of it is to the "no religion" category. The total population that is raised non religious is only about 3%. So, if atheists really were a dying breed you would have to expect that almost no religious raised children become atheists, and that is just clearly not true.

If West's argument was correct you would also expect that those who identify with no religion would be an ever decreasing number in absolute terms. Not only has that number increased in Canada, but it has done so by 43% from 1991 to 2001. If his argument had even a morsel of truth in it that number would have to be 0% or even lower.

Always remember to check that all pillars of an argument have evidence behind them before buying into the argument as a whole. This writer clearly forgot to.