In All Seriousness, Will Ted Cruz Really Drive People to Atheism?

[skepticscott]

5. Interesting thought, because it tends to reinforce what I've maintained for a while

That a lot of mainstream Xstians in this country (Lutherans, Methodists, UCC, Episcopalians, etc) maintain their religious practice because it grants them a necessary social imprimatur, not because they really believe very much of it. But when religion starts to become more and more of a stigma, rather than a benefit, they ease away, at least from churchgoing and open identification, but it has very little if anything to do with their having less belief in "god" than they used to.