Nones are people who do not have a religion. When surveyed about which religion they belong to, they check the box marked "None". In the US the number of Nones has grown to the point that the number of Nones is now equal to the number of Roman Catholics and to the number of Christian evangelicals. However, this by no means indicates they are Atheists, as is too often falsely assumed.
The American Religious Identification Survey shows that 59% of people classified as Nones hold Deistic or Agnostic beliefs, while polling done by the Pew Research Center shows that 68% (31,280,000 people) of the 46 million Americans classified as Nones believe in God. Belief in God minus belief in religions equals Deism. These tens of millions of people already hold Deistic beliefs, but the vast majority of them probably never heard of Deism.
One good example, out of many, of this is in an article that the World Union of Deists received from a 17-year-old who was raised in a church-going Christian home and family. By the time she was 13 she knew she did not believe in what she was being taught in church and in the Bible, and that she was not a Christian. For awhile she mistakenly believed she was an Atheist. She wrote:
"I only thought of myself as an Atheist for a brief time, about 3 months at most. I was too convinced of a Creator's existence to continue. I then had absolutely no clue what I was and it nagged me. I thought I was nothing, thought there was no real place for my particular set of beliefs. That depressed me and made me feel unfulfilled.
"About 7-8 months ago I was thinking about my beliefs again, when I remembered hearing about Deism in history. I decided to Google it. That was the best decision of my life. I stumbled across deism.com and began to read the articles, and with joy too profound for words I realized that Deism exactly fit my beliefs in every aspect, even the ones I had never thought about before. It was magical."
The World Union of Deists welcomes all Nones to Deism and to the World Union of Deists! You have a true home in Deism! And you're in some very good company. People like Thomas Paine, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Voltaire, Albert Einstein, Neil Armstrong and Antony Flew, just to name a few, were either self-proclaimed Deists or held very strong Deistic beliefs. I hope you join with us to help get the word out about Deism and to spread the empowering Deist message that God gave us reason, not religion, to as many people as possible!
