Hello TStock, thanks for taking the time to respond.

You said:

"If you look at 1990 v today, the number of Christians in the world grew from 1.9 billion to 2.3, an increase of about 20%. Atheism grew from 762m to 1.2b over the same period, an increase of 57%. Actual numeric growth for each group end up being close to the same at about 400m each (roughly). So, the title in the article is demonstrably false, and much of the contents are . . . well . . . wishful thinking.

For reference, search the Pew Research Center, World Religion Database."

The Pew article you reference is good, but its data is not current. Its most recent data is from 2010, and anything referring to today is an extrapolation.

The data I reference is from 2020, being an accurate measurement of where we're actually at, rather than where we were projected to be at.

There were 165,156,000 atheists in 1970, then a smaller number, 141,023,000, in 2000. Today, at the mid-2020's, there are 147,288,000.

Also, we need to distinguish between actual atheists -- those who believe there is no God -- from agnostics (those who don't know whether there is a God) and ambivalents (those who don't care whether there is a God).

It's the number of atheists who shrank at the end of the 20th century.