> I think you read the atheist situation incorrectly. When any group grows so large it splits. There are more atheists in the US than ever and the polls indicate that number is growing.

Re: group size being the primary cause... maybe?

There are plenty of non-split groups that are larger than the size the atheism community was before elevator gate, and most split groups (say, programmers divided by programming language) seem to coexist relatively peacefully.

To me, that suggests the size hypothesis is wrong. It'll need more variables if you'd like to explain the atheism community situation this without using elevatorgate (ie "a huge divisive political battle") as the primary cause.

Re: atheist headcount, this is why I referred to the "atheism community" rather than atheism generally. While I'm glad that atheism has grown, I find myself missing the conferences :/