What date do you estimate atheism will overtake theism in the world population

[mordant]

I think it's quite premature to declare victory, but ultimate victory is not out of the question.

How long it takes, how it comes about, and how many fits and starts are involved, are all huge unknowns. And there are scenarios where religion wins big-time -- at least for awhile.

It's just hard to accept that dealing in reality is not ultimately a survival advantage. Dealing in reality has got us technology, longer life spans, greater comfort and self determination and the well-being that goes with it, already. Sure, some will cut off their nose to spite their face, but in theory at least they should tend to live shorter, meaner lives.

Then again, all evolution cares about is survival, not enjoyment.

Time will tell.

So in the scenarios where atheism wins what would you say the average time that atheism becomes the majority is?

Well as I said earlier it depends on how you define "wins". If you simply mean what people are in between their ears even if they don't admit it to themselves much less others, an atheist majority is probably < 100 years away, and has already arrived in some areas.

If you mean 50.1% of openly self-labeled atheists, then more like 500 years.

If you mean theism becomes such a fringe irrelevancy that the concept of "atheist" no longer even has meaning and religion has no significant cultural influence anymore, then more like 1000 years.

With respect to the first group, I usually have my 70 year old brother in mind. If you ask him in the right way, when no one else is around to hear it, he'll admit that he doesn't believe in god. But he still self-identifies as a Christian, in part in deference to his Catholic wife, and to a lifetime association of our extended family with fundamentalism. There are little plaques on the walls of his condo with Bible verses on them. He never openly talks about, much less against, god. He goes along to get along. Yet he has not been in a church in decades, has no prayer life, and I'm sure goes for days without thinking about matters theological -- despite that he once attended theological seminary and aspired to be a youth minister. For all practical intents and purposes he is an atheist, he simply can't admit it to himself much less to others. Yet he'll admit privately to me, the person he trusts most on such matters for discretion, that he doesn't believe. How many people are there like that? And how much of a "victory" is that?

Maybe this is the way you get from the first group above, to the last group. Not with anti-religious atheist activists protesting religion in force, but one heart at a time, privately giving up on the fever dreams of theism. In that sense, maybe both religion and atheism being irrelevant is much closer than I think.

There are just a lot of variables, such as that things can get very bad indeed (think: white nationalism / authoritarianism, climate change) and then people can either regress to theism or reject it as failed -- probably both, but in unknown ratio to one another.