If you look at the religious surveys, more and more people are saying No to faith; and since almost nobody is raised without religion, those people are way more likely to have had faith and given it up than they are to have never had any in the first place, like my family (we now have 4th generation no-religious-upbringing atheists). Even my *kids* don't know anybody else being raised without religion.
So I would say the data are there.

besides, what I *meant* was (boy, and I am the one who claims rigor is required... thanmk you) that now that we do have explanations for natural phenomena fewer and fewer people rely on theistic explanations for those natural phenomena. Of *course* there are still people who pray for hurricanes to either strike the nasty or spare the nice, or who claim that since the tornado DID strike the nasty or spare the nice that proves deity caused it.

I doubt that anybody in the developped world thought that some sea god up and ate all those villages when the Asian tsunami hit. But to the people *there* - if we didn't know about earthquakes and plate tectonics - it sure would have LOOKED as if the sea had up and et everyone!

And right about Buddhism, which is a philosophy, not a religion. No deity, then religion is the wrong term. Kinda like the prettiness of the rainbow doesn't make deity the right term for its cause, or evidence for deity the right term for the prettiness.