With a massive spike in national curiosity, the Mormon leadership is rustling papers and trying to figure out how to deal with an equally massive spike in apostasy.

How does this small American culture shift fit into a bigger picture? Mormonism is a handy microcosm to see the future of secular humanism around the globe. My prediction is that, thanks to the Internet, it’s inevitably and unstoppably a great future. Religions face an ungodly predicament in the Information Age.

All religions have histories and philosophies that are troublesome when researched deeply. Non-violent Buddhists are at war as we speak, one presidential candidate prays for rain, another slips on his spiritually protective super-stockings, a horde of former molested children accuse their Catholic priests, Hindus sacrifice hundreds of thousands of endangered turtles to a fire-god, and anyone with access to a computer can Google the names of Brigham Young’s young, younger and youngest wives.

Young interest in Brigham Young, as it were, is on the down-turn.

Consider the importance of the Internet in relation to these kinds of issues. In a matter of minutes, photos of American riots can incite zeal in places like Egypt – twenty years ago, it would have been days, months or never. I can look up the weather right now in Beijing in less than a minute. With this kind of freedom, and the quick exchange of information, it’s getting harder and harder to convert people to religions based on select, limited premises. Take for example the oft-made remark that “Joseph Smith found golden plates that belonged to a white race of American Israelites.”

Someone sitting at a computer with a mild curiosity about a religion tends to find its arguments less persuasive than, say, from smiling missionaries with good news and cute matching name-tags, who’d really, really like to help you out.

Even though it sounds like kind of nice story if you’ve never read, say, a different book – it’s dealt a severe blow by the further investigation, which inevitably leads to the discovery that Israelites couldn’t possibly have imagined sailing to America, nor is there a geneticist on the planet who would dare say so, for the risk of getting beat up by other geneticists and demoted to dishwasher.

What does this mean for new generations of people weened on the Internet? They have the freedom to research almost anything instantly, and get a variety of viewpoints rather than just one. If there is dirt to be had on any topic, then beyond a doubt you will find it heaped into mountains on the Net. Now, for the LDS church in particular, whose history is nothing but jaw-droppingly fascinating absurdity, this is not good news.

When a guy from Cleveland sees Mitt Romney running for President, watches the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, and reads about gay rights in the news, he’s led to spend maybe five minutes clicking links online to find out more information about Mormonism itself.

The same goes for any religion. When people research religions online, my money is not on life-changing moments of conversion – my money’s on jaws dropping. SHAFT is in for a good year.