Worldwide Atheism Trend and Pattern – A Summary Thursday, May 3, 2007
Posted by Henry in agnosticism, atheism, Buddhism, China, Christianity, Europe, faith, God, Hinduism, Islam, Italy, Japan, Middle East, North Korea, Portugal, rationality, religion, Scandinavian, science, secularism, South Korea, statistics, survey, Sweden, United States, Vietnam, world.26 comments
This is the sort of article I have been long searching for – a comprehensive, analytical and scholarly summary – filled with hard data – of atheism trends in the world. This 2005 article is written by Phil Zuckerman and seems to have been part of a Cambridge University publication. Although slightly outdated, it nonetheless provides a reliable and useful source for anyone interested in the study of the atheist demographics.
It is not a short article, so I will take the liberty of summarising it further here. Firstly it outlines the difficulties in conducting a survey on the beliefs and disbeliefs of large populations. Then it provides a good statistics on the atheism population in many countries. Then, most importantly, the Top 50 list of non-believing countries is presented, which I will duplicate here (I have stripped out the population columns due to space limits):
| Country | % Atheist/actual # Agnostic/Non-believer in God | |
| 1 | Sweden | 46-85% |
| 2 | Vietnam | 81% |
| 3 | Denmark | 43-80% |
| 4 | Norway | 31-72% |
| 5 | Japan | 64-65% |
| 6 | Czech Republic | 54-61% |
| 7 | Finland | 28-60% |
| 8 | France | 43-54% |
| 9 | South Korea | 30%-52% |
| 10 | Estonia | 49% |
| 11 | Germany | 41-49% |
| 12 | Russia | 24-48% |
| 13 | Hungary | 32-46% |
| 14 | Netherlands | 39-44% |
| 15 | Britain | 39-44% |
| 16 | Belgium | 42-43% |
| 17 | Bulgaria | 34-40% |
| 18 | Slovenia | 35-38% |
| 19 | Israel | 15-37% |
| 20 | Canada | 19-30% |
| 21 | Latvia | 20-29% |
| 22 | Slovakia | 10-28% |
| 23 | Switzerland | 17-27% |
| 24 | Austria | 18-26% |
| 25 | Australia | 24-25% |
| 26 | Taiwan | 24% |
| 27 | Spain | 15-24% |
| 28 | Iceland | 16-23% |
| 29 | New Zealand | 20-22% |
| 30 | Ukraine | 20% |
| 31 | Belarus | 17% |
| 32 | Greece | 16% |
| 33 | North Korea | 15% (?) |
| 34 | Italy | 6-15% |
| 35 | Armenia | 14% |
| 36 | China | 8-14% (?) |
| 37 | Lithuania | 13% |
| 38 | Singapore | 13% |
| 39 | Uruguay | 12% |
| 40 | Kazakhstan | 11-12% |
| 41 | Estonia | 11% |
| 42 | Mongolia | 9% |
| 43 | Portugal | 4-9% |
| 44 | United States | 3-9% |
| 45 | Albania | 8% |
| 46 | Argentina | 4-8% |
| 47 | Kyrgyzstan | 7% |
| 48 | Dominican Rep. | 7% |
| 49 | Cuba | 7% (?) |
| 50 | Croatia | 7% |
where (?) indicates the relatively low certainty/validity. Note that rather than defining the terms “atheism”, “agnosticism” and “non-belief”, which is a tricky issue in itself, the article lumps all three together to simply mean people who do not believe in God. The range of percentages (for example the top non-believing country Sweden is 46% – 85%) gives an indication of the difficulties in reaching such figures. Finally, the author gives his own analysis on atheism trend and pattern using the data.
Not Only In America – Evolution Science Endangered Worldwide Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Posted by Henry in anti-creationism, anti-ID, atheism, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Europe, evolution, intelligent design, Japan, rationality, religion, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, science, Turkey, United States, world.7 comments
The scientific theory of evolution is under attack – and not just in the United States alone – but on a global scale.
Firstly, the result of a study published last year shows conclusively that the adult populations of US and Turkey are the least likely to believe in theory of evolution. The study was conducted over 34 countries which include Japan, US and 32 European nations. A question “Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals.” was asked, in which correspondents could respond with true, false or unsure.
A graphical depiction of the study is re-posted here. Click on it to enlarge it. 
Remarkably, but unsurprisingly, only a paltry 14% of the adult US population actually believes in evolution, completely outnumbered by the one-third who firmly rejects the idea.
Turkey, where 99% of its population is Muslim, represents another worrying trend. Using the result of this study, we can probably safe to conclude that the Muslim population, in general, reject the theory of evolution strongly. In fact, looking at the graph, one could also say that the ratio of rejection is quite high in comparison to US and the rest of surveyed countries.
A second article written recently also adds worry that the anti-evolution movement is gathering pace worldwide. It lists a couple of examples of how evolution is being attacked. One case is that in Kenya, a bitter dispute is taken place as the plan of exhibiting a prehistoric human skeleton is being opposed by local religious forces. Another example involves a well-funded Turkish publishing house mass-distributing anti-evolution books to French speaking schools and universities across Europe. The article also shows an example from Russia, and of course, there is the well-known Intelligent Design movement that is currently taking place in the US.
