GLOBAL RELIGIOSITY AND ATHEISM INDEX

[MiM]

Question: Irrespective of whether you attend a place of worship or not, would you say you are a religious person, not a religious persons or a convinced atheist?

According to a survery, which included 50 000 people in 57 countries 59% of people self identify as religious, 23% as not religious and only 13% as atheists. I wonder why they used "convinced atheist", while the other alternatives did not include conviction. Might give the thing a slight bias.

Some interesting results, that seem to be contrary to common belief (page 20)

Women are less religious and more atheistic than men 57%/60% and 14%/12%
The age group <30y had the next highest religiosity, after >65y
Christians were more prone to self identify as religious than Muslims

[FBM]

Korea seems to be maintaining near the 50/50 split, but I recall from elsewhere that within the 52% of religious people, the Buddhists portion is slipping and the xtian part is growing.

[PsychoSerenity]

That only adds up to 95%.

[FBM]

There was a "don't care/no response" column.

[PsychoSerenity]

Only 5% of people gave no answer to the survey? That surprises me even more.

But I agree with MiM, "convinced atheist" is very strong wording, especially compared with what they have on the other end of the scale "a religions person", which could easily cover vague feelings of spirituality.

Also why are they displaying the overall result using traffic light colours with green as religious and red as atheist? I know I'm kind of nit-picking, but that looks like a fairly clear visual representation of bias to me.

[MiM]

Also why are they displaying the overall result using traffic light colours with green as religious and red as atheist? I know I'm kind of nit-picking, but that looks like a fairly clear visual representation of bias to me.

That's a very good point. I don't find it nitpicky at all

[Xamonas Chegwé]

I don't like this survery - been waiting hours to get surved!

[Blind groper]

A better index is the Gallop poll on irreligiosity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion_by_country

Noteworthy that the more educated nations score highly in this, as do ex communist or currently communist nations.

The USA does not stack up well, but that kinda figgers.....

[JimC]

A better index is the Gallop poll on irreligiosity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion_by_country

Noteworthy that the more educated nations score highly in this, as do ex communist or currently communist nations.

The USA does not stack up well, but that kinda figgers.....

Yemen and others...

A very brave 1% indeed - who knows if the pollsters report to the local religious authorities.

I would love to know the "give lip service" % - in many parts of the world, it's either physically, socially or economically dangerous to admit that you think the whole god thing is ludicrous claptrap...