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Balance summary
|Similarly, will atheist nations underachieve in general?
|Similarly, will atheist nations underachieve in general?
|China, an officially atheist and communist country, led in gold medals in the first week but then dropped badly to a distant second place behind the United States, despite China having more than three times the population of the United States and despite having a national program designed to produce champion athletes. Increasingly atheistic Australia performed much worse than expectations. Australia won 35 medals, but only 7 gold medals. France has 34 medals, of which 11 are gold. In 2008, Australia won 46 medals and France won 41. Australia won 14 golds that year, a total that they failed to surpass. "Atheistic" Great Britain, on the other hand, had its best Olympic showing since the 1908 Olympic Games (where Team GB had over half of the athletes in competition), although this is possibly because they were the hosts (as they were in 1908 and 1948). Even excluding Britain (which may or may not be accurate), the data is inconclusive as there is a 1/4 chance (25%) that two randomly selected countries would underperform by pure chance. 2016 will provide additional data to analyze, and it may be possible to reach a conclusion. Furthermore, any analysis including Great Britain in these Games is problematic, because hosts typically experience about a 30% medal boost.
|China, an officially atheist and communist country, led in gold medals in the first week but then dropped badly to a distant second place behind the United States, despite China having more than three times the population of the United States and despite having a national program designed to produce champion athletes. Increasingly atheistic Australia performed much worse than expectations. Australia won 35 medals, but only 7 gold medals. France has 34 medals, of which 11 are gold. In 2008, Australia won 46 medals and France won 41. Australia won 14 golds that year, a total that they failed to surpass. "Atheistic" Great Britain, on the other hand, had its best Olympic showing since the 1908 Olympic Games (where Team GB had over half of the athletes in competition), although this is possibly because they were the hosts (as they were in 1908 and 1948). Even excluding Britain (which may or may not be accurate), the data is inconclusive as there is a 1/4 chance (25%) that two randomly selected countries would underperform by pure chance. 2016 will provide additional data to analyze, and it may be possible to reach a conclusion. Furthermore, any analysis including Great Britain in these Games is problematic, because hosts typically experience about a 30% medal boost.
The performance of the United States team (majority Christian) overall was woefully below that of the atheistic Great Britain team, and in fact lingers right at the bottom of any reasonable league table. Out of the 83 teams to win medals at 2012, The United States won the most out right medals, but in terms of available funds (GDP), finished 68/83, with a national GDP of $140Bn per medal won. In terms of population per medal, the U.S. team showed a slight improvement, and managed a respectable 47/83 place, with 3 million people required to win 1 medal. In terms of sports investment, the U.S. invests more in sports than any other nation in the world.
The bottom 10 team performances, for population per medal won, are all deeply religious, conservative, countries. India(204 million people per medal), Indonesia, Egypt, Algeria, Afghanistan, Uganda, Morocco, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Thailand (23 million people per medal). The top of the same list indicates that atheist countries require fewer people to produce world class athletes and includes countries such as: New Zealand (0.3 million people per medal), Slovenia, Hungary, Australia, Denmark (0.6 million people per medal). In fact, of the 22 countries that required less than 1 million people to win 1 medal (G.B. being the threshold at 1 million), 17 are countries that would be considered "Atheist". The only exceptions seem to be the Caribbean nations, which have a loose Christian foundation.
The only reasonable conclusion is that belonging to a religious nation, severely damages your personal chances of winning an Olympic medal. Why this is, remains unclear.
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