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Demographics of atheism (view source)
Revision as of 01:30, February 12, 2017
, 01:30, February 12, 2017→Ethnic Chinese and the rise of Christianity in Southeast Asia
See: [[Ethnic Chinese and the rise of Christianity in Southeast Asia]]
See: [[Ethnic Chinese and the rise of Christianity in Southeast Asia]]
=== Atheism and Europe ===
''See also:'' [[Secular Europe]]
The website Science 2.0 reported in 2015 about [[secular Europe]]:
{{Cquote|When we move our strictly-by-the-numbers probe across the rest of Europe, we find it is not the atheistic continent it is painted to be. Surveys across the 27 member countries indicate that 77% of people believe in a God-like higher consciousness. Only 20% of people said they did not believe in God or any type of over-arching spirit. And again we see the definition gap: alongside these figures, we get a separate number which tells us that only 7% of Europeans said they were atheists....
Outside East Asia, the three countries often listed as the least religious in the world, the places where (the media tells us) atheists dominate, are Estonia, Sweden and the Czech Republic.
In support of this assertion, we usually find the Eurobarometer Poll 2010 quoted, which shows that only 18% of people in Sweden and Estonia believe in God, and only 16% of people in the Czech Republic have that particular belief. That seems clear enough. These are atheist countries, right?
But no. That same poll also asked respondents whether they believe in some sort of ultimate force or great spirit. “Yes” answers came from 44% in the [[Czech Republic]], 45% in [[Sweden]] and 50% in [[Estonia]].
So then we do the math: the number of citizens who believe in the existence of some sort of deity-like presence, called God or The Force or something else, is actually 60% in Estonia, 63% in Sweden, and 68% in Estonia, according to the exact same survey. They are certainly not all churchgoers. But contrary to conventional wisdom, in all three countries, atheists were a minority, and the dominant groups were the middle grounders – people whose beliefs are hard to define except for one thing: they don’t think of themselves as atheists.<ref>[http://www.science20.com/writer_on_the_edge/blog/atheism_peaks_while_spiritual_groups_move_toward_convergence-156528 Atheism Peaks, While Spiritual Groups Move Toward Convergence], Science 2.0 website</ref>}}
=== European countries with high levels of atheism/agnosticism ===
=== European countries with high levels of atheism/agnosticism ===