Atheism in the world

As some governments have strongly promoted atheism, whilst others have strongly condemned it, atheism may be either over-reported or under-reported for different countries. There is a great deal of room for debate as to the accuracy of any method of estimation, as the opportunity for misreporting (intentionally or not) a belief system without an organized structure is high. Also, many surveys on religious identification ask people to identify themselves as "agnostics" or "atheists", which is potentially confusing, since these terms are interpreted differently by many different people, with some identifying themselves as being both atheist and agnostic. Additionally, many of these surveys only gauge the number of irreligious people, not the number of actual atheists, or group the two together.

The following surveys are in chronological order, but as they are different studies with different methodologies it would be inaccurate to infer trends on the prevalence of atheism from them:

• A 1995 survey [19] attributed to the Encyclopedia Britannica indicates that the non-religious are about 14.7% of the world's population, and atheists around 3.8%.

• The 2001 ARIS report found that while 29.5 million U.S. Americans (14.1%) describe themselves as "without religion", only 902,000 (0.4%) positively claim to be atheist, with another 991,000 (0.5%) professing agnosticism.

• In the 2001 Australian Census [20] 15.5% of respondents ticked "no religion", and a further 11.7% either did not state their religion or were deemed to have described it inadequately (there was a popular and successful campaign at the time to have people describe themselves as Jedi).

• The 2001 New Zealand census [21] showed that 40% of the respondents claimed "no religion".

• In 2001, the Czech Statistical Office provided census information on the ten million people in the Czech Republic. 59% had no religion, 32.2% were religious, and 8.8% did not answer. This suggests that the Czech Republic is probably the most atheistic country in the world.

• In 2002 survey in Russia, 32% self-described as atheist. Of the 58% self-describing as Russian Orthodox Christian, 42% said they had never been in a church.

• A 2002 survey by Adherents.com [22] estimates the proportion of the world's people who are "secular, non-religious, agnostics and atheists" as about 14%.

• In a 2003 poll in France, 54% of those polled identified themselves as "faithful", 33% as atheist, 14% as agnostic, and 26% as "indifferent". [23]

• A 2004 survey by the BBC [24] in 10 countries showed the proportion of the population "who don't believe in God" varying between 0% and 44%, with an average close to 17% in the countries surveyed. About 8% of the respondents stated specifically that they consider themselves to be atheists.

• A 2004 survey by the CIA in the World Factbook [25] estimates about 12.5% of the world's population are non-religious, and about 2.4% are atheists.

• A 2004 survey by the Pew Research Center [26] showed that in the United States, 12% of people under 30 and 6% of people over 30 could be characterized as non-religious.

• A 2005 poll by AP/Ipsos [27] surveyed ten countries. Of the developed nations, people in the United States had most certainty about the existence of god or a higher power (2% atheist, 4% agnostic), while France had the most skeptics (19% atheist, 16% agnostic). On the religion question, South Korea had the greatest percentage without a religion (41%) while Italy had the smallest (5%).

• A 2006 survey in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten (on February 17), saw 1006 inhabitants of Norway answering the question "What do you believe in?". 29% answered "I believe in a god or deity", 23% answered "I believe in a higher power without being certain of what", 26% answered "I don't believe in god or higher powers", and 22% answered "I am in doubt". Depending on the definition of atheism, Norway thus has between 49% and 71% atheists. Still, some 85% of the population are members of the Norwegian state's official Lutheran Protestant church. Parts of this deviance is due to the fact that all non-affilated Norwegians were signed into this church a few years before (without being asked), and that signing out is a time-consuming, bureaucratic affair yielding no immediate gains.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism

Leonardo, I am not sure if any government (unless you are talking about the communist regimes) actually actively promotes atheism. There are many countries with a "state religion" (e.g. Lutheranism in Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Finland - Sweden abolished it in 2000), but the majority of the population of these countries are either nominal believers or atheists (not because of any active encouragement by the state). Some so-called "secular states" (e.g. South Korea, the United States) are actually very "religious" (e.g. SK - Buddhism and Christianity, US - Christianity). Even in non-religious secular countries like France, Japan, and Canada, the government never officially promotes or encourages atheism.

But both Maju and you are right. For example, in Quebec, a majority of the French-speaking Quebecois would IDENTIFY themselves as Catholics, but I would say most of them are either nominal Catholics (who wouldn't even bother going to mass on Christmas day) or atheists.   

I'm surprised too, I bet that number is incorrect.

We rock! I feel so proud.

In all seriousness only 10% of the Australian population attend any form of regular religious services. The attitude in this country is extremely casual and non-committal when it comes to religion. Most people here simply do not care, religion is such an insignificant part of society to most that most don't even see the need to get up an loudly proclaim to the world their atheism.

Oh come on, you don't believe it yourself. Only in Germany i dare to consider me as an atheist.