Mr Rayon Posted May 15, 2012 Posted May 15, 2012 What does everyone think? Will we ever achieve a 100% atheist/agnostic American population? Where does Europe stand?
CaptainPanic Posted May 15, 2012 Posted May 15, 2012 Europe does not have a single stand, and neither does the USA. In Europe, there are countries where 95% of the population believe in a god, and countries where as little as 16% believe in a god. And everything in between. I cannot find statistics for the USA, but I wouldn't be surprised if the range is just as broad. Since the religion is probably influenced by education, and all kinds of social issues, they should be seen nationally. And to be honest, I cannot be bothered to do that for the EU. Too many countries. What about the USA? Does the federal government have any influence on that at all? Could it even be that there is a single trend which is valid for the whole USA???
timo Posted May 15, 2012 Posted May 15, 2012 (edited) Europe does not have a single stand, and neither does the USA.[...] Since the religion is probably influenced by education, and all kinds of social issues, they should be seen nationally. I would imagine history to have the main effect and education level, and social security system to play a minor role at best. For example, Malta (the tiny 95% rock in the ocean you mentioned that technically counts as a country) has been ruled by a knight order of the roman church from mid-16th century till the French revolution (~1800). Italy, another country with a high value, has been the center of the roman catholic church, the largest religion in the world, for more than a thousand years. The countries on the low end of the spectrum are (with the exception of France) countries that did not play a huge rule during the super-religious middle ages, where church not only completely dominated everyday life but actually ruled parts of Europe. I'd expect that the low religiousness of the French can be traced back to their revolution (for the non-European readers: in Europe, the French revolution is usually considered as the turning point from a god-blessed monarch to a concept of citizenship and participation of the people). A difference between Europe and the US may be that the more-religious countries in Europe are catholic, whereas most of people in the US are some flavor of protestant (there also are protestants in Europe, but they tend to be in the less-religious countries, mostly). I'll skip the tendentious discussion of talking about the implications of this difference. But I know a lot of people believing that there are quite a lot of religious zealots in the US, whereas I've never heard the same being said about Portugal or Italy (except for certain parts of the institution called "roman catholic church", that is). Edited May 15, 2012 by timo
bbrubaker Posted May 16, 2012 Posted May 16, 2012 (edited) What does the census say? http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0075.pdf Let me know what you find, you'll have to get the total pop. and do the math, I guess. Or not. EDIT: Oh yeah, also this nifty graph,"More Poverty = More Religion" http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/09/religions-correlation-with-poverty/ Which may explain things like this: http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#CAI01p1 Edited May 16, 2012 by bbrubaker
esbo Posted May 16, 2012 Posted May 16, 2012 Religion is not supposed to be a means to worldly wealth, indeed in most vast wealth is considered unholy. The USA handles that hypocrisy fairly well. Another aspect is happiness. Despite economic woes, wars, conflicts and natural disasters the world is a happier place today than it was four years ago and Indonesians, Indians and Mexicans seem to be the most contented people on the planet. More than three-quarters of people around the globe who were questioned in an international poll said they were happy with their lives and nearly a quarter described themselves as very happy. "The world is a happier place today and we can actually measure it because we have been tracking it," said John Wright, senior vice president of Ipsos Global, which has surveyed the happiness of more than 18,000 people in 24 countries since 2007. But he added that expectations of why people are happy should be carefully weighed. "It is not just about the economy and their well being. It is about a whole series of other factors that make them who they are today." Brazil and Turkey rounded out the top five happiest nations, while Hungary, South Korea, Russia, Spain and Italy had the fewest number of happy people. Perhaps proving that money can't buy happiness, residents of some of the world biggest economic powers, including the United States, Canada and Britain, fell in the middle of the happiness scale. "There is a pattern that suggests that there are many other factors beyond the economy that make people happy, so it does provide one element but it is not the whole story," said Wright. "Sometimes the greatest happiness is a cooked meal or a roof over your head," he explained. "Relationships remain the No. 1 reason around the world where people say they have invested happiness and maybe in those cultures family has a much greater degree of impact." Regionally Latin America had the highest number of happy people, followed by North America, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East and Africa. Only 15 percent of Europeans said they were very happy. On a more personal note married couples tended to be happier than singles but men seemed to be as content as women. Education and age also had an impact with more people under 35 saying they are very happy than 25-49 year olds. Higher education also equated with higher happiness Indeed it seems that many of the poorest are also the happiest. If only I were poorer. I'd rather be happy and poor then rich and miserable. Guess I will have to make do with being poor and miserable!! Once you get rich you have to devote your life to staying rich. Incidentally you will see other surveys which show the opposite, but rather than ask people if they were happy, they used other things such as basically wealth health and social security. Unfortunately asking people if they were happy tended to show those thing did not make people happy. The survey which showed the rich were happy was done by Forbes, a business magazine, so they told people what they wanted to hear!! ( in a typically dishonest business man's way!!) http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mef45ejmi/01-norway/#gallerycontent
swansont Posted May 16, 2012 Posted May 16, 2012 ! Moderator Note You were warned http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/64905-the-smarter-you-are-the-more-susceptible-you-are-to-religiosity/
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