The Largest Atheist Populations

I wonder that you do not consider that religious people are more reasonable and rational than you give them credit for. You seem to me to be one who would adore Walter Williams or Thomas Sowell and yet you would consider them superstitious people?

Yay, we won :D Again. Nänanänanäna.

@celle: And there's my country waaaay down near the bottom, and if we go by minimum percentage, we are the bottom. What does it mean when a secular state founded on enlightenment, rational principles has a lower proportion of atheists -- by a factor of 4-10x -- than Israel, a nation founded as a homeland for members of one religion?

Vietnam is predominantly Buddhist and some Buddhist schools are atheist. So that figure doesn't necessarily translate to "skeptics of religion".

My personal ideal goes something like:

Religion forces you to encounter but not consider moral judgements: it provides a set of morals and drives home the idea of a very dire consequence.

Atheism forces you to truly think about how you make moral judgements, but makes it so much easier to avoid them altogether.

That being said, I'm certain that by and large people don't settle into this dichotomy. Religious folk certainly can think about and decide their own morality, perhaps thought of as a personal take on their religion, and atheists I know have always adopted their own moral codes either, often stimulated by society.

And that sums up my critiques of both possibilities, albeit in an oblique manner.

@Joseph: Not so oblique at all -- in fact, very lucid and straightforward. One question, however: what do you mean when you say that atheists can avoid moral judgments altogether? Morality is such an integral part of existence in a society that a person with no morals is generally diagnosed as a sociopath. I know plenty of atheists, but I don't know one who hasn't adopted their own moral code. We generally think about how we make moral judgments and consider their effects in relation to ourselves and the other people involved rather than in relation to a reward or punishment.

Still, for us free market sorts who also happen not to believe in god(s), it looks like we're out of luck for sensible locals to inhabit.

I find your implicit characterization of all people who believe in God as nonsensical overbroad. Perhaps even your characterization of all athiests as sensible about superstition is overbroad.

Regarding

Is torture ever OK? ... Does that tell you anything?

No, it doesn't. Not really. (Even aside from the fact that 88% of all lies, damned lies, and statistics are made up on the spot...)

A friend of mine brought this up and I thought you all might find it interesting. Sweden has the highest percentage of agnostics/atheists. Sweden also has what is arguably the best standard of living. Coincidence?

Evano:

Being an Atheist myself, I agree completely. I have established and still am establishing a moral code which I take great care, thought, and study in creating. Additionally, I feel it is a strong in that I feel I am able to be flexible should a situation arise that overturns the values that it formed under. Really, I agree with you completely.

I'll justify my statement as nothing more than a bit of overzealous literary parallelism to the earlier statement mixed with a remark that there is no threat of Heaven/Hell over an atheist's head. Should an atheist decide to live without morals, he or she will have no qualm from religious guilt (obviously).

Atop that, I think atheists more directly face greater individual responsibility. While we all are likely to form a set of morals, it is personal responsibility to work to form morals that are intelligent, compassionate, and well-adjusted.

(Disclaimer: I mean no offense to most followers of religion. These responsibilities are equally shared by you; however, I simply feel by, well, incompletely justified means that there is more room within the auspices of a formal religion to simply accept presented morals without considering why they are what they are beyond explanations of a divine being's presentation of such. It is my hope that everyone at some point makes those considerations, though I fear it overly optimistic to assume my hope is rooted in reality.)

praetor605:

I suppose it depends quite a bit on how you define your standard of living.

That being said, I think it is a coincidence if by "coincidence" you presume that strong atheist presence leads to greater quality of living; however, I'd be interested to see if someone could find a way to show causality from some sort of policy or mindset to both atheistic culture and greater standard of living.

According to some scales, GDP per capita for example, it certainly doesn't hold true for the US.

Ah: misworded that last one (#12). I meant to say I believe it is coincidence if you're presuming that if it were not coincidence it is causality.

hi!

Is there really a strong correlation between, comman economies and % of atheists? Or between std. of living and % of atheists. I am just not seeing it in the data.

That being said, I think it is a coincidence if by "coincidence" you presume that strong atheist presence leads to greater quality of living

I was thinking more in terms of a greater standard of living leading to a more secular populace. Sweden rates high in several factors, including the UN Human Development Index. I have no data to support this idea (if anyone finds something, please post it), and I was just raising the point for people to think about.

That being said, I think it is a coincidence if by "coincidence" you presume that strong atheist presence leads to greater quality of living

The converse sounds more likely. Greater quality of living leads to decreased spirituality.

I love how people enjoy throwing around statistics.

As to the "poll" (I like how you don't cite the source of said poll) that claims Christians are more likely to support torture, I would be interested to find out the pool of responders. I would imagine most of the Christians were from the South or the Midwest, where people are also more likely to be very conservative and supportive of Republican policies, in which case I find it more likely that there "support" of torture is more closely related to their political views than their religious views. In addition, I would be interested to know if they were practicing their religion. Numbers on religion tend to be very skewed, because there are a lot of people who were baptized as children but who do not practice their religion (ie, attend weekly Mass/services, pray regularly, et cetera). When these people are asked, they say they are Catholic or Protestant or whatever, but in reality their "religion" has little to no affect on their life.

And as to Norway's standard of living, I would imagine that their success has far more to do with the general success of the EU, coupled with the small size and general homogeneity of the population there than the religious values of the citizens.

I can pick any numbers I want and prove almost any hypothesis imaginable. Statistics don't prove causality; at best they help point out certain patterns in the data. But these patterns are meaningless without a great deal of research and additional polling.

Smart, educated, wealthy, atheist, religious or spiritual are all roles we play which connects us together in the great dance of Shiva called life. Nothing is by accident, everything is as it's supposed to be.

Organized religion is just a man made invention to comfort people.

Give one piece of proof in the last 1000 years that God exists. I can give you thousands (millions ) of examples that he doesn't exist or at peast that He isn't that great a guy.

We are a spec of sand in the beach of the universe. Unfortunate but oh well.

If religion gives people a moral compass: great. But one can have a perfectly good moral compass without religion. And clearly the majority of the world's violence is in the name of religion (including the Great God Petroleum).

If you are looking for a corelation: Try education and atheism.

Poor uneducated people are almost exclusively religious. the educated , far less so.

The one strange exception is the Southern US religious right wing. Although they are "educated" a bit too much by evangilical fanatics (eg Ernest Angely, etc).

@ damianmann:

You wrote: "There was a poll recently . The question was asked to Catholics, Protestants, and atheists/agnostics: Is torture ever OK? 26% of Catholics said, "No". Just 26. 34-36 % of protestants said "No". Atheists/Agnostics turned out to be the most moral with a 41% negative to torture being OK sometimes. Does that tell you anything?"

It tells me that way to many people are messing around with the concept of torture. Consider this: Anyone of you could become the victim of torture, somewhere in the world, authorized by people who sincerely believed they acted to protect people against a threat, even terrorism. You may never have had anything to do with terrorism, but what if you or a family member by accident learned information vital to a rogue security service? What if you cooperated, and they didn't believe you? Or if you couldn't cooperate, because it would endanger your family, or sentence them to death?

I find it hard to understand that anyone, and especially so many can condone torture. Dying is better than torture, and after torture death is more desirable to many than to most people, who have been seriously disabled in accidents, since their mental and emotional capacities are often unharmed. Torture causes a trauma that can be medically proved by new refined methods of scanning. Many torture victims are as living dead, unable to take in much information, unable to learn and grow as human beings, and unable to establish committed relationships. I can assure anyone that they would not be the same, having undergone torture, and that they would not condone the use of torture afterwards.

A little off topic, sorry about that. But something really important. Religious or not, condoning torture is a disgrace, and only chicken hawks would do it. Anyone familiar with combat or with violence would understand that torture is not for men, it is for monsters.

I just found it darned shocking that the U.S. is apparently the most religious country in the world.

No WONDER I get such grief for being a skeptic. I'm in a much tinier minority than I realized.

If people's support for torture has more to do with their political rather than political beliefs, it doesn't really change the correlation. Causation is another thing, but for whatever reason it is that religious people are more likely to support torture, it just disgust me personally.

I think we should ignore the "torture" survey until some validity is established by a citation. otherwise they are just made up numbers thrown-out there.

If atheists and agnostics are going to claim to be more rational, the least they could do is approach random survey citations with a bit of skepticisim; because, frankly, I don't buy the results cited based on the posters word alone.