more statistics
Reply to: comm-658825935@craigslist.org
Date: 2008-04-27, 9:34PM CDT
What can someone that doesn't really believe in anything possibly have to offer? Still a minority in the whole world.
1) A 1995 survey http://www.zpub.com/un/pope/relig.html attributed to the Encyclopedia Britannica indicates that the non-religious are about 14.7% of the world's population, and atheists around 3.8%.
2) 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.
3) In the 2001 Australian Census http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/9658217eba753c2cca256cae00053fa3?OpenDocument 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).
4) The 2001 New Zealand census http://www.stats.govt.nz/products-and-services/Articles/census-snpsht-cult-diversity-Mar02.htm showed that 40% of the respondents claimed "no religion".
2001 The Czech Statistical Office asked the ten million people in the Czech Republic about religion. 59% had no religion, 32.2% were religious, and 8.8% did not answer.
5) A 2002 survey by Adherents.com http://adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html estimates the proportion of the world's people who are "secular, non-religious, agnostics and atheists" as about 14%.
6) In a 2003 poll in France, 54% of those polled identified themselves as "faithful", 33% as atheist, 14% as agnostic, and 26% as "indifferent". http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2004/35454.htm
7) A 2004 survey by the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/wtwtgod/3518375.stm in 10 countries showed the proportion of the population "who don't believe in God nor in a higher power" varying between 0% and 30%, with an average close to 10% in the countries surveyed. About 8% of the respondents stated specifically that they consider themselves to be atheists.
8) A 2004 survey by the CIA in the World Factbook http://cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/xx.html#People estimates about 12.5% of the world's population are non-religious, and about 2.4% are atheists.
9) A 2004 survey by the Pew Research Center http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=757 showed that in the United States, 12% of people under 30 and 6% of people over 30 could be characterized as non-religious.
10) A 2005 poll by AP/Ipsos http://www.ipsos-na.com/news/pressrelease.cfm?id=2694 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%).
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PostingID: 658825935