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Intellectual Most atheists would offer some of the arguments on the following pages as their reason for deciding that God doesn’t exist Non-Intellectual Many people are atheists not because they’ve reasoned things out like that, but because of the way they were brought up or educated, or because they have simply adopted the beliefs of the culture in which they grew up. It’s the same for many believers. So someone raised in Communist China is likely to have no belief in God, because they rarely if ever, meet a believer, and because the education system and pressure from the people they meet make being an atheist the natural thing to do.Other people are atheists because they just feel that atheism is right. In the same way, many people of faith hold their beliefs because they just seem right to them. Law of probabilities ”It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence” - W. K. Clifford (1879) Many people are atheists because they think there is no evidence for God’s existence - or at least no reliable evidence. They argue that a person should only believe in things for which they have good evidence. A philosopher might say that they start from the presumption of Atheism. They say that there is as much evidence for the existence of God (any particular god at all) as there is for the existence of unicorns. And although they might be more polite about it, someone who follows a particular faith may have the same sort of opinion about the existence of the gods of other faiths. Believers disagree with this in several ways: People accept many other things as true without insisting on good evidence. Good evidence may be difficult and complicated to understand and thus not appear to be good evidence. Many of the "truths" at the cutting edge of science are based on "evidence" only by a complicated chain of reasoning. Good evidence needn’t provide certainty, it’s sufficient for it to make something probable. And the atheists reply: But "people accept many things as true" without evidence on good, reliable authority, assuming that a trustworthy source has good evidence - but ultimately they require evidence. Good evidence may be complicated - but scientists etc can understand it and are good authorities. Theologians from the various religions are not such good authorities - disagreeing with each other even within the same religion. Probability is OK if it is the best you can get, but the evidence does not even begin to make God probable The presumption of Atheism This is an argument about where to begin the discussion of whether or not God exists. It says that we should assume that God does not exist, and make it the duty of people who believe in God to to prove that God does exist. We should adopt the same policy that we do with people who insist the Loch Ness Monster exists: Start by assuming that the Loch Ness Monster doesn’t exist. Form an idea of what would constitute the Loch Ness Monster. Then see if there’s anything that "proves" that particular thing exists. The philosopher Anthony Flew who wrote an article on this said: If it is to be established that there is a God, then we have to have good grounds for believing that this is indeed so. Until and unless some such grounds are produced we have literally no reason at all for believing; and in that situation the only reasonable posture must be that of either the negative atheist or the agnostic. So the onus of proof has to rest on the proposition. It must be up to them: first, to give whatever sense they choose to the word ’God’, meeting any objection that so defined it would relate only to an incoherent pseudo-concept; and, second, to bring forward sufficient reasons to warrant their claim that, in their present sense of the word ’God’, there is a God. Science explains everything Atheists argue that because everything in the universe can be explained in a satisfactory way without using God as part of the explanation, then there is no point in saying that God exists. Occam’s Razor The argument is based on a philosophical idea called Occam’s Razor, popularised by William of Occam in the 14th century. In Latin it goes Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitateor in English... "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily". This is usually simplified to say that the simplest answer is the best answer. The Atheist and Occam’s Razor So, says the atheist, since the entire universe, and all of creation can be explained by evolution and scientific cosmology, we don’t need the existence of another entity called God. Therefore God doesn’t exist. Does this prove God doesn’t exist? No it doesn’t. It merely proves that the assumption that God exists isn’t needed, and so can be abandoned. What would William have said? William of Occam would not have agreed; he was a Franciscan monk who never doubted the existence of God. But in his century he wasn’t breaking the rule named after him. 14th century science knew nothing about evolution or how the universe came into being. God was the only explanation available, and thus very necessary. What William would think if he lived now is another matter... Weakness of the proofs that God Exists There are a number of traditional ways of proving that God exists. None of them convince atheists. Here they are: The Argument from Design The universe is such a beautiful and orderly thing that it must have been designed. Only God could have designed it. Therefore since the universe exists, God must exist. Actually the universe is not particularly beautiful and orderly. And even if it was, why should there be a designer? And modern science shows that most of the natural things we think of as designed are just the products of processes like evolution. The "Ontological" Argument We think of God as a perfect being. If God didn’t exist he wouldn’t be perfect. God is perfect, therefore God exists. But the Atheist replies: Most atheists think this argument is so feeble they don’t bother dealing with it. Professional philosophers usually reject it on the grounds that existence is not a property of beings. The First Cause Argument Everything that happens has a cause. Therefore the universe must have had a cause. That cause must have been God. Therefore since the universe exists, God must exist in order to have caused it to exist. The Atheist replies: Then what caused God? (And what caused the cause of God, and so on.) And if God didn’t need a cause, then maybe the universe didn’t need a cause either. If God was already perfect before he created the universe, why did he create it? How did it` benefit him? Why would he bother? And if the universe was caused, perhaps something other than God caused it? Sorry, but I’m still not convinced. Note for Philosophers The arguments and counter-arguments are presented here in a vastly over-simplified way. Anyone interested in the meat of the debate should look in a philosophy text book. The Argument from Evil The existence of evil in the world is a problem for those who believe that God is wholly good, and can do anything, because the existence of evil seems inconsistent with the existence of such a God. The argument goes like this: Most religions say that God is completely good, knows everything, and is all-powerful. But the world is full of wickedness and bad things keep happening. This can only happen if...
And so there is no being that is completely good, knows everything, and is all powerful. And so, there is no God. Theologians and philosophers have provided various answers to this argument. They all agree that it should be taken very seriously, and that responding to it gives useful insights into the nature of God, evil, and belief. Believers usually respond by saying that God has good reasons for not preventing evil. The best explanation For most of human history God was the best explanation for the existence and nature of the physical universe. But during the last few centuries, scientists have developed explanations that are much more logical, more consistent, and better supported by evidence. Atheists say that these explain the world so much better than the existence of God that there is no longer any need for anyone to believe in God. They also say that far from God being a good explanation for the world, it’s God that now requires explaining. Before Science In olden times - and still today in some traditional societies - natural phenomena that people didn’t understand, such as the weather, sunrise and sunset, and so on, were seen as the work of gods or spirits. Bible Times The Old Testament portrays the world as something controlled by God. Where we would see the weather as obeying meteorological principles, people in those days saw it as demonstrating God at work. And it was the same with all the other natural phenomena, they just showed God doing things. The Greeks "Everything is full of Gods" - Thales (624-546 BCE), Greek philosopher The Greek philosopher Thales moved things on by suggesting that the gods were actually an essential part of things, rather than external puppeteers pulling strings to make the world work. Myth and Magic But there was more to these ancient explanations than gods doing things in or to the world. People saw the whole universe in a religiously structured way; they had no other way to see it at that time. For the ancients, God provided the power that made the universe work, and God provided the structure within which the universe worked and human beings lived. Astrology Ideas like that survive in modern astrology. Many people believe that their lives are in some way influenced by the movements of heavenly bodies. And the heavenly bodies concerned have names taken from mythology and religion. Modern Religion And you’ll find similar ideas in most popular religious thinking. Many people still believe, or want to believe, in the idea of God as puppeteer. They believe that God is able to do things in the world: he can divide the waters of the Red Sea to save the Israelites from Pharaoh, he can respond to prayer by healing an illness or getting someone through an exam. Cosmology Cosmology is the study of the origin and nature of the universe. Nowadays it’s a branch of astronomy and physics, but in pre-scientific times it was a religious subject, organising the universe in terms of almost military ranks of beings. God was at the top, and human beings came pretty much at the bottom. In some cosmologies there was also an inverted hierarchy of evil beings going down from humanity to the source of wickedness, the devil, at the bottom. Power These religious cosmologies were rigid; each being had its place worked out for it in the structure that God had provided, and that was where it stayed. Looking at the universe like this provided great support for the hierarchical power structures of earthly nations and tribes: Everyone in a nation or tribe had their place, and the power came from the top. And if God had decided to organise the universe in such a hierarchy, this provided a strong argument against anyone who wanted to suggest that society could be organised in a fairer and more equal way - God had shown us the perfect way to organise things, and those who were ruling did so by a right given by God. It was also very good news for whichever religion was followed in a particular nation: since the power all came from God, religion was bound to be given high status. The Mechanical Universe The idea that God was a heavenly bus driver, steering everything in the universe as he saw fit, was demolished by the discovery that there were natural laws obeyed by objects in the universe. Galileo, for example, discovered that the universe followed laws that could be written down mathematically. This suggested that there was logic and engineering throughout creation. The universe behaved in a consistent manner and was not subject to gods pulling a string here and there, or some unexplained influences from astrological bodies. This didn’t give Galileo any religious problems (although it annoyed the church greatly and they eventually made him keep quiet about some of his conclusions) because he believed that God had written the scientific rules. And around this time scientists began to come up with new ways of assessing whether certain things were true. Things were expected to happen in a repeatable, testable way, that could be written down in equations. God the Engineer Although scientific discovery began to explain more and more, it didn’t cause large numbers of people to become less religious. Even many - probably most - scientists still had a place for God in the universe. At the very least, he had started the whole thing going, and he had created the rules that his universe was shown to obey. This half-way house between religion and science still had problems for the faithful, since it didn’t seem to leave much room for God to intervene in the universe - and certainly it didn’t need God to keep things ticking over. God the Creator But the half-way house also provided some support for the faithful. They could look at the universe and see how beautifuly made it was, and be reassured that God had demonstrated his existence by creating such a wonderful place. And since science, until the late 18th, and 19th centuries, hadn’t produced any good explanation of how things began, religion still had an important place in explaining how the world was the way it was. God Takes a Back Seat God’s role as an explanation for the way things are took a serious knock from the sciences of geology and evolution. Geologists discovered that the earth was hundreds of millions of years old, and not just 6,000 years old as was generally believed at that time. They showed that the rocks that make up the earth had been laid down in layers at different times; a deeper layer (by and large) came from an earlier time than a shallow layer. In each layer were fossils that showed that different species of animals had lived in different eras. Not only were many no longer in existence but some didn’t appear until relatively recent times. This was incompatible with the idea that God completely created the world in 6 days and so scientists with a faith came up with another compromise - the 6 days of biblical creation were a poetic way of describing long periods of millions of years during which God worked on the world. Evolution "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." - Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker. The theory of evolution explains the variety of life forms on earth without any reference to God. It says that from very simple beginnings, processes of genetic variation and selection (i.e. new forms of life keep appearing, and some forms of life don’t survive and become extinct), working for hundreds of millions of years, generated the range of plants and animals that exist today. These processes are not directed by any being, they are just the way the world works; God is unnecessary. The result of this for God has been explained by Stephen Jay Gould: "No intervening spirit watches lovingly over the affairs of nature (though Newton’s clock-winding god might have set up the machinery at the beginning of time and then let it run). No vital forces propel evolutionary change. And whatever we think of God, his existence is not manifest in the products of nature." Relative Philosophy Some philosophers think that religious language doesn’t mean anything at all, and therefore that there’s no point in asking whether God exists. They would say that a sentence like "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" is neither true or false, it’s meaningless; in the same way that "colourless green ideas sleep furiously" is meaningless. Logical Positivism, or Verificationism Logical Positivists argued that a sentence was meaningless if it wasn’t either true or false, and they said that a sentence would only be true or false if If it could be tested by an experiment, OR If it was true by definition A more accurate version of this idea can be found here Since you couldn’t verify the existence of God by any sort of "sense experience", and it wasn’t true by definition (eg in the way "a triangle has 3 sides" is true), the logical positivists argued that it was pointless asking the question since it could not be answered true or false. These particular philosophers didn’t only say that religious talk was meaningless, they thought that much of philosophical discussion, metaphysics for example, was meaningless too. This philosophical theory is no longer popular, and attention has returned to the issues of what "God" means and whether "God" exists. Note for philosophers This is how one prominent philosopher put it: We say that a sentence is factually significant to any given person, if and only if, he knows how to verify the proposition which it purports to express-that is, if he knows what observations would lead him, under certain conditions, to accept the proposition as being true, or reject is as being false. - A. J. Ayer Ayer actually preferred a weaker version of the theory, because since no empirical proof could be totally conclusive, almost every statement about the world would have to be regarded as meaningless. "A proposition is said to be verifiable, in the strong sense of the term, if, and only if, its truth could be conclusively established in experience. But it is verifiable, in the weak sense, if it is possible for experience to render it probable." And this led Ayer to dispose of the God question rather brusquely: "...There can be no way of proving that the existence of a god...is even probable. "For if the existence of such a god were probable, then the proposition that he existed would be an empirical hypothesis. And in that case it would be possible to deduce from it, and other empirical hypotheses, certain experiential propositions which were not deducible from those other hypotheses alone. "But in fact this is not possible...For to say that "God Exists" is to make a metaphysical utterance which cannot be either true or false." Psychological Explanations of Religon Psychologists have long been fascinated by religion as something that exists in all societies. They ask whether ’religion’ is actually a name given to various psychological drives, rather than a response to the existence of God or gods. Such a belief is clearly atheistic. Religion, to the common man, is a "system of doctrines and promises which on the one hand explains to him the riddles of this world with enviable completeness, and, on the other, assures him that a careful Providence will watch over his life and will compensate him in a future existence for any frustrations he suffers here." - Freud, Civilization and its Discontents Religion comes from Emotions Human beings believe in God because they want:
Even if this is true (which it probably is) this doesn’t mean that God doesn’t exist, but merely that we are psychologically likely to believe in God whether or not he exists. Atheists argue that since religion is just a psychological fantasy, human beings should abandon it so that they can grow to respond appropriately to deal with the world as it is. Freud Sigmund Freud tackled religion in great detail and had several ideas about it. One of his theories was that religion stems from the individual’s experience of having being a helpless baby totally dependent on its parents. The infant sees its parents as all-powerful beings who show it great love and satisfy all its needs. This experience is almost identical to the way human beings portray their relationship with God. Freud also suggested that childhood experiences caused people to have very complex feelings about their parents and themselves, and religion and religious rituals provide a respectable mechanism for working these out. Freud also described religion as a mass-delusion that reshaped reality to provide a certainty of happiness and a protection from suffering. Sociological Explanations of Religion Some people think that religions and belief in God fulfil functions in human society, rather than being the result of God actually existing. Ludwig Feuerbach Ludwig Feuerbach was a 19th century German philosopher who proposed that religion was just a human being’s consciousness of the infinite. He said that human ideas about God were no more than the projection of humanity’s ideas about man onto an imaginary supernatural being. Emile Durkheim Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), a French sociologist, thought that religion was something produced by human society, and had nothing supernatural about it. Religious force is nothing other than the collective and anonymous force of the clan. - Durkheim. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. He believed that religion existed, but he did not agree that the reality that lay behind it was the same reality that believers thought existed. Religion helped people to form close knit groups, in which they could find a place in society. Religious rituals created mental states in those taking part which were helpful to the group. To put it another way; religious rituals do not do anything other than strengthen the beliefs of the group taking part and reinforce the collective consciousness. Religion fulfilled the functions of:
Durkheim thought that this was enough to give people a feeling that there was something supernatural going on. "Since it is in spiritual ways that social pressure exercises itself, it could not fail to give men the idea that outside themselves there exist one or several powers, both moral and, at the same time, efficacious, upon which they depend." - The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life Durkheim said that religious beliefs divided experiences into the profane and the sacred - the profane were the routine experiences of everyday life, while the sacred were beyond the everyday and likely to inspire reverence. Objects could become sacred, not because of any inherent supernatural resonance but because the group fixed certain "collective ideals" on an object. Karl Marx Karl Marx thought that religion was an illusion, with no real God or supernatural reality standing in the background. Religion was a force that stopped human societies from changing. A social institution Marx believed that religion was a social institution, and reflected and sustained the particular society in which it flourished. He went further. Religion was a tool used by the capitalists to keep the working-class under control. Religion provided the working-class with comfort in their miserable oppressed circumstances, and by focussing attention on the joys to come after death, it distracted the workers from trying to make this life better. Religion cheats human beings Furthermore, it took the noblest human ideals and gave them to a non-existent God, thus cheating human beings of realising their own greatness and potential. Religion disguises the true wrongs Marx argued that the illusory happiness provided by religion should be eliminated by putting right the economic conditions that caused people to need this illusion to make their lives bearable. Religion was like a pain-killer (hence Marx’s famous reference to it as "the opium of the people), but what was needed was to cure the sickness, not sedate the patient. "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feelings of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of unspiritual conditions. It is the opium of the people." Target: Christianity The Marxist analysis of religion was principally aimed at Christianity. There are other religions which do not provide as much comfort for the oppressed. However, as Christianity was the dominant faith in the industrial societies which Marx was criticising, his remarks were entirely relevant in the specified context. God is Loving This is one of the more unusual arguments used to show that God can’t exist: God is perfectly loving God knows that human beings would be happier if they were aware of the existence of a loving God So if such a God existed, he would make sure that everyone knew it There are lots of people who aren’t aware of the existence of a loving God. Therefore such a God does not exist source: bbc.co.uk
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Multiple Gods and Religious Traditions: It is difficult to credit any one religion as being True or any one god as being True when there have been so many throughout human history. None appears to have any greater claim to being more credible or reliable than any other. Why Christianity and not Judaism? Why Islam and not Hinduism? Why monotheism and not polytheism? Every position has had its defenders, all as ardent as those in other traditions. They can’t all be right, but they can all be wrong. Contradictory Characteristics in Gods: Theists often claim that their gods are perfect beings; they describe gods, however, in contradictory and incoherent ways. Numerous characteristics are attributed to their gods, some of which are impossible and some combinations of which are impossible. As described, it’s unlikely or impossible for these gods to exist. This doesn’t mean that no god could possibly exist, just that the ones theists claim to believe in don’t. Religion in Self-Contradictory: No religion is perfectly consistent when it comes to doctrines, ideas, and history. Every ideology, philosophy, and cultural tradition has inconsistencies and contradictions, so this shouldn’t be surprising — but other ideologies and traditions aren’t alleged to be divinely created or divinely sanctioned systems for following the wishes of a god. The state of religion in the world today is more consistent with the premise that they are man-made institutions.Sponsored Links Gods Are Too Similar to Believers: A few cultures, like ancient Greece, have postulated gods which appear to be as natural as human beings, but in general gods are supernatural. This means that they are fundamentally different from human beings or anything on earth. Despite this, however, theists consistently describe their gods in ways that make the supernatural appear almost mundane. Gods share so many characteristics with humans that it has been argued that gods were made in the image of man. Gods Just Don’t Matter: Theism means believing in the existence of at least one god, not that one necessarily cares much about any gods. In practice, though, theists typically place a great deal of importance on their god and insist that it and what it wants are the most important things a person can be concerned with. Depending upon the nature of a god, however, this isn’t necessarily true. It’s not obvious that the existence or desires of gods should matter to us. Gods and Believers Behave Immorally: In most religions, gods are supposed to be the source of all morality. For most believers, their religion represents an institution for promoting perfect morality. In reality, though, religions are responsible for widespread immorality and gods have characteristics or histories which make them worse than the most vile human serial killer. No one would tolerate such behavior on the part of a person, but when with a god it all becomes laudable — even an example to follow. Evil in the World: Closely associated with taking action that should be considered immoral is the fact that there is so much evil in the world today. If there are any gods, why don’t they act to eliminate it? The absence of substantive action against evil would be consistent with the existence of evil or at least indifferent gods, which is not impossible, but few people believe in such gods. Most claim that their gods are loving and powerful; the suffering on Earth, makes their existence implausible. Faith is Unreliable: A common characteristic of both theism and religion is their reliance on faith: belief in the existence of god and in the truth of religious doctrines is neither founded upon nor defended by logic, reason, evidence, or science. Instead, people are supposed to have faith — a position they wouldn’t consciously adopt with just about any other issue. Faith, though, is an unreliable guide to reality or means for acquiring knowledge. Life is Material, not Supernatural: Most religions say that life is much more than the flesh and matter we see around us. In addition, there is supposed to be some sort of spiritual or supernatural realm behind it all and that our "true selves" is spiritual, not material. All evidence, though, points to life being a purely natural phenomenon. All evidence indicates that who we really our — our selves — is material and dependent upon the workings of the brain. If this is so, religious and theistic doctrines are wrong. There is No Good Reason to Bother Believing: Perhaps the most important and common reason for not believing in any gods and for not following any religions is the absence of any good reason for doing so. All of the above are decent reasons for not believing and are common reasons for questioning — and eventually leaving — whatever theistic and religious beliefs a person might have had in the past. Once a person gets beyond the bias in favor of belief, though, they can realize something critical: the burden of support lies with those claiming that belief is rational and/or necessary. Believers fail to meet this burden, however, and as a consequence fail to provide any really good reasons to accept their claims. As a consequence, those who don’t already believe and/or who are not biased in favor of belief aren’t given a reason to start. Given the fact that the burden of support lies first and foremost with those making the positive the claim — the theistic, religious believers — then non-believers don’t necessarily need reasons not to believe. They are helpful, to be sure, but they aren’t particularly necessary. Instead, what is required are reasons to believe. The question "Why don’t you believe?" is a request for justification from the nonbeliever; the response "I haven’t seen any good reason to bother believing" returns the need for justification back to the believer where it belongs. Too often, believers fail to realize that their position is the one which needs defending and perhaps this can help them begin to understand that. source: atheism.about.com
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Now the need for gods has gone, man cannot explain everything but science has come up with enough answers that seem to sketch out much of the important features in our Universe, there seems no place for God to be hiding. Next to my computer is a map of the world. It has most of the continents placed in roughly the right place. The shape of South America is clearly discernible. North America is a mess. It has Virginia marked but little else has its current name. Much of the detail is obvious guesswork. It is interesting to note that the map maker guessed right in putting a southern continent covering the pole but showing the North Pole with no land. He got the size of the southern continent a bit wrong though, Antarctica is not bigger than Asia or joined to the northern tip of Australia or Tierra del Fuego. I see this map as a reasonable metaphor for mankind's current knowledge of the Universe, we know a lot, we have made some good guesses about the rest. Time will prove many guesses wrong. But we know enough to do the equivalent of sailing from Europe to Japan without expecting to find dragons in our way. Good stories never die. God continues to have a hold on us because it is a good story. The idea of God has been with us for thousands of years. Good stories get re-told. The story of God is a meme, an idea that has what it takes to get itself replicated. It has a hold on us because it is a meme complex, a series of ideas that get bundled together and get passed on together. Nobody hears about God in isolation, suddenly coming across the idea for the first time in a theology lecture at the age of 18. The idea of God is so prevalent in our society that we never really learn it in the way we learn a foreign language, we learn it in the way we learn our own language. We learn it before we have become critical thinkers, it pollutes all our thoughts the way PCBs pollute our mother's milk. Before we know for ourselves if God exists or not we know where he lives, what he does to little boys and girls that are naughty and that he made all the flowers and the the birds and if we are bad he will tell Santa Claus not to come to give us any presents. We learn all the baggage that comes along with the central idea before we are capable of analysing the central concept. Before we are capable of knowing what a religious experience is we know that the Bible is always right. We have leaned lots of Bible stories and we have been armed with the religious inoculation against atheism and other religions. Here is a short list of ideas that were well established in my head before I was old enough to decide I didn't believe a word of it:- "Don't tempt me satan." An excellent all purpose inoculation against reasoned argument from any quarter. The smart thing is that the more intelligent the challenge to Christian orthodoxy the more obviously diabolical the source is shown to be. The fact that an argument for atheism appears to be reasonable proves it must come from the horned deceiver himself. If this piece does not convince you from your God fearing ways it is because I am only one of the master's lesser imps, the fallen angel himself is busy writing television sit-com scripts and rock lyrics. (Note, that was IRONY) Unbelievers go to Hell. This is a classic memetic strategy, it gives reward to those that pass on the meme. If you know that your actions will save a soul from torment it is your duty to act. If catching that soul before they are old enough to resist indoctrination improves the chances that the soul will be saved then not to indoctrinate would surely be a sin. If frightening children saves their soul then it is your duty to do it. Accepting that logic is only a small step from accepting the need to marry your niece when she is thirteen to keep her in the bosom of the true faith, or of killing your whole family to save their souls from the satanic messages on MTV. Suffer little children to come unto me. This means allowing children to learn the wonderful works of Jesus. No parent is going to be convinced by a conspiratorial idea to tell their children to believe something early while there is a chance the child will accept it without thinking. That is a poor reward for passing on the message. But Jesus is quoted as saying himself that children must be allowed to learn the message early, for their own good. Tied up with this is the thoroughly evil idea that the souls of unbaptized dead children will be denied a place in heaven. The Bible is the word of God. This is another key belief in the interlocking series of ideas that help perpetuate religion. The Bible is the revealed word of God, revealed to the writers of the Bible, which contains the revealed word of God. Remember, you learned this before you learned that tautology was a weak form of argument, and you learned it from the experts in the Bible, which is the revealed word of God, they must know what they are talking about. They are men of God. They know the Bible. The Bible is the Gospel Truth after all. If you believe that the Bible contains the word of God then you can prove your point, look! There it is, in the Bible! I can give you chapter and verse, what more proof do you need? Faith is a virtue. Belief without proof is a virtue for the religious. To the scientist belief without evidence is gross professional misconduct. By turning a weakness into a strength the idea of faith squares the circle and smoothes down all the rough edges of any religion. Lenin tried to rid Russia of belief in God, but he kept blind faith in the motherland and the party instead. Note, all those ideas were firmly in place in my head before I was old enough to use my own brain for myself. That is why Christianity, and similar well structured religions, have so much power over their believers. Before you confront the central point of whether or not you believe in God you have such a wealth of ammunition to prove to yourself that God must exist you don't really need to believe in any positive way at all. Once you break that circle of self proof the Bible becomes just another book, written by many different people over a long time. For some reason it is no longer legitimate to add to the Bible, but obviously in biblical times, it was. Whoever gave legitimacy to the writers of the Bible is obviously no longer around. Christians say it is God who gives the Bible legitimacy... But that is a cheap debating point unworthy of me. source: mwillett.org/atheism/
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THIS CHAPTER IS FORTH-COMING IN THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO ATHEISM, EDITED BY MICHAEL MARTIN, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2005 Assessing rates of belief or disbelief among large populations is extremely difficult. Determining what percentage of a given society believes in God - or doesn't -- is fraught with methodological difficulties, most importantly: 1) low response rates, 2) non-random samples, 3) adverse political or cultural climates, and 4) problematic cross-cultural terminology. A brief discussion of each is warranted before presenting an accumulation of statistics concerning rates and patterns of atheism worldwide. The first methodological concern is low response rates; most people in most societies do not respond to polls or surveys (Brehm, 1993). A response rate of around 50% is considered satisfactory/adequate, and anything over 70% is considered excellent (Babbie, 1989). Surveys with response rates of lower than 50% may provide accurate information concerning the minority of self-selecting people responding, but they cannot be generalized to the wider society. A second major methodological concern involves non-random samples. Even with a high response rate, if the sample is not randomly selected - wherein every member of the given population has an equal chance of being chosen -- it is non-generalizable. A third methodological problem involves the political or cultural climate of a given country. In a totalitarian country where atheism is promulgated by the government and serious risks are present for citizens viewed as disloyal (e.g., China or North Korea), individuals will be reluctant to admit that they actually do believe in God. Conversely, in a society where religion is heavily enforced by the government and serious risks are present for citizens viewed as non-believers (e.g., Saudi Arabia or Iran), individuals will be reluctant to admit that they actually don't believe in Allah, regardless if anonymity is "guaranteed." Even in open, democratic societies without pervasive governmental coercion, individuals often feel that in order to make themselves appear as decent, upstanding citizens, it is necessary to say that are religious( i ) -- or deny being an atheist -- simply because such a response is deemed socially desirable or culturally appropriate. For example, the designation "atheist" is highly stigmatized in many societies; even when people directly claim to not believe in God, they still eschew the specific self-designation of "atheist." Greeley (2003) found that 29% of Latvians, 41% of Norwegians, 48% of the French, and 54% of Czechs claimed to not believe in God, but only 9%, 10%, 19%, and 20% of those respondents self-identified as "atheist," respectively. Finally, there are methodological problems relating to terminology. Meanings and definitions of specific words or categories seldom translate cross-culturally. Signifiers such as "religious," "secular," or even "God" have dramatically different meanings and connotations in different cultures (Beyer, 2003). They are laden with historical, political, social, and theological implications that are unique to every given country and the subcultures there within. Thus, making cross-national comparisons of beliefs between markedly different societies is tenuous, at best.( ii ) Any assessment of the rates and patterns of atheism worldwide must keep the above methodological limitations in mind. That said, the enterprise isn't completely futile. We can make reliable estimates( iii ). Though methodological flaws hamper all sociological inquiries, in the words of Robert Putnam (2000:23): "we must make do with the imperfect evidence that we can find, not merely lament its deficiencies." Below is a presentation of the findings of the most recently available surveys concerning rates of atheism, agnosticism, and non-belief in God in various countries worldwide( iv ). Australia , Canada, New Zealand, and the United States According to Norris and Inglehart (2004), 25% of those in Australia do not believe in God. According to Paul (2002), 24% Australians are atheist or agnostic. Guth and Fraser (2001) found that 28% of Canadians "show no evidence of religious salience or activity." According to Norris and Inglehart (2004), 22% of those in Canada do not believe in God. According to Bibby (2002), when asked "Do you believe that God exists?" 6% of Canadians answered "No, I definitely do not" and another 13% answered, "No, I don't think so," for a total of 19% being classified as either atheist or agnostic. According to Gallup and Lindsay (1999:121), 30% of Canadians do not believe in God or a "Higher Power." Inglehart et al (2004) found that 22% of those in New Zealand do not believe in God, and Paul (2002) found that 20% of New Zealanders are atheist or agnostic. According to Norris and Inglehart (2004), 6% of those in the United States do not believe in God. According to a 2004 survey commissioned by the BBC( v ), 9% of Americans do not believe in God. Rice (2003) found that 3.8% of Americans don't believe in God or "a spirit or life force." According to Hout and Fischer (2002), between 3-4.5% of Americans are either atheist or agnostic; Marwell and Demerath (2003) suggest that a more accurate estimate is 7%. According to Paul (2002) and Froese (2001), 8% of Americans are atheist or agnostic. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 16% of Americans claim no religious affiliation (Kang, 2004). According to Gallup and Lindsay (1999:99), 5% of Americans do not believe in God or a "Higher Power." Latin America A 2004 survey commissioned by the BBC found that 7% of those in Mexico do not believe in God. Inglehart et al (2004) found that only 2% of Mexicans do not believe in God. According to Inglehart et al (2004), 12% of those in Uruguay do not believe in God. O'Brien and Palmer (1993) claim that between 30-50% of Uruguayans have "no religious allegiance." According to Inglehart et al (2004), 3% of those in Chile do not believe in God, down from 5% in 1990. The 1999 Gallup International Poll( vi ) found that nearly 7% of Argentineans chose "none" as their religion According to Inglehart et al (2004), 4% of those in Argentina do not believe in God, down from 8% in 1990. According to Hiorth (2003), Barret et al (2001), the 1999 Gallup International Poll, and Inglehart et al (2004, 1998), less that 1-2% of those in El Salvador, Guatemala, Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Paraguay, and Venezuela are atheist, agnostic, or nonreligious. Europe Norris and Inglehart (2004) found that 39% of those in Britain do not believe in God. According to a 2004 survey commissioned by the BBC, 44% of the British do not believe in God. According to Greeley (2003), 31% of the British do not believe in God, although only 10% self-identify as "atheist." According to Bruce (2002), 10% of the British self-identify as an "agnostic person" and 8% as a "convinced atheist," with an additional 21% choosing "not a religious person." According to Froese (2001), 32% of the British are atheist or agnostic. According to Gallup and Lindsay (1999:121), 39% of the British do not believe in God or a "Higher Power." According to Norris and Inglehart (2004), 44% of those in France do not believe in God. According to Greeley (2003), 48% of the French do not believe in God, although only 19% self-identify as "atheist." According to Froese (2001), 54% of the French are atheist or agnostic. According to Davie (1999), 43% of the French do not believe in God. According to Norris and Inglehart (2004), 64% of those in Sweden do not believe in God. According to Bondeson (2003), 74% of Swedes said that they did not believe in "a personal God." According to Greeley (2003), 46% of Swedes do not believe in God, although only 17% self-identify as "atheist." According to Froese (2001), 69% of Swedes are either atheist or agnostic. According to Gustafsoon and Pettersson (2000), 82% of Swedes do not believe in a "personal God." According to Davie (1999), 85% of Swedes do not believe in God. According to Norris and Inglehart (2004) 48% of those in Denmark do not believe in God. According to Bondeson (2003), 49% of Danes do not believe in "a personal God." According to Greeley (2003), 43% of Danes do not believe in God, although only 15% self-identify as "atheist." According to Froese (2001), 45% of Danes are either atheist or agnostic. According to Gustafsson and Pettersson (2000), 80% of Danes do not believe in a "personal God." According to Inglehart et al (2004), 31% of those in Norway do not believe in God. According to Bondeson (2003), 54% of Norwegians said that they did not believe in "a personal God." According to Greeley (2003), 41% of Norwegians do not believe in God, although only 10% self-identify as "atheist." According to Gustafsson and Pettersson (2002), 72% of Norwegians do not believe in a "personal God." According to Froese (2001), 45% of Norwegians are either atheist or agnostic. Norris and Inglehart (2004) found that 28% of those in Finland do not believe in God. According to Bondeson (2003), 33% of Finns do not believe in "a personal God." According to Gustafsson and Pettersson (2002), 60% of Finns do not believe in a "personal God." According to Froese (2001), 41% of Finns are either atheist or agnostic. According to Norris and Inglehart (2004), 42% of those in the Netherlands do not believe in God. According to Greeley (2003), 43% of the Dutch do not believe in God, although only 17% self-identify as "atheist." Houtman and Mascini (2002) found that 39% of the Dutch are either agnostic or atheist. According to Froese (2001), 44% of the Dutch are either atheist or agnostic. Norris and Inglehart (2004) found that 31% of West Germans do not believe in God. According to Greeley (2003), 35% of West Germans do not believe in God, but only 11% self-identify as "atheist." According to Froese (2001), 35% of West Germans are either atheist or agnostic. According to Greeley (2003), 75% of East Germans do not believe in God, with 51% self-identifying as "atheist." According to Pollack (2002), 74% of East Germans and 38% of West Germans do not believe in God. According to Shand (1998), 42% of West Germans and 72% of East Germans are either atheist or agnostic. According to Inglehart et al (2004), 17% of those in Switzerland do not believe in God, and Greeley (2003) found that 27% of the Swiss do not believe in God, but only 4% self-identify as atheist. Inglehart et al (2004) found that 15% of those in Spain do not believe in God, and according to Greeley (2003), 18% of Spaniards do not believe in God, but only 9% self-identify as "atheist." According to Froese (2001), 24% of Spaniards are either atheist or agnostic. According to Norris and Inglehart (2004), 18% of those in Austria do not believe in God. According to Greeley (2003), 20% of Austrians do not believe in God, but only 6% self-identify as "atheist." According to Froese (2001), 26% of Austrians are either atheist or agnostic. Ingelhart et al (2004) found that 6% of those in Italy do not believe in God. According to Greeley (2003), 14% of Italians do not believe in God, but only 4% self-identify as "atheist." According to Froese (2001), 15% of Italians are either atheist or agnostic. According to Davis and Robinson (1999), 23% of Italians disagreed (some strongly) that a God exists who concerns himself with every human being personally. According to Greeley (2003), 5% of those in Ireland do not believe in God, but only 2% accept the self-identification of "atheist." According to Ingelhart et al (2004) and Davie (1999), 4% of the Irish do not believe in God. Inglehart et al (2004) found that 4% of those in Portugal do not believe in God. According to Greeley (2003), 9% of those in Portugal do not believe in God, with only 2% self-identifying as "atheist." According to Norris and Inglehart (2004), 43% of those in Belgium do not believe in God. According to Froese (2001), 42% of Belgians are either atheist or agnostic. According Inglehart et al (2004), 8% of those in Albania do not believe in God. According to O'Brien and Palmer (1993), over 50% of Albanians claim "no religious alliance." According to Inglehart et al (2004), 34% of those in Bulgaria do not believe in God. According to Greeley (2003), 40% of those in Bulgaria do not believe in God, but only 17% self-identify as "atheist." According to Inglehart et al (2004), 61% of those in the Czech republic do not believe in God. According to Greeley (2003), 54% of those in the Czech Republic do not believe in God, although only 20% self-identify as "atheist." According to a 1999 Gallup International Poll, over 55% of Czechs chose "none" as their religion. According to Inglehart et al (2004), 17% of those in Slovakia do not believe in God. According to Greeley (2003), 28% of those in Slovakia do not believe in God, but only 11% self-identify as "atheist." According to Gall (1998), 10% of Slovaks are atheist. According to Inglehart et al (2004), 7% of those in Croatia do not believe in God. According to a 1999 Gallup International Poll, 5.5% of those in Croatia and 6.4% of those in Bosnia chose "none" as their religion. According to Ingelhart et al (2004), 35% of those in Slovenia do not believe in God. According to Greeley (2003), 38% of those in Slovenia do not believe in God, but only 17% self-identify as "atheist." According to Inglehart et al (2004), 32% of those in Hungary do not believe in God. According to Greeley (2003), 35% of Hungarians do not believe in God, a decrease in non-belief from 1981, when 45% reported that they didn't believe in God. According to Froese (2001), 46% of Hungarians are either atheist or agnostic. According to Inglehart et al (2004), 3% of those in Poland do not believe in God. According to Greeley (2003), 6% of Poles do not believe in God, but only 2% self-identifies as an "atheist." According to Inglehart et al (2004), 16% of those in Iceland do not believe in God. According to Froese (2001), 23% of those in Iceland are either atheist or agnostic. According to Norris and Inglehart (2004), 16% of those in Greece do not believe in God. According to Greeley (2003), 4% of those in Cyprus do not believe in God, although only 1% choose to identify as "atheist." According to Inglehart et al (2004) and the 1999 Gallup International Poll, less than 1-2% of those in Turkey are nonreligious. According to Inglehart et al (2004), 4% of Romanians do not believe in God. Russia and Former Soviet States A 2004 survey commissioned by the BBC found that 24% of those in Russia do not believe in God. According to Inglehart et al (2004), 30% of those in Russia do not believe in God, but only 5% self-identify as "atheist" (Froese, 2004). According to Greeley (2003), 48% of Russians do not believe in God, although only 19% self-identify as "atheist." Froese (2004) reports that 5% of those in the Ukraine are self-described atheists. According to Inglehart et al (2004), 20% of those in the Ukraine do not believe in God. According to Yelensky (2002), 44% of Ukrainians claim "none" in terms of religious identification. According to Inglehart et al (2004), 17% of those in Belarus do not believe in God, far fewer than in 1990, when 57% claimed to not believe in God. Froese (2004) found that 6% of those in Latvia are self-described atheists, but according to Inglehart et al (2004), 20% of those in Latvia do not believe in God, far fewer than in 1990, when 42% did not believe in God. According to Greeley (2003), 29% of those in Latvia do not believe in God, but only 9% self-identify as "atheist." According to Inglehart et al (2004), 13% of those in Lithuania do not believe in God, although only 1% describe themselves as atheists (Froese, 2004). Inglehart et al (2004) found that 49% of those in Estonia do not believe in God, although only 11% are self-described atheists (Froese, 2004). According to Inglehart et al (2004), 14% of those in Armenia do not believe in God, although only 7% are self-described atheists (Froese, 2004). According to a 1999 Gallup International Poll, over 11% of Armenians chose "none" as their religion. According to Froese (2004), less than 1% of those in Azerbaijan and 4% of those in Georgia are atheist. According to Froese (2004), 12% of those in Kazakhstan are atheist. According to Barrett (2001), 29% of those in Kazakhstan are nonreligious, with 11% claiming to be atheist. According to the 1999 Gallup International Poll, almost 19% of Kazakhs chose "none" as their religion. According to Froese (2004), 7% of those in Kyrgyzstan, 6% of those on Moldova, 4% of those in Uzbekistan, 2% of those in Tajikstan, and 2% of those in Turkmenistan, are atheist. According to Barret et al (2001), 3.5% of Uzbeks are atheist. According to Johnstone (1993), 28% of those in Kyrgystan, 27% of those in Moldova, 26% of Uzbeks, 18% of those in Turkmenistan, and 13% of Tajikstan, are nonreligious. Asia As a result of periodic repression of religion by various dictators (Guest, 2003), survey data of religious belief in the most populated country in the world - China -is extremely unreliable (Demerath, 2001:154). Only very recently has sound scholarship begun to emerge, and even that is of limited scope (Yang, 2004). Estimates of high degrees of atheism in China are most likely gross over-exaggerations (Overmyer, 2003). That said, according to Barrett et al (2001), 8% of the Chinese are atheist. According to Marshall (2000), 10% of those in China identify as "atheist." According to Johnstone (1993), 59% of those in China are nonreligious. According to O'Brien and Palmer (1993), between 10-14% of those in China are "avowed atheists." According to Norris and Inglehart (2004, 1998), 6% of those in India do not believe in God. According to a 2004 survey commissioned by the BBC, less than 3% of Indians do not believe in God. According to Norris and Inglehart (2004), 65% of those in Japan do not believe in God. According to Demerath (2001:138), 64% do not believe in God and 55% do not believe in Buddha, however a very strong majority have engaged in some form or Shinto, Buddhist, or Japanese folk/cultural ritual, such visiting a shrine or temple on the previous New Year's Day. According to the 1999 Gallup International Poll, nearly 29% of the Japanese chose "none" as their religion. According to Johnstone (1993:323), 84% of the Japanese claim no personal religion, but most follow "the customs of Japanese traditional religion." According to Inglehart et al (2004), 81% of those in Vietnam and 24% of those in Taiwan do not believe in God. Barret et al (2001) report that 15% of North Koreans are atheist. According to Johnstone (1993), 68% of North Koreans are nonreligious, however, for similar reasons discussed above concerning China, this high estimate should be met with skepticism. A 2004 survey commissioned by the BBC found that 30% of those in South Korea do not believe in God. According to Eungi (2003), 52% of South Koreans do not believe in God. According to Barret et al (2001), 9% of those in Mongolia are atheist. According to Johnstone (1993), 20% of those in Mongolia, 7% of Cambodians and 5% of Laotians are nonreligious. Inglehart et al (2004) found that 13% of those in Singapore do not believe in God. According to the 1999 Gallup International Poll, over 12% of those in Singapore chose "none" as their religion. According to Moaddel and Azadarmaki (2003), less than 5% of Iranians do not believe in God, and according to a 2004 survey commissioned by the BBC, less than 2% of those in Indonesia do not believe in God. According to Inglehart et al (2004), Barrett et al (2001), the 1999 Gallup International Poll, and Johnstone (1993), less than 1% of those in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Brunei, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Iran, Malaysia, Nepal, Laos, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Philippines, are atheist, agnostic, or nonreligious. Africa According to a 2004 survey commissioned by the BBC, Hiorth (2001) Inglehart et al (2004, 1998), Barrett et al (2001), the 1999 Gallup International Poll, and Johnstone (1993), less than 1% of those in Algeria, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Cote D'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zimbabwe, and Zambia, are atheist, agnostic, or nonreligious. According to Johnstone (1993), 2.7% of those in Congo, 4% of those in Zimbabwe, 4% of those in Namibia, 1.5% of those in Angola and the Central African Republic, and 5% of those in Mozambique are nonreligious. According to a 1999 Gallup International Poll, nearly 11% of South Africans chose "none" as their religion. According to Inglehart et al (2004), 1% of South Africans do not believe in God. Middle East According to a 2004 survey commissioned by the BBC, 15% of those in Israel do not believe in God. According to Yuchtman-Ya'ar (2003), 54% of Israelis identify themselves as "secular." According to Dashefsky et al (2003), 41% of Israelis identify themselves as "not religious." According to Kedem (1995), 31% of Israelis do not believe in God, with an additional 6% choosing "don't know," for a total of 37% being atheist or agnostic. A 2004 survey commissioned by the BBC found that less than 3% of those in Lebanon do not believe in God. According to Moaddel and Azadarmaki (2003), less than 5% of those in Jordan and Egypt do not believe in God. According to Inglehart et al (2004), less than 1% of those in Jordan and Egypt do not believe in God. According to Barret et al (2001) less than 1% of those in Syria, Oman, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen are secular. According to Johnstone (1993), less than 2% of Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, and Kuwait is nonreligious. According to Johnstone (1993), less than 1% of those in Iraq are nonreligious. West Indies According to Hiorth (2003), 40% of those in Cuba claim "none" as their religion. According to Barrett et al (2001), 30% of Cubans are nonreligious, with 7% claiming to be atheist. According to Johnstone (1993), 9% of those in Trinidad and Tobago, and 3% of Jamaicans are nonreligious. According to Hiorth (2003) and Johnstone (1993) less than 1% of those in Haiti are non-religious. According to Inglehart et al (2004), 7% of those in the Dominican Republic do not believe in God, and the 1999 Gallup International Poll found that almost 10% of those in the Dominican Republic chose "none" as their religion. The Top 50 Below is a list of the top fifty countries containing the largest percentage of people who identify as atheist, agnostic, or non-believer in God. Country Total Pop.(2004) % Atheist/actual # Agnostic/Nonbeliever in God (minimum - maximum) 1 Sweden 8,986,000 46-85% 4,133,560-7,638,100 2 Vietnam 82,690,000 81% 66,978,900 3 Denmark 5,413,000 43-80% 2,327,590-4,330,400 4 Norway 4,575,000 31-72% 1,418,250-3,294,000 5 Japan 127,333,000 64-65% 81,493,120-82,766,450 6 Czech Republic 10,246,100 54-61% 5,328,940-6,250,121 7 Finland 5,215,000 28-60% 1,460,200-3,129,000 8 France 60,424,000 43-54% 25,982,320-32,628,960 9 South Korea 48,598,000 30%-52% 14,579,400-25,270,960 10 Estonia 1,342,000 49% 657,580 11 Germany 82,425,000 41-49% 33,794,250-40,388,250 12 Russia 143,782,000 24-48% 34,507,680-69,015,360 13 Hungary 10,032,000 32-46% 3,210,240-4,614,720 14 Netherlands 16,318,000 39-44% 6,364,020-7,179,920 15 Britain 60,271,000 31-44% 18,684,010-26,519,240 16 Belgium 10,348,000 42-43% 4,346,160-4,449,640 17 Bulgaria 7,518,000 34-40% 2,556,120-3,007,200 18 Slovenia 2,011,000 35-38% 703,850-764,180 19 Israel 6,199,000 15-37% 929,850-2,293,630 20 Canada 32,508,000 19-30% 6,176,520-9,752,400 21 Latvia 2,306,000 20-29% 461,200-668,740 22 Slovakia 5,424,000 10-28% 542,400-1,518,720 23 Switzerland 7,451,000 17-27% 1,266,670-2,011,770 24 Austria 8,175,000 18-26% 1,471,500-2,125,500 25 Australia 19,913,000 24-25% 4,779,120-4,978,250 26 Taiwan 22,750,000 24% 5,460,000 27 Spain 40,281,000 15-24% 6,042,150-9,667,440 28 Iceland 294,000 16-23% 47,040-67,620 29 New Zealand 3,994,000 20-22% 798,800-878,680 30 Ukraine 47,732,000 20% 9,546,400 31 Belarus 10,311,000 17% 1,752,870 32 Greece 10,648,000 16% 1,703,680 33 North Korea 22,698,000 15% ( ? ) 3,404,700 34 Italy 58,057,000 6-15% 3,483,420-8,708,550 35 Armenia 2,991,000 14% 418,740 36 China 1,298,848,000 8-14% ( ? ) 103,907,840-181,838,720 37 Lithuania 3,608,000 13% 469,040 38 Singapore 4,354,000 13% 566,020 39 Uruguay 3,399,000 12% 407,880 40 Kazakhstan 15,144,000 11-12% 1,665,840-1,817,280 41 Estonia 1,342,000 11% 147,620 42 Mongolia 2,751,000 9% 247,590 43 Portugal 10,524,000 4-9% 420,960-947,160 44 United States 293,028,000 3-9% 8,790,840-26,822,520 45 Albania 3,545,000 8% 283,600 46 Argentina 39,145,000 4-8% 1,565,800-3,131,600 47 Kyrgyzstan 5,081,000 7% 355,670 48 Dominican Rep. 8,834,000 7% 618,380 49 Cuba 11,309,000 7% ( ? ) 791,630 50 Croatia 4,497,000 7% 314,790 (?): certainty/validity on these figures is relatively low We can also include Mexico (2-7% do not believe in God), Poland (3-6% don't believe in God), Moldova (6% don't believe in God) Romania, Georgia, and Uzbekistan (4% don't believe in God), India (2-6% don't believe in God), Ireland (4-5% do not believe in God), and Chile (3% do not believe in God). From the top 50 countries, along with those additionally mentioned above countries, the grand total worldwide number of atheists, agnostics, and non-believers in God is somewhere between 504,962,830 and 749,247,571. These minimum/maximum numbers are conservative estimates; had I factored in a mere .25% of such highly populated countries as Egypt, Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria, Burma, Tanzania, and Iran, as non-believers in God, estimates would be significantly larger. Also, these numbers are only for non-believers of God, specifically. Had I included all "non-religious" people in general, the numbers would nearly double. Given the above estimates, we can deduce that there are approximately 58 times as many atheists as there are Mormons, 41 times as many atheists as there are Jews, 35 times as many atheists as there are Sikhs, and twice as many atheists as there are Buddhists. Finally, nonbelievers in God as a group come in fourth place after Christianity (2 billion), Islam (1.2 billion), and Hinduism (900 million) in terms of global ranking of commonly-held belief systems. Explaining High Rates of Non-Belief What accounts for the staggering differences between nations in terms of rates of non-belief? Why do most nations in Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia contain almost no atheists, but within many European nations atheists are in abundance? There are numerous explanations (Zuckerman, 2004; Paul, 2002; Stark and Finke, 2000; Bruce, 1999). One leading theory comes from Norris and Inglehart (2004), who argue that in societies characterized by plentiful food distribution, excellent public healthcare, and widely accessible housing, religiosity wanes. Conversely, in societies where food and shelter are scarce and life is generally less secure, religious belief is strong. This is not a new theory (Thrower, 1999). For example, Karl Marx (1843) argued that people who suffer in oppressive social conditions are apt to turn to religion for comfort. Sigmund Freud's (1927) central thesis was that belief in God served to comfort humans in the face of earthly pain, suffering, and death. However, Marx and Freud provided no data. Norris and Inglehart (2004) do. Through an examination of current global statistics on religiosity in relation to income distribution, economic inequality, welfare expenditures, and basic measurements of lifetime security (such as vulnerability to famines, natural disasters, etc.), Inglehart and Norris (2004) convincingly argue that despite numerous factors possibly relevant for explaining different rates of religiosity world-wide, "the levels of societal and individual security in any society seem to provide the most persuasive and parsimonious explanation" (p.109).( vii ) Of course, as with any grand sociological theory, there are holes. The glaring cases of Vietnam (81% non-believers in God) and Ireland (4-5% non-believers in God) prove to be exceptions to Inglehart and Norris's analysis; Vietnam is a relatively poor/insecure country and yet quite irreligious, while Ireland is one of the wealthiest/most secure countries in the world, and yet very religious. But aside from these two glaring exceptions, the correlation between high rates of individual and societal security/well-being and high rates of non-belief in God remains strong. Atheism and Societal Health Indeed, countries containing high percentages of non-believers are among the most healthy and wealthy nations on earth (Paul, 2004). Of course, we must always distinguish between those nations where non-belief has been forced upon the society by dictators ("coercive atheism") from those societies wherein non-belief has emerged on its own without governmental coercion ("organic atheism"). Nations marked by coercive atheism -- such as China, North Korea, Vietnam, and former Soviet states -- are societies marked by all that comes with totalitarianism: poor economic development, intellectual censorship, widespread corruption, ubiquitous depression, etc.. However, nations marked by high levels of organic atheism - such as Sweden, the Netherlands, and France -- are among the healthiest, wealthiest, most educated, and most free societies on earth. Consider the Human Development Report (2004), commissioned by The United Nations Development Program. This report ranks 177 nations on a "Human Development Index," which measures societal health through a weighing of such indicators as life expectancy at birth, adult literacy rate, per capita income, and educational attainment. According to the 2004 Report, the five highest ranked nations in terms of total human development were Norway, Sweden, Australia, Canada, and the Netherlands. All five of these countries are characterized by notably high degrees of organic atheism. Furthermore, of the top 25 nations ranked on the "Human Development Index," all but one country ( Ireland) are top-ranking non-belief nations, containing some of the highest percentages of organic atheism on earth. Conversely, of those countries ranked at the bottom of the "Human Development Index" -- the bottom 50 -- all are countries lacking any statistically significant percentages of atheism. Concerning the infant mortality rate specifically (number of deaths per 1,000 live births), irreligious countries have the lowest rates, and religious countries have the highest rates. According to the CIA World Factbook (2004), out of 225 nations, the top 25 nations with the lowest infant mortality rates were all nations containing significantly high percentages of organic atheism. Conversely, the 75 bottom nations with the highest infant mortality rates were all very religious nations without any statistically significant levels of organic atheism. Concerning international poverty rates, the United Nations' Report on the World Social Situation (2003) found that of the 40 poorest nations on earth (measured by the percentage of each nation's population that lives on less than $1.00 a day), all but one (Vietnam) are highly religious nations with statistically minimal or insignificant levels of atheism. Concerning homicide rates, Fajnzylber et al (2002), looked at 38 nations (excluding those in Africa) and found that of the top ten nations with the highest homicide rates, all but one (United States) were highly religious nations with statistically insignificant levels of organic atheism. Conversely, of the bottom ten nations with the lowest homicide rates, all but one ( Ireland) are highly secular nations with high levels of atheism. Fox and Levin (2000) looked at 37 nations (again excluding Africa), and found that of the top ten nations with the highest homicide rates, all but two (Estonia and Taiwan) were highly religious nations containing statistically insignificant levels of organic atheism. Conversely, of the bottom ten nations with the lowest homicide rates, all but two ( Ireland and Kuwait) were relatively secular nations with high levels of organic atheism. Concerning suicide rates, this is the one indicator of societal health in which religious nations fare much better than secular nations. According to the 2003 World Health Organization's report on international male suicides rates (which compared 100 countries), of the top ten nations with the highest male suicide rates, all but one (Sri Lanka) are strongly irreligious nations with high levels of atheism. It is interesting to note, however, that of the top remaining nine nations leading the world in male suicide rates, all are former Soviet/Communist nations, such as Belarus, Ukraine, and Latvia( viii ). Of the bottom ten nations with the lowest male suicide rates, all are highly religious nations with statistically insignificant levels of organic atheism. Concerning literacy rates, according to the United Nations' Report on the World Social Situation (2003), of the 35 nations with the highest levels of youth illiteracy rates (percentage of population ages 15-24 who cannot read or write)( ix ), all are highly religious nations with statistically insignificant levels of organic atheism. Concerning gender equality, nations marked by high degrees of organic atheism are among the most egalitarian in the world, while highly religious nations are among the most oppressive. According to the 2004 Human Development Report's "Gender Empowerment Measure," the top ten nations with the highest degrees of gender equality are all strongly organic atheistic nations with significantly high percentages of non-belief. Conversely, the bottom ten are all highly religious nations without any statistically significant percentages of atheists. According to Inglehart and Norris's (2003) "Gender Equality Scale," of the top ten nations most accepting of gender equality, all but two (United States and Colombia) are nations marked by high levels of organic atheism; of the bottom ten (those least accepting of gender equality), all are highly religious nations marked by statistically insignificant levels of organic atheism( x ). According to Inglehart (2003), countries with the most female members of parliament tend to be countries characterized by high degrees of organic atheism (such as Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands) and countries with the fewest female members in parliament tend to be highly religious countries (such as Pakistan, Nigeria, and Iran). In sum, countries marked by high rates of organic atheism are among the most societally healthy on earth, while societies characterized by non-existent rates of organic atheism are among the most destitute. Nations marked by high degrees of organic atheism tend to have among the lowest homicide rates, infant mortality rates, poverty rates, and illiteracy rates, and among the highest levels of wealth, life expectancy, educational attainment, and gender equality in the world. The only indicator of societal health mentioned above in which religious countries fared better than irreligious countries was suicide. Of course, it is essential to clearly state that I am in no way arguing that high levels of organic atheism cause societal health or that low levels of organic atheism cause societal ills such as poverty or illiteracy. If anything, the opposite argument should be made: societal health causes widespread atheism, and societal insecurity causes widespread belief in God, as discussed by Norris and Inglehart (2004) above. The causes of the glaring differences in societal well being among the world's rich and poor nations are numerous (Diamond, 1999; Landes, 1999). Certainly among them include the birth and development of the industrial revolution, the lingering residue of colonialism and international conquests, and international trade policies that heavily favor the interests of wealthy/first world nations and their multi-national corporations over the interests of developing/third world nations. Again, to suggest that widespread belief or non-belief in God is the cause of societal health or societal pathology is not my intention. Rather, I am simply seeking to clearly establish that high degrees of non-belief in God in a given society clearly do not result in societal ruin, and high levels of belief in God do not ensure societal well-being. This is an important fact to stress because politically-active theists often equate atheism with crime, immorality, and societal disintegration. From Muslim fundamentalists in Iran to Christian fundamentalists in Indiana, the argument is loudly trumpeted that belief in God is "good for society" - an ultimate panacea -- while rejection of the belief in God is bad for society. The above discussion reveals that this thesis is baldly incorrect. Secularization? Is worldwide atheism growing or in decline? This is difficult to answer. On the one hand, there are more atheists in the world today than ever before. Additionally, the nations with some of the highest degrees of organic atheism (such as Great Britain, France, and Scandinavia) have been experiencing a steady increase of atheism over the past century, an increase which shows no indication of abating (Bruce, 2001). On the other hand, worldwide atheism overall may be in decline. This is due to the simple demographic fact that highly religious nations have the highest birthrates in the world and highly irreligious nations have the lowest birthrates in the world. As Norris and Inglehart (2004:25) observe, due to basic demographic trends, "the world as a whole now has more people with traditional religious views than ever before - and they constitute a growing proportion of the world's population." Thus, the picture is complicated, making predictions of the growth or overall decline of atheism difficult to make. What is clear - as stated above -- is that in certain selected societies, non-belief in God is definitely growing. While most humans on this earth continue to maintain a firm belief in deities (especially in the most populated countries of Africa, South America, Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East, and possibly China), there is clear evidence of secularization in selected, advanced industrial nations (Norris and Ingelhart, 2004; Bruce, 2002). Secularization is specifically evident in the empirically observable decline of belief in God within many western nations.( xi ) According to Gallup and Lindsay (1999:121), 30% of Canadians do not believe in God or a "Higher Power," up from 23% in 1985. According to Beyer (1997), 12.5% of Canadians chose "none" when presented with a plethora of religious identity options in 1991, up from 7% in 1981 - a 90% increase of "none's" in one decade. According to Gallup and Lindsay (1999:121), 39% of the British do not believe in God or a "Higher Power," up from 24% in 1979. According to Bruce (2002) and Gill et al (1998), survey data from the 1960s found that 79% of the British held a belief in God, but this dropped down to 68% in surveys taken in the 1990s; whereas only 10% answered that they "don't believe in God" in the 1960s, this percentage had almost tripled to 27% in the 1990s. According to Bruce (2001), surveys in the 1950s found that only 2% of the British replied they did not believe in God; that percentage was up to 27% in the 1990s. According to Palm and Trost (2000), when Swedes were asked in 1947 "Do you believe in God?" 83% said yes, 9% said they didn't know, and 8% said no. In the early 1990s, in response to the same question, only 38% said yes, 16% didn't know, and 46% said they did not. According to CUNY's 2001 American Religious Identification Survey, 14% of Americans claim "no religion" in terms of self-identification, up from 8% in 1990. Finally, according to Norris and Inglehart (2004:90), the percentage of people believing in God over the past 50 years has declined by 33% in Sweden, 22% in the Netherlands, 20% in Australia, 19% in Norway, 18% in Denmark, 16.5% in Britain, 12% in Greece, 11% in Belgium, 7% in Canada, and 3% in Japan. In sum, loss of belief in God has occurred over the course of the 20 th century in Canada, Australia, and various European countries ( Davie, 2000), including Germany (Shand, 1998; Greeley, 2003), the United Kingdom (Bruce, 2001, 2002), the Netherlands (Grontenhuis and Scheepers, 2001), and Scandinavia (Bruce, 1999). However, secularization is quite limited to specific advanced industrialized nations (with relatively low birth rates), and has not occurred throughout much of the rest of the world. Secularization is thus very limited in scope, for as Peter Berger (2001) observes, "most of the world is bubbling with religious passions." Atheism and the "Innateness" of Religious Belief In recent years, a new attempt at explaining religious belief has emerged. Its central tenet is that belief in God is biologically natural or neurologically based. Developed largely by cognitive neuropyschologists and academic theists, this thesis argues that belief in God is in-born and inevitable, growing out of the "natural" processes of the human brain. Justin Barret (2004) has argued that belief in God is a result of the "way our minds are structured" (p.viii) and "the way human minds operate" (p.30). He argues that belief in God is "greatly supported by intuitive mental tools"(p.17) and is "an inevitable consequence of the sorts of minds we are born with" (p.91). Belief in God is "natural," resulting from the "natural workings of the human mind," and atheism is thus unnatural (p.108). David Wilson (2002) suggests that religion is part of humanity's naturally evolving adaptive strategy, and that religious belief represents "the healthy functioning of the biologically and culturally well-adapted human mind" (p.228). Michael Persinger (1987) has stressed the role of the hippocampus, the amygdala, temporal lobes, and hormonal processes, in explaining religious belief in God. Ashbrook and Albright (1997) focus on the neural underpinnings and workings of the brain in explaining belief in God. Newberg and D-Aquili (2001) argue that the religious impulse lies in an evolved "neurological process" (p.9), that the roots of belief in God are to be found in "the wiring of the human brain" (p.129), and that "as long as our brains are arranged the way they are," belief in God will remain (p.172). The data presented in this chapter delivers a heavy blow to this new explanation of theism. First of all, the sheer numbers must be contended with. With between 500,000,000 and 750,000,000 non-theists living on this planet today, any suggestion that belief in God is natural, inborn, or a result of how our brains are wired becomes manifestly untenable. Secondly, anyone who argues that theism has neural roots and is a direct result of the natural way human minds work must then explain the dramatically different rates of belief among similar countries. Consider Britain (31-44% atheist) compared to nearby Ireland (4-5% atheist), the Czech Republic (54-61% atheist) compared to nearby Poland (3-6% atheist), and South Korea (30-52% atheist) compared the Philippines (less than 1% atheist). It is simply unsustainable to argue that these glaring differences in rates of atheism among these nations is due to different biological, neurological or other such brain-related properties. Rather, the differences are better explained by taking into account historical, cultural, economic, political, and sociological factors (Norris and Inglehart, 2004; Grontenhuis and Scheepers, 2001; Verweij, Ester, and Natua, 1997; Zuckerman, 2003). Conclusion Based on a careful assessment of the most recent survey data available, we find that somewhere between 500,000,000 and 750,000,000 humans currently do not believe in God. Such figures render any suggestion that theism is innate or neurologically based untenable. The nations with the highest degrees of organic atheism (atheism which is not state-enforced through totalitarian regimes but emerges naturally among free societies) include most of the nations of Europe, as well as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel. There also exist high degrees of atheism in Japan, Vietnam, North Korea, and Taiwan. Many former Soviet nations, such as Estonia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus also contain significant levels of atheism. Atheism is virtually non-existent in much of the world, however, especially among the most populated nations of Africa, South America, the Middle East, and much of Asia. High levels of organic atheism are strongly correlated with high levels of societal health, such as low homicide rates, low poverty rates, low infant mortality rates, and low illiteracy rates, as well as high levels of educational attainment, per capita income, and gender equality. Most nations characterized by high degrees of individual and societal security have the highest rates of organic atheism, and conversely, nations characterized by low degrees of individual and societal security have the lowest rates of organic atheism. In some societies, particularly Europe, atheism is growing. However, throughout much of the world - particularly nations with high birth rates - atheism is barely discernable. References Ashbrook, James and Carol Rausch Albright. 1997. 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(1) - I would like to thank the following people for their help with this chapter: Russ Dalton, Paul Froese, Jill Grigsby, Ronald Inglehart, Charles Lachman, Beatrice Leung, Peter Nardi, Katherine Meyer, Arthur Rosenbaum, Fenggang Yang, and Kwasi Yirenkyi. ( i ) - A glaring example of just such a phenomenon was uncovered by Chaves and Stephens (2003) and Hadaway et al. (1993), who found that Americans claim to attend church much more often than they actually do. The weekly church attendance rate in the United States is actually closer to 20%, far lower than the 40% often cited. ( ii ) - Even within the same culture, specific terms can be contestable and confused. For example, many Evangelical Christains will say that they are not "religious" and have "no religion," but instead insist they have a "relationship" with Christ or God. Many Israelis consider themselves both "Jewish" and "atheist." In Ireland, one may identify oneself as a "Catholic" for political or ethnic reasons, and yet not maintain a personal belief in God. In Thailand, "religious" might refer to the piety and practices of monks, and thus a Thai individual may describe him or herself as "not religious" even though he or she holds deep personal religious beliefs. In many societies, one could feasibly be "secular" in practice but hold a personal belief in god, or conversely, "religious" in outward practice but atheist in terms of personal belief. See Demerath's (2001) discussion of "cultural religion" for further analysis. ( iii ) - Noteworthy improvements in obtaining higher response rates have been reported in recent years, at least among western democracies (Dillman, 1991, 2000; Yammarino, Skinner, and Childers, 1991). Given enough money and resources, innovative questionnaire design, repeated attempts, well-trained interviewers, and amenable socio-political circumstances, obtaining relatively valid survey information about the beliefs and activities of people is possible (Michael, et.al., 1994:15-41). ( iv ) - Most countries with a population of less than 1 million were excluded. ( v ) - The results of this BBC study, which I cite elsewhere, were posted on-line by bbcnews.com ( UK edition) under the heading "What the World Thinks of God" and can be easily found via google. ( vi ) - The Gallup International Survey Polldata can be found and requested via the web (google search: Gallup International Association), under their "Millennium Survey." Oddly enough - and perhaps reflecting the Evangelical Christian bias of George Gallup, JR, -- this survey does not specifically ask people if they are an atheist or agnostic. ( vii ) - What about the United States? While the U.S, is one of the wealthiest nations on earth, Norris and Inglehart (2004) are still able to account for its high degree of religiosity and religious belief. As they explain on page 108: "The United States:is one of the most unequal postindustrial societies:relatively high levels of economic insecurity are experienced by many sectors of U.S. society:many American families:face risks of unemployment, the dangers of sudden ill health without adequate private medical insurance, vulnerability to becoming a victim of crime:" ( vii ) - This suggests that the change from Communist to post-Communist societies is probably more likely to account for these nations' high suicide rates than their relatively high levels of atheism. It is also important to note that, contrary to popular belief, the Scandinavian nations do not lead the world in suicides. ( ix ) - It is important to note that within these nations with high illiteracy rates, the illiteracy rates were often twice as high or more for females compared to males within each country. ( x ) - Acceptance of gender equality among irreligious nations may be linked to relative acceptance of homosexuality. Inglehart et al (2004) found that of the top 18 nations least likely to condemn homosexuality, all are highly-ranked organic atheistic nations. Conversely, of the top 18 nations most likely to condemn homosexuality, all but one ( Hungary) were highly religious nations marked by statistically insignificant levels of organic atheism. ( xi ) - Various sociologists of religion, such as Rodney Stark and Roger Finke (2000), have declared that "secularization" is a myth and that there is no empirical evidence for the decline of religion. For decades, Andrew Greeley has been in denial about the loss of religious belief. In 1972 he claimed that the observation that religion was in decline in certain societies was mere "dogma" not "substantiated by empirical fact" (p.45). In (1995:199) he claimed that there is "little evidence" that "men and women are less religious than they used to be," and that such a claim contains "no data" to support it. And again in 2003 (ix-x) he maligns the observation of secularization as "dogma" and charges that anyone who uses the term "secularization" does so as an "excuse for not thinking." Greeley is dead wrong. Religion in much of the world may show little decline, but elsewhere, the evidence for secularization is strong and the empirical data sound and abundant. source: pitzer.edu
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