In Reply to: Re: Is Faith Good for Us? posted by Okay but... on July 27, 2006 at 19:48:28:
I can’t tell if this is one or two people posting essentially the same post in reply to me. First of all, if you ever lived in Japan you wouldn’t be so uninformed about the society there. Japan is one of the most secular nations in the world.
http://www.rothteien.com/topics/secular.htm
Did you even bother to read the article I posted? Your inane questions (eg, “who makes these rules?”) suggest not. Perhaps the following article has some answers for you, though I suspect your mind is already made up and you don't want to be confused by the facts.
The paragraphs that follow this link are some direct quotations from the article.
http://www.pitzer.edu/academics/faculty/zuckerman/atheism.html
“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.”
…..
“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.”