Is Atheism more alive in the USA than in other western democracies?

[MarkCharles]

This is a question I have often wondered about.

I have traveled only in western Europe, and found folks there didn't really consider their religions as seriously as we seem to here in the USA. In Canada, I know, most of the atheistic folks look a lot like atheists in any American city or town, challenging the more predominant local Catholic or local Protestant communities. Canadian atheists seem less obsessed with those challenges, preferring more to stock up the wood for the winter fires from any theist or non-theistic source. (Truth be told: I have never spent a winter in Canada, after the week of the American Thanksgiving.)


There is little I know about French, German, Italian, or Portuguese atheism movements. In the UK, and Ireland, it's pretty well alive and growing, and not many members of the "Church of England" or other Protestant or Catholic groups have a problem with accepting and tolerating these atheists. In the UK and Ireland we DO NOT see people running for office on campaigns to further wed their Christian beliefs to their government, and, more likely, they run campaigns in the UK to profess their more wide-ranging tolerance of all beliefs and non-beliefs. In the UK, Islam is more feared and combated by political figures than is simple agnosticism or atheism.


I hear that Australia is almost exclusively atheist, except when it comes to birth, death, and Christmas.

Does anyone have more insights about atheism around the world?

[iris27]

1. I wouldn't say more alive, but perhaps more necessarily oppositional.

As you say, attitudes about religion in western Europe are much more laid back, and much less likely to interfere with the rights of your average non-believing citizen. Where religion IS sanctioned by governments in a damaging way -- for example, the UK's sub-legal but sanctioned Sharia courts -- you do still (rightly) see pushback.

[sfwriter]

2. No...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_atheism

Disbelief or lack of faith in a god is two or three times higher and believers less ardent in most of Europe.

[MarkCharles]

3. Yes, that is what I thought, and experienced in small ways, but what is

YOUR PERSONAL experience with agnostics and atheists in Europe?

I think that, while colonists were settling and cutting down trees, starting farms in the USA and Canada, being challenged by exceedingly cold winters and hot summers, from DC to Boston...(more severe than in the UK or France, for sure). Somehow, over that 150 years or so between Plymouth, 1620, and Philadelphia, 1775, we managed to get ourselves a group of pretty well educated worldly theists, (Jefferson, et al.) who had read everything intellectual that had come out of Europe since the Magna Carta.

We got ourselves a religion free democratic republic, but we seemed to have kept our grip on the religious beliefs more solidly than those in Europe, who, other than Catholics and Anglicans, started questioning Christianity long before Unintarians and Universalists and others in the USA did in the mid 1850's, when the abject reality of religious justification for slavery met up with those challenges of skeptics calling a hypocrite a hypocrite.

[demosincebirth]

4. Sorry to burst your bubble....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism

[MarkCharles]

6. The point of your link? Did you have one?

I read more history of atheism than just a simple link in wiki.

You have a point? Care to make it?

[demosincebirth]

7. You asked. It's 2.8 to 4 percent in the U.S.. I guess you missed it?

[Humanist_Activist]

9. There's a difference between activity and numbers...

Atheists in a society that is already largely atheistic/secular would be less active than atheists in a majority religious country. Compare and contrast most of western Europe with the United States and to a slightly lesser extent, Canada.

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. So 'alive' means 'organised' in this case?

If DU is anything to go by, then atheists in the USA do worry a lot more about joining organisations so that they have something to belong to 'as atheists'.

[provis99]

5. atheists are the most hated minority group in America.

they are considered lower than communists, Nazis, homosexuals, Jews, or blacks.

It's more of a wonder that atheists are alive, than is atheism alive.

[tama]

8. I live in Finland

Most people belong to state church, but mainly out of habit and social customs, not strong faith. Church has been losing members because of women priesthood, first because they were not accepted as priests (many women leaving church because of that), then because they were accepted (some fundies leaving), gay marriage issue brought lately a larger wave of people resigning from church. Atheism as a movement is imported from other countries and the waves from the situation in US are hitting also other shores, but gladly with much less force.

I left the church when I was fifteen, at first legal opportunity. At some point of my life I became interested in local pagan traditions and their revival, lost active interest also in those.

[Humanist_Activist]

10. I do wonder what the affect is on the secularization of society when...

a state church is present and yet freedom of religion and thought is also traditional. Would you say it has a greater secularization affect on society(not necessarily government) or less?

[tama]

13. Good question

Perhaps greater. The state church has to keep up with the times and general sentiments of the population, so it has become relatively liberal and secularized church. We have actually two state churches, the "main" Protestant and the small Greek Orthodox. Christians seeking deeper religious meanings and experiences often go to the orthodox mysteries or small evangelical sects and movements.

Ordinary people do often question their priests on official church doctrines, critical and open discussions happen all the time, the church has not a position of a great authority.

[Nay]

11. Not at all. My friend from Holland says over half of Dutch have no

religion and pay very little attention to it. I was in Australia years ago and it was pretty much the same there.

[SwissTony]

14. I'm an Australian living in Holland

and I'd agree with your statements on both countries. Australia's current Prime Minister is an atheist but aspect of her is considered to be of zero importance.

The trouble with asking questions like "What religion are you?" is that who never go to church or pray or act in any way religious, may answer "Christian" (or something else). They may genuinely have faith, but in terms of practical significance...not so much.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

12. My relatives in Norway appear indifferent

but they have their children baptized and get married in church, and the people who died since our last visit are all buried in the churchyard nearest the family's ancestral home.

It's as if they use the church for life's passages but not much more.

[rrneck]

16. Well, it's certainly more entertaining. nt