Britain - the most atheistic country on earth?

[Cain]

I had heard previously that the Czech Republic was very highly atheistic as well, but this new Guardian ICM poll suggests the UK has taken the lead

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/dec/23/religion.topstories3

More people in Britain think religion causes harm than believe it does good, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published today. It shows that an overwhelming majority see religion as a cause of division and tension - greatly outnumbering the smaller majority who also believe that it can be a force for good.

The poll also reveals that non-believers outnumber believers in Britain by almost two to one. It paints a picture of a sceptical nation with massive doubts about the effect religion has on society: 82% of those questioned say they see religion as a cause of division and tension between people. Only 16% disagree. The findings are at odds with attempts by some religious leaders to define the country as one made up of many faith communities.

Most people have no personal faith, the poll shows, with only 33% of those questioned describing themselves as "a religious person". A clear majority, 63%, say that they are not religious - including more than half of those who describe themselves as Christian.

Older people and women are the most likely to believe in a god, with 37% of women saying they are religious, compared with 29% of men.

The findings come at the end of a year in which multiculturalism and the role of different faiths in society has been at the heart of a divisive political debate.

Johann Hari has a very snarky article on this as well

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-slow-whining-death-of_b_676613.html

And now congregation, put your hands together and give thanks, for I come bearing Good News. My country, Britain, is now the most irreligious country on earth. This island has shed superstition faster and more completely than anywhere else. Some 63 percent of us are non-believers, according to a 2006 Guardian/ICM poll, while 82 percent say religion is a cause of harmful division. Now, let us stand and sing our new national hymn: Jerusalem was dismantled here/ in England's green and pleasant land.

How did it happen? For centuries, religion was insulated from criticism in Britain. First its opponents were burned, then jailed, then shunned. But once there was a free marketplace of ideas, once people could finally hear both the religious arguments and the rationalist criticisms of them, the religious lost the British people. Their case was too weak, their opposition to divorce and abortion and gay people too cruel, their evidence for their claims non-existent. Once they had to rely on persuasion rather than intimidation, the story of British Christianity came to an end.

Now that only six percent of British people regularly attend a religious service, it's only natural that we should dismantle the massive amounts of tax money and state power that are automatically given to the religious to wield over the rest of us. It's a necessary process of building a secular state, where all citizens are free to make up their own minds. Yet the opposition to this sensible shift -- the separation of church and state Americans have known for centuries -- is becoming increasingly unhinged. The Church of England, bewildered by the British people choosing to leave their pews, has only one explanation: Christians are being "persecuted" and "bullied" by a movement motivated by "Christophobia." George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, says Christians are now "second class citizens" and it is only "a small step" to "a religious bar on any employment by Christians".

Really? Let's list some of the ways in which Christians, and other religious groups, are given special privileges every day in Britain. Start with the educational system. Every school in Britain is required by law to make its pupils engage every day in "an act of collective worship of a wholly or mainly Christian nature". Yes: Britain is still a nation with enforced prayer. The religious are then handed total control of 36 percent of our state-funded schools, in which to indoctrinate children into their faith alone.

These religious schools, paid for by the taxpayer, are disfiguring Britain. I know one reason I grew up without the prejudices of some of my older relatives was because I went to school with kids from every conceivable ethnic and religious group, and I could see they were just like me. A five-year-old will make friends with anyone, and he'll be much less likely to believe smears against those friends for the rest of their lives. But in Britain today, that mixing is happening less and less. Increasingly, the children of Christians are sent to one side, Jews to another, Muslims to another still, and they never see each other except from the window of their parents' cars. After the race riots in Bradford, Oldham and Burnley in 2001, the official investigations found that faith schools were a major cause.

So why keep them? Their defenders say these schools perform better in exams -- and at first glance, it seems to be true. On average, they get higher grades. But look again. A number of studies, including by the conservative think thank Civitas, have blown a hole in this claim. They have proven that faith schools systematically screen out children who will be harder to teach: children from poor families, and less bright children. Once you look at how much a school improves the pupils it actually admits, the only real measure of a school's success, it turns out faith schools do less well than other schools - which isn't surprising given they waste so much time teaching them crazy nonsense like Virgin births and Noah's Ark. The British people instinctively know all this: 64 percent want every state school to be neutral when it comes to religion.

Special rights for the religious don't stop at the school gates. They automatically get 26 unelected bishops in the House of Lords. Public broadcasters are required by law to give them large amounts of money and time to screen religious propaganda. Jews and Muslims are allowed to ignore the laws on animal cruelty and engage in the barbaric practice of slitting the throats of live animals without numbing them in order to create kosher and halal meat.

And it seems that, in crucial cases, religious figures are virtually exempted from the law. There is now overwhelming evidence that Joseph Ratzinger, the Pope, was involved for over twenty years in an international criminal conspiracy to cover up the rape of children by priests in his Church. (Check out the superb edition of the BBC's Panorama, 'Sex Crimes and the Vatican', for the evidence.) But when he arrives in Britain in September, our politicians will fawn over him, rather than dialing 999.

Given all this unearned privilege, how can Christians claim they are in fact being "persecuted"? Here are the cases they offer as "proof". A nurse called Shirley Chaplin turned up to work wearing a crucifix around her neck. Her hospital told her that they were worried the elderly and confused patients she worked with could grab at it, so they said she could pin the crucifix to her uniform instead if she liked. That's it. That's their cause celebre. Oh, and a woman called Theresa Davies who worked in a registry office, but refused to perform civil partnerships for gay couples, so... she was moved to working on reception.

In response, Carey and the CofE demand Christians be allowed to break the law requiring them to treat gay people equally when providing a service to the general public -- and that any case where a Christian feels discriminated against should be judged by a special court of "sensitive" Christians. If we started allowing religious people to break basic anti-discrimination laws, where would we stop? Until 1975, the Mormon Church said black people didn't have souls. (They only changed their mind the day the Supreme Court ruled this was illegal, and God niftily appeared to their leader that morning and announced blacks were ensouled after all.) Would we let a Mormon registrar refuse to marry black people? Would it be "Mormonophobia" to object?

When Lord Chief Justice Laws, who is a Christian himself, ruled the exemptions demanded by Carey would be "irrational, divisive, and arbitrary", he threw an extraordinary tantrum and said Christians might begin to engage in "civil unrest". When I saw Carey make these threats on television, red-faced and rageful, it made me think of a nasty child in the playground who had been beating up the gay kids and spitting at the girls for years and is finally told to stop - only to start bawling that he's the one who is being picked on.

[Pope Pixie Pickle]

I would think that this is why the Religious Right in America seems extra crazy to Brits.

I like the fact that we are the most secular nation in the world.

[Kai]

Totally did not know about the enforced prayer or the bishops in the house of lords.

[Suu]

I would think that this is why the Religious Right in America seems extra crazy to Brits.

I like the fact that we are the most secular nation in the world.

And the fact that we're the nation FOUNDED on religious freedoms and we have the biggest wackjobs next to the Taliban?   

I live in the wrong country.

[The Johnny]

I recall seeing some statistics called "Eurobarometer" and im pretty sure Britain was nowhere close to being the most atheistic.

Then again, i dont recall how crappy was their method either.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I recall seeing some statistics called "Eurobarometer" and im pretty sure Britain was nowhere close to being the most atheistic.

Then again, i dont recall how crappy was their method either.

I think the problem is in asking a vague question. It even said that half of self-identified Christians are non-religious. It doesn't mean they don't believe. It just means they don't practice. I come from a Catholic family and as far as I can tell the only ones on my mother's side who go to Mass are my grandmother and my mom. Doesn't mean the rest of my family aren't Catholic. They just don't care. Religious has also taken on a negative connotation too and may lead to bias. "Religious" people speak in tongues and pretend to cure diseases, praise Jesus, Halleluja and Amen, where as "spiritual" people are religious people who don't go crazy with it.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Side note, I had thought Sweden was the most atheistic Western nation (stats on China for comparison for world?), with the other Scandinavian countries not far behind.

[The Johnny]

China's "state religion" is atheism - but not necessarily the people's.

Sweden seems like a good bet.

[Cain]

I recall seeing some statistics called "Eurobarometer" and im pretty sure Britain was nowhere close to being the most atheistic.

Then again, i dont recall how crappy was their method either.

I think the problem is in asking a vague question. It even said that half of self-identified Christians are non-religious. It doesn't mean they don't believe. It just means they don't practice. I come from a Catholic family and as far as I can tell the only ones on my mother's side who go to Mass are my grandmother and my mom. Doesn't mean the rest of my family aren't Catholic. They just don't care. Religious has also taken on a negative connotation too and may lead to bias. "Religious" people speak in tongues and pretend to cure diseases, praise Jesus, Halleluja and Amen, where as "spiritual" people are religious people who don't go crazy with it.

For a lot of British people, especially in Ireland and Scotland, "religion" has an ethnic connotation.  Therefore someone will say they're "Catholic" when what they actually mean is their background is Irish and they have Republican sympathies.  I highly doubt in many of those cases the people involved are going to Church or have spritual beliefs related to the faith in question (although I am having a hilarious vision of a bunch of Celtic and Rangers fans being all sombre and stuff in their local churches before getting drunk as fuck and beating the shit out of each other).

[Payne]

Yup.

Also, Churches and other religious organisations have a vested interest in spinning the numbers to almost impossibly high figures. ("Oh yeah! Well I have ELEVENTY ONE BILLION FOLLOWERS!" GIMME THAT TAX BREAK!")

I have only ever seen one Celtic fan go into a Church all sombre like. He later turned from the True Path though, and is now a Hibs fan, though he still goes to Church.

[Cain]

The CoE and Catholics are especially bad for that.

[Golden Applesauce]

China's "state religion" is atheism - but not necessarily the people's.

Sweden seems like a good bet.

My experience with foreign exchange students supports this.  The rural areas still have lots of traditional religion (especially the areas where people are trying to hold on to a separate cultural identity), and a number of other people have taken to things like feng shui, tai chi, or the mysticism behind kung fu.  But by and large, the city folk aren't members of any organized religion, and indeed know very little about the major world religions.  There's still loose spirituality going around though, so a lot of people develop weird idiosyncratic beliefs mixing traditional beliefs, Buddhism, and stuff like astrology, ghosts, and UFOs.  China's state atheism seems to have done a better job reducing knowledge about religion than reducing actual religious belief, which just creates really bizarre superstitions.

But by pure numbers, Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism aren't doing badly in China, though.  The spread of Christianity is funny because it is in part fueled by state restrictions on churches - you can't have a church with more than so many members, so when the "house churches" get close to that number, they just split in two and recruit twice as many new members.

[Thurnez Isa]

Does that mean you have to change the lyrics of God Save the Queen?

[Payne]

Does that mean you have to change the lyrics of God Save the Queen?

Nope. I think most of us like the idea of nothing being there to save the queen.

[Thurnez Isa]

I don't know. I kinda like the ring of "Dawkins Save the Queen... ... please"