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Atheism is only part of the picture. Most agnostics [1] are effectively irreligious.

If you look here [2], you can see that the USA is more on the religious end of the religion curve in terms of Western countries. You can also see a trend linking uncertainty, inequality, and religiosity.

[1] https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/religious...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_irreligio...

At least for Germany that perspective is not quite right.

While most people in Germany formally belong to some Christian church or are Muslim or Jewish, in a lot of cases that does not extend past the entry on some registration form.

Look for example at [0] whose headline states: "Believe is irrelevant to majority of Germans".

[0] https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/deutschlandtrend-821.html

> A supermajority of people in every western country believe in god or higher power: https://www.pewforum.org/2018/05/29/beliefs-about-god/pf_05-...

Your link belies what you said. That survey was not in "every western country", but fifteen western countries. The Czech Republic is west of Finland (surveyed) and less than 20% of its population is religious.

Also you say from that survey people believe in God or a higher power, but it does not limit to that, they include people who believe in a spiritual force. That could be a Buddhist.

I meant to say “western Europe” so as to exclude the communist-influenced purge of religion from Eastern Europe. Also, most Americans would consider Buddhism a religion.

Curious about why you use "believe in god or some higher power" for religiosity but "identify as atheist" for lack of religiosity considering your first link has "do not believe in a higher power" as an option for non-theists.

Belief in a "higher power" could be the statistical likelihood of an alien race on the other side of the universe who have technology a little more advanced than ours.

A higher power could also be an omnipresent intelligence with no interest what so ever in human affairs.

In my opinion the whole debate should be using a terminology regarding spiritual awareness and not of religion since the latter is much more loaded with assumptions which biases the results. This way an atheist could actively be pursuing a personal spiritual program.

Certainly, but by that position, people who "do not believe in a higher power" is a subset of people who "do not believe in God" so Sweden has at least 41% non-theists then.

I certainly didn't mean to say that.

Are you saying that people who don't believe in advanced alien tech also do not believe in God? Or am I having a mental breakdown? I'm fairly sure I know what a subset is and its logical implications.

It is straightforward to prove this through mere syllogism, but perhaps the discrepancy arises because you interpret "do not believe in a higher power" as "do not believe in a singular higher power"? In English, "X does not believe in a higher power" translates to the logical statement "For any higher power H, X does not believe in H", and is equivalent to the English statement "X does not believe in any higher power".

To go from there to ((English ("X does not believe in a higher power")) logically implies (English ("X does not believe in God"))) is trivial. And that is the definition of a subset A of B: \forall x \in A, x \in B

Oh I see, you believe in the law of the excluded middle. I'm more of a constructivist myself.

Haha, an entertaining conclusion to this conversation. I enjoyed that.

I can't say that is my experience of the UK - I haven't been to a religious wedding or funeral for decades and the topic of religion never comes up in day to day conversation with anyone.

e.g.

https://humanism.org.uk/2019/08/29/more-people-opting-for-no...

Religion doesn't come up as a topic in the US either. That means very little about the religiosity of the person, it just means that people are polite because they know that religious opinions differ.

And a religious wedding or funeral just informs us about your relatives not about the UK.

Pretty common for people to have discussed with partners what for of funeral you would want - I know I have and it was clear that the last funeral I attended (of a colleague who died in a climbing accident) that he had very strong opinions about what any funeral would be like.

Same for weddings - I can't think of any wedding I have attended where it wasn't very clear that the style of the wedding was determined by the people getting married.

I think people don't generally talk about religion in the UK because it is pretty irrelevant to most of the population.

> > Paul's intention in creating the scale was to challenge the idea that religion is universal and innate to the human condition, and to show that societies that don't believe in God are not doomed, as some religious conservatives would have people believe.

> Always an excellent idea to start off a study with an attempt to prove a preconceived point.

That's highly disingenuous.

The intention as stated was to disprove a preconceived point -- viz 'societies that don't believe in God are doomed'.