What’s the Most Godless Place on Earth?

Hmm, it’s not fair they broke Germany down, but kept Great Britian as one entity. I could of sworn that Scotland may have them beat. Something like four of the seven million ethnic scots atheist, agnostic, or not-religious – or so I was told last I went there. Could be wrong though. Anyone with a census about?

East Germany is something of a special case in that it used to be a truly separate country until a little over 20 years ago. One with a completely different ideology. Communist East Germany wasn’t entirely atheistic, but religion was pushed back by the state there. Just as in other communist countries, they replaced some religious rites with secular ones, designed to inspire allegiance to the government.

That legacy remains. If people are religious, they are Protestants. The Catholic Church is almost irrelevant there (in Germany the Protestant/Catholic division depends highly on the geographical area).

But what’s most interesting is that the church wasn’t able to reestablish its hold there like in some other eastern European countries. The youngest generation has remained atheistic.

For once I’m happy to be from East Germany 😀

I seem to recall that UK godlessness has Wales at the top of the table, then Scotland, then England then N Ireland.

I thought I saw Canada in there in another report, but I think my memory was hampered by 
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/05/13/the-correlation-between-religiosity-and-well-being-among-u-s-states/

I don’t believe these numbers, I think the number of godless people in Norway and Sweden is much higher. 

My very 1st encounter with an east German atheist of my age was in vocational school in a mandatory(!) religion class.
And what I have to say? Well, he asked me only one question “Why?” and I was speechless as I honestly never thought about what I was only repeating like a parrot back than (I was 17).
And now, around 15 years later, I’m one of the West Germany Atheists ;).

The thing is, even the people who do believe in God in Germany don’t make a deal about it at all and are very “liberal” – I know lots of Christians, and they don’t believe in hell and are of the “personal relationship with god” variety. They have no problem accepting all other religions as equally true, something I can’t understand today, although I believed that for some time too.
 My whole family knows I am an atheist, and nobody cares. My now retired uncle was the minister of the biggest church in Berlin and I have heard him talk about religion… once? Twice?

That probably has to do with the diffuse state of religion in Japan. Many are religious in some way, but don’t identify themselves with a particular religion. Many of their traditions are cobbled together from different Asian belief systems. Also forms of ancestor worship in the Shinto and Buddhist tradition is more common than worship of deities.

The report notes:

“The ISSP Religion studies covered 18 countries in 1991 (counting East and West Germany and Northern Ireland and Great Britain separately), 33 countries in 1998, and 42 countries in 2008. This paper analysis the 30 countries that were in at least two of the three ISSP rounds and appear in the 1991–‐2008 merged ISSP Religion file created by GESIS. ”

Which means many countries -Greenland, Canada- were completely excluded.

Maybe a question based on a Twain quote would help. Do you believe the mind can stay sober when the body is drunk? Which could lead to do the question can the mind stay awake when the body stops breathing?

Looking at the countries at the top of the list, all either allow same-sex marriage or partnerships except Latvia.

So I guess the conclusion from all of this is that we should be more like the former communist East Germany and that we should be indoctrinated from a very young age that God does not exist and that we should worship the state. Sorry for the sarcasm but are you really pointing to the former East Germany as the model?

But, but, but, how will children learn about the controversy?  I mean, it’s ONLY a theory!

If someone sees religion as simply a relationship with God and they aren’t too concerned about doctrine then I can see how they wouldn’t have a problem seeing all religions as equally true. That makes far more sense than the idea of one correct religion.

Trick question!  There’s no god, so the entire Earth is equally godless.

 Nope, it simply shows the fragility of religion. It implies that belief in god is neither innate nor natural

Unfortunately, East Germany is also the place where extreme right-wing / (borderline?) neo-Nazi parties get relatively high number of votes in elections (especially noticable in city and state elections)…

I’m also a bit surprised that West Germany has such a low percentage in “I don’t believe in God”; that doesn’t match my experience. However, that might just be my bias being a 20-something student and mostly interacting with that circle.

 Atheists have raised atheists for over 70 years so the fact fifty percent of the population believes is really remarkable.   It is not a reflection on religion as much as it is a reflection of the lack of religious freedom.

Still curious how Communist ideology had such an effect on East Germany, but not other Soviet Bloc nations.

I’m a bit hazy on the details, but as I understand the history, the Catholic and Orthodox churches of most of Eastern Europe were fairly heavily repressed and persecuted, especially during the Stalin era.

Things were different in East Germany.  In 1949, the area was 90% Lutheran. The East German Lutheran Church started off resisting the government’s attempts to crack down on citizens and enforce atheism (Wikipedia reports the founding of university chairs to study “scientific atheism”, which is kind of spooky when you consider today’s New Atheist rhetoric), but eventually realised the DDR was here to stay, so they had to negotiate with the government. They eventually adopted a neutral stance, adopting some communist ideals (which makes sense since Jesus was a hippie) and even “conditional loyalty”, but reserved the right to speak out against the government if necessary.

That’s where my vague knowledge ends, but on a personal note, I can see how this could be interpreted by some church members as a form of ersatz collusion from an institution which is supposed to be on the side of the downtrodden. Those who bought into the communist propaganda would of course be anti-religion, and those who didn’t would be rightly angry at the church for failing in its duty.

 I noticed that too…. Israel is the ONLY place where the older generation is LESS likely to believe in god… presumably they remember the Holocaust and question how their god could let that happen to his chosen people.
Reminds me of that movie where the Jews in the concentration camp put Yahweh on trial.

Quite surprised England ranked so high in terms of believers, but I believe it has something to do with the wording – “they have never believed in the existence of a god”.
I’m sure many of us at one point, as kids, believed in a god; we’re exposed to the idea of him from a dangerously early age and it’s not like any of us can say we never believed in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy because our parents told us.Plus I reckon there’s an aspect of people claiming by birthright that they are, for example, Roman Catholic as is the custom – my parents, for one, do that despite not really believing in anything.

When pushed, most Brits will just say they don’t really care either way.

Anyway, just my $0.02.

Your first sentence seems to imply causality, otherwise why bring it up in this context?

There is something seriously wrong with this report. Compare Table 1 and Table 2 in the report in the link. In Table one we have “% that does not beleive in god”, while in Table 2 we have “% don’t believe in god and never have”. The percentages in Table 2 is in almost all cases HIGHER than in Table 1, for some countries, much higher. How can this possibly make sense?? The people that have never believed in god are many more than those who do not believe in god right now? After seeing this, nobody should give any credence to anything here.

Btw, in a more reliable report recently, Estonia won the price as most godless country, closely followed by Sweden.

Let’s hope it’s a good result. There was quite a lot of campaigning on our side. I certainly convinced a couple of my friends not to tick the X’tian box.