7 ms·

Least Religious Countries 2021

48 points by ToFab123 5y ago

axaxs 5y ago
I find this really interesting...but can we talk about that opening map? It's something I'm seeing a lot of more recently and wondering if I'm broken or the people making them are. I don't think of myself as colorblind, but I only see 'red and purple' on the map. Why did they use tiny variations of those two colors to cover 10 different categories? Or can some people clearly differentiate the shades easily?
- SamBam 5y ago
  One of my most standard criticisms. It's like people don't spend any time at all researching dataviz color scales. A quick Google search will bring you to Viridis. Use that or one of the many similar versions in other hues. Also: the title of the chart is "Least Religious Countries", but the chart is colored so that the top of the scale is "100% Importance of Religion in Daily Life," i.e. the most religious.
- t0mmyb0y 5y ago
  Yeah the colors are a horrible choice made by a person that doesn't understand color. I have been seeing this since color graphics on computer screens. There are so many differences between their settings and how the screen was built and yours. Colors are very different when light comes through vs when they are opaque, like on a piece of paper. To me this type of thing is the same as all the sites that don't work correctly because nobody uses the same setup as the person that built the site. As for the article, I thought it was as useless as the map.
ianai 5y ago
Those colors are horrible to me. I’ve got no idea what any country is outside of either redish or purpleish. At least label a few hard to distinguish choices with a numerical value.
- z5h 5y ago
  I fully agree. And I’ve done those silly “arrange these similar colors” challenges and got pretty good scores. So I’m not sure who this is for.
  - ianai 5y ago
    I doubt this is what they’re doing, but vagueness can definitely be used for political or personal aims.
    - leephillips 5y ago
      The palette is so terrible that I wouldn’t rule out deliberate obfuscation; maybe not on the part of the authors, but perhaps on the part of someone else involved.
sat3492 5y ago
There is a strong correlation b/w science and non-reglious countries. The case of saudi arabia is interesting. Although it is wealthy the country does not have the capability to manufacture.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Why would they bother though? All they have to do is pump oil and buy whatever they want with the proceeds :) It's one resource that only becomes more valuable (even after we move to 100% green energy oil is still used for production of plastics etc).
- liberalbias998 5y ago
  If that correlation existed no one would need to worry about middle eastern WMDs. In the UK we have a welfare state to meet some basic needs; entertainment, sport and consumerism to distract us from existential concerns, the rule of law to provide justice in this life, and education to teach us through comparison that all religions can not possibly be true, by implication none of them are. In other countries where daily life is grindingly miserable and short; more people might place their hope in a future life and hope for some kind of eventual justice.
cs702 5y ago
Here are the 10 countries/territories in which religion is least "important in daily life" according to the OP: Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, Norway, Czech Republic, Japan, Hong Kong, United Kingdom, Finland, France. Here are the 10 countries/territories in which religion is most "important in daily life" according to the OP: Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Niger, Somalia, Indonesia, Yemen, Sri Lanka, Malawi, Burundi, Mauritania. Interesting: The least religious countries/territories have more economic, social, and political stability and are far wealthier and more technologically/scientifically advanced than the most religious ones. If I had to randomly choose a country in which I would be forced to live, I would rather it be in the top-10-least-religious group than the in the other (top-10-most-religious) group.
- mgh2 5y ago
  This trend, while generally true, has been examined through multiple sources and variables to find out what makes a country prosperous- the US is an exception though https://m-g-h.medium.com/in-data-we-trust-2978dacc8c22 https://m-g-h.medium.com/in-data-we-trust-2978dacc8c22
  - tlogan 5y ago
    I think there is one more factor. Due to polarized state of our politics religion is used as “rally flag” or a way to show “family values”. On both sides.
    - ben_palaskas 5y ago
      Is it though? I am a christian in the US and have only met other christians at religious functions save for two or three occasions, where as everyone else I meet is not christian and probably not religious.
  - chmod775 5y ago
    > the US is an exception though I would say people in the US just really like to profess to being Christian, even though they act the part in no way, shape, or form. Both country and people. It's more of a cultural 'thing' than actual belief or practice. The dichotomy of word and action is striking. Like watching someone claim to be a firefighter, attend training and seminars, then commit arson and not do any, you know, firefighting.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
GekkePrutser 5y ago
There's one huge gap there which is China, they don't have any data there. If you click on it in their world map it shows NaN%. Considering their enormous population it matters a lot on the world as a whole.
- brabel 5y ago
  If you read the article, one of the first sentences has this to say about China: _When analyzing the WIN/Gallup International polls' data, China is the least religious country. Less than 10% of residents stated that they feel religious in this nation, and over 60% are "convinced atheists." _
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    Yeah I saw they mentioned it a few times, I'm just surprised they left it out of their own comparions. Because I would indeed imagine it's the least religous overall. Of course in China a lot of religion is hidden because it's unwanted by the CCP. It was the same in Russia during Soviet rule but you can see the opposite happening now (very strict adherence to religious and traditional morals).
- aww_dang 5y ago
  If you think critically about the role of religion, especially in the context of organizing a society around shared ideals, it isn't hard to see how this conclusion was reached. Include the cult of the expert, scientism, technocracy or politics as an all encompassing belief system. I'd wager that you'll find that many of these non-religious regions are highly devout. Consider the tolerance or lack thereof in some of these examples. https://observers.france24.com/en/20190626-china-tibet-portraits-xi-jinping-dalai-lama https://observers.france24.com/en/20190626-china-tibet-portr... https://bitterwinter.org/xi-jinping-portraits-replace-catholic-symbols/ https://bitterwinter.org/xi-jinping-portraits-replace-cathol... https://mosemaryandme.com/products/anthony-fauci-devotional-prayer-saint-candle https://mosemaryandme.com/products/anthony-fauci-devotional-... https://hyperallergic.com/554171/anthony-fauci/ https://hyperallergic.com/554171/anthony-fauci/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juche#Religious_features_of_Juche https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juche#Religious_features_of_Ju... https://www.npr.org/2021/01/28/961507953/without-their-messiah-qanon-believers-confront-a-post-trump-world https://www.npr.org/2021/01/28/961507953/without-their-messi... >This fact seems to place the person committed to scientism in a cognitive predicament much like that of the religious believer, i.e., deeply committed to the eventual revelation of a mystery, a truth that from our current circumstances is in principle unknowable. For scientism, this truth is the belief that we will one day be able to offer an exhaustive inventory of reality in purely natural terms. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/17390/1/%5E%20Final_Religion%20and%20Scientism%202.0.pdf http://repository.essex.ac.uk/17390/1/%5E%20Final_Religion%2...
mrfusion 5y ago
I’d be curious how they define religion. I consider politics a religion these days.
- ben_palaskas 5y ago
  That is weird because it doesn't offer salvation or answers for questions of existence or purpose or cosmology
  - diego_moita 5y ago
    Read "Sapiens", by Yuval Harari. He extensively discusses that.
  - mistermann 5y ago
    In the US, politics (Democracy) seems to be widely considered a "sacred institution", literally. If you observe how people talk about it in forums, this seems very true to me.
rocknor 5y ago
So many central and west Asian countries less or equally religious to India? Yeah that doesn't make sense.
chmod600 5y ago
Can someone provide context on what it means for Israel to be on this list? I generally think of Israel as being defined by religion. It's in the "holy land", and it seems like almost every news article about Israel includes something about a religion.
- mathewsanders 5y ago
  A small group of friends are doing a book club on I/P and I asked a couple of them who’ve been to Israel on birthright trips if they felt the population was religious or not. Their anecdotal perspective was that there is a large group (maybe majority) who are not religious. Seeing my home country (New Zealand) rank higher in how important religion is I’m wondering how people are interpreting religious. I’m thinking of friends and family in NZ who (outside of some weddings or funerals) never go to church or (I assume) pray or have a strong personal spiritual life. But these same people would classify themselves as ‘Christians’ simply because they put up a Christmas tree each year. The same applies to all my Jewish friends I can think of, except that maybe a dinner with friends on a religious day that is more a reason to socialize than for any religious purpose.
- orisho 5y ago
  Many Israelis identify as being Jewish or Muslim, but for many of them it's a cultural identity or tradition far more than a religion.
  - throw0101a 5y ago
    > Many Israelis identify as being Jewish or Muslim, but for many of them it's a cultural identity or tradition far more than a religion. Which is funny because a "cultural identity" is what being 'religious' meant in the past. Religion as a set of practices and beliefs that are 'separate' from everyday life would be quite alien to people in the ancient world, and for most of human history. Having religious and secular/public spheres of life is actually a quite Christian, and especially Protestant, way of view the world. Tom Holland had a good talk on this: > Books that take for granted the existence of Greek or Roman religion are everywhere. But did ‘religion’ as we understand the word today actually exist in the ancient world, or is it a word so freighted with Christian - and specifically Protestant - assumptions that to apply it to antiquity is to risk anachronism? * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeCTC_r4vMI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeCTC_r4vMI The separation of Church and State makes little sense in the eyes of most worldviews through history. There's a reason why the word "church" is used and not temple or mosque.
digbybk 5y ago
People often point out how the US is an outlier in religiosity as a western, wealthy nation, but I've always wondered how it would break down if you corrected for its diversity. For example, there are a lot of first and second generation Italian immigrants in the US, how does that population compare to Italy? There are a lot of Mexican immigrants, how does that population compare to Mexico? The older groups from protestant countries, how do they compare to Germany or the UK, and so on.
leephillips 5y ago
This oft-cited paper¹ shows that almost all measures of societal health are negatively correlated with religiosity, across the world. Of course that doesn’t prove that faith causes such things as teenage pregnancy, crime, and drug abuse, but it’s provocative. [1] http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.pdf http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.pdf
- diego_moita 5y ago
  You can infer the same from the map provided by the link, right? The map clearly shows that the most religious regions are precisely the most dysfunctional: Africa, Latin America and Southern Asia. > doesn’t prove that faith causes such things as teenage pregnancy, crime, and drug abuse, but it’s provocative. As a Latin American I suspect it is the other way around: a society that doesn't solve problems makes people despaired for any solution, even the ones that don't solve anything, like religion. Whe you can't get a remedy then at least you want a placebo.
  - mistermann 5y ago
    > even the ones that don't solve anything, like religion Is this a fact supported by peer reviewed science?
gonzo41 5y ago
So, just for some added context. religion fell of the map in Australia about 5-7 years ago when there was a Royal Commission called into Institutional responses to child sexual abuse. For a few years there you'd hear some really shocking stuff on the radio about terrible events happening to kids at the hands of those in power in the churches. The Australian 2011 census has recorded pretty high engagement with religion, and after that 2016 there was a 10% decrease in direct reporting of affiliation.
throwaway2939 5y ago
Looking forward to a world free of religion, it can't come soon enough.
ykevinator3 5y ago
It amazes me how there are still believers. People like being drunk and can suppress reality if there is mob comfort in it.

48 points by ToFab123 5y ago

I find this really interesting...but can we talk about that opening map? It's something I'm seeing a lot of more recently and wondering if I'm broken or the people making them are. I don't think of myself as colorblind, but I only see 'red and purple' on the map. Why did they use tiny variations of those two colors to cover 10 different categories? Or can some people clearly differentiate the shades easily?

SamBam 5y ago
One of my most standard criticisms. It's like people don't spend any time at all researching dataviz color scales. A quick Google search will bring you to Viridis. Use that or one of the many similar versions in other hues. Also: the title of the chart is "Least Religious Countries", but the chart is colored so that the top of the scale is "100% Importance of Religion in Daily Life," i.e. the most religious.
t0mmyb0y 5y ago
Yeah the colors are a horrible choice made by a person that doesn't understand color. I have been seeing this since color graphics on computer screens. There are so many differences between their settings and how the screen was built and yours. Colors are very different when light comes through vs when they are opaque, like on a piece of paper. To me this type of thing is the same as all the sites that don't work correctly because nobody uses the same setup as the person that built the site. As for the article, I thought it was as useless as the map.

ianai 5y ago

Those colors are horrible to me. I’ve got no idea what any country is outside of either redish or purpleish. At least label a few hard to distinguish choices with a numerical value.

z5h 5y ago
I fully agree. And I’ve done those silly “arrange these similar colors” challenges and got pretty good scores. So I’m not sure who this is for.
- ianai 5y ago
  I doubt this is what they’re doing, but vagueness can definitely be used for political or personal aims.
  - leephillips 5y ago
    The palette is so terrible that I wouldn’t rule out deliberate obfuscation; maybe not on the part of the authors, but perhaps on the part of someone else involved.

sat3492 5y ago

There is a strong correlation b/w science and non-reglious countries. The case of saudi arabia is interesting. Although it is wealthy the country does not have the capability to manufacture.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
Why would they bother though? All they have to do is pump oil and buy whatever they want with the proceeds :) It's one resource that only becomes more valuable (even after we move to 100% green energy oil is still used for production of plastics etc).
liberalbias998 5y ago
If that correlation existed no one would need to worry about middle eastern WMDs. In the UK we have a welfare state to meet some basic needs; entertainment, sport and consumerism to distract us from existential concerns, the rule of law to provide justice in this life, and education to teach us through comparison that all religions can not possibly be true, by implication none of them are. In other countries where daily life is grindingly miserable and short; more people might place their hope in a future life and hope for some kind of eventual justice.

cs702 5y ago

Here are the 10 countries/territories in which religion is least "important in daily life" according to the OP: Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, Norway, Czech Republic, Japan, Hong Kong, United Kingdom, Finland, France. Here are the 10 countries/territories in which religion is most "important in daily life" according to the OP: Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Niger, Somalia, Indonesia, Yemen, Sri Lanka, Malawi, Burundi, Mauritania. Interesting: The least religious countries/territories have more economic, social, and political stability and are far wealthier and more technologically/scientifically advanced than the most religious ones. If I had to randomly choose a country in which I would be forced to live, I would rather it be in the top-10-least-religious group than the in the other (top-10-most-religious) group.

mgh2 5y ago
This trend, while generally true, has been examined through multiple sources and variables to find out what makes a country prosperous- the US is an exception though https://m-g-h.medium.com/in-data-we-trust-2978dacc8c22 https://m-g-h.medium.com/in-data-we-trust-2978dacc8c22
- tlogan 5y ago
  I think there is one more factor. Due to polarized state of our politics religion is used as “rally flag” or a way to show “family values”. On both sides.
  - ben_palaskas 5y ago
    Is it though? I am a christian in the US and have only met other christians at religious functions save for two or three occasions, where as everyone else I meet is not christian and probably not religious.
- chmod775 5y ago
  > the US is an exception though I would say people in the US just really like to profess to being Christian, even though they act the part in no way, shape, or form. Both country and people. It's more of a cultural 'thing' than actual belief or practice. The dichotomy of word and action is striking. Like watching someone claim to be a firefighter, attend training and seminars, then commit arson and not do any, you know, firefighting.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

GekkePrutser 5y ago

There's one huge gap there which is China, they don't have any data there. If you click on it in their world map it shows NaN%. Considering their enormous population it matters a lot on the world as a whole.

brabel 5y ago
If you read the article, one of the first sentences has this to say about China: _When analyzing the WIN/Gallup International polls' data, China is the least religious country. Less than 10% of residents stated that they feel religious in this nation, and over 60% are "convinced atheists." _
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Yeah I saw they mentioned it a few times, I'm just surprised they left it out of their own comparions. Because I would indeed imagine it's the least religous overall. Of course in China a lot of religion is hidden because it's unwanted by the CCP. It was the same in Russia during Soviet rule but you can see the opposite happening now (very strict adherence to religious and traditional morals).
aww_dang 5y ago
If you think critically about the role of religion, especially in the context of organizing a society around shared ideals, it isn't hard to see how this conclusion was reached. Include the cult of the expert, scientism, technocracy or politics as an all encompassing belief system. I'd wager that you'll find that many of these non-religious regions are highly devout. Consider the tolerance or lack thereof in some of these examples. https://observers.france24.com/en/20190626-china-tibet-portraits-xi-jinping-dalai-lama https://observers.france24.com/en/20190626-china-tibet-portr... https://bitterwinter.org/xi-jinping-portraits-replace-catholic-symbols/ https://bitterwinter.org/xi-jinping-portraits-replace-cathol... https://mosemaryandme.com/products/anthony-fauci-devotional-prayer-saint-candle https://mosemaryandme.com/products/anthony-fauci-devotional-... https://hyperallergic.com/554171/anthony-fauci/ https://hyperallergic.com/554171/anthony-fauci/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juche#Religious_features_of_Juche https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juche#Religious_features_of_Ju... https://www.npr.org/2021/01/28/961507953/without-their-messiah-qanon-believers-confront-a-post-trump-world https://www.npr.org/2021/01/28/961507953/without-their-messi... >This fact seems to place the person committed to scientism in a cognitive predicament much like that of the religious believer, i.e., deeply committed to the eventual revelation of a mystery, a truth that from our current circumstances is in principle unknowable. For scientism, this truth is the belief that we will one day be able to offer an exhaustive inventory of reality in purely natural terms. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/17390/1/%5E%20Final_Religion%20and%20Scientism%202.0.pdf http://repository.essex.ac.uk/17390/1/%5E%20Final_Religion%2...

mrfusion 5y ago

I’d be curious how they define religion. I consider politics a religion these days.

ben_palaskas 5y ago
That is weird because it doesn't offer salvation or answers for questions of existence or purpose or cosmology
- diego_moita 5y ago
  Read "Sapiens", by Yuval Harari. He extensively discusses that.
- mistermann 5y ago
  In the US, politics (Democracy) seems to be widely considered a "sacred institution", literally. If you observe how people talk about it in forums, this seems very true to me.

rocknor 5y ago

So many central and west Asian countries less or equally religious to India? Yeah that doesn't make sense.

chmod600 5y ago

Can someone provide context on what it means for Israel to be on this list? I generally think of Israel as being defined by religion. It's in the "holy land", and it seems like almost every news article about Israel includes something about a religion.

mathewsanders 5y ago
A small group of friends are doing a book club on I/P and I asked a couple of them who’ve been to Israel on birthright trips if they felt the population was religious or not. Their anecdotal perspective was that there is a large group (maybe majority) who are not religious. Seeing my home country (New Zealand) rank higher in how important religion is I’m wondering how people are interpreting religious. I’m thinking of friends and family in NZ who (outside of some weddings or funerals) never go to church or (I assume) pray or have a strong personal spiritual life. But these same people would classify themselves as ‘Christians’ simply because they put up a Christmas tree each year. The same applies to all my Jewish friends I can think of, except that maybe a dinner with friends on a religious day that is more a reason to socialize than for any religious purpose.
orisho 5y ago
Many Israelis identify as being Jewish or Muslim, but for many of them it's a cultural identity or tradition far more than a religion.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  > Many Israelis identify as being Jewish or Muslim, but for many of them it's a cultural identity or tradition far more than a religion. Which is funny because a "cultural identity" is what being 'religious' meant in the past. Religion as a set of practices and beliefs that are 'separate' from everyday life would be quite alien to people in the ancient world, and for most of human history. Having religious and secular/public spheres of life is actually a quite Christian, and especially Protestant, way of view the world. Tom Holland had a good talk on this: > Books that take for granted the existence of Greek or Roman religion are everywhere. But did ‘religion’ as we understand the word today actually exist in the ancient world, or is it a word so freighted with Christian - and specifically Protestant - assumptions that to apply it to antiquity is to risk anachronism? * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeCTC_r4vMI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeCTC_r4vMI The separation of Church and State makes little sense in the eyes of most worldviews through history. There's a reason why the word "church" is used and not temple or mosque.

digbybk 5y ago

People often point out how the US is an outlier in religiosity as a western, wealthy nation, but I've always wondered how it would break down if you corrected for its diversity. For example, there are a lot of first and second generation Italian immigrants in the US, how does that population compare to Italy? There are a lot of Mexican immigrants, how does that population compare to Mexico? The older groups from protestant countries, how do they compare to Germany or the UK, and so on.

leephillips 5y ago

This oft-cited paper¹ shows that almost all measures of societal health are negatively correlated with religiosity, across the world. Of course that doesn’t prove that faith causes such things as teenage pregnancy, crime, and drug abuse, but it’s provocative. [1] http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.pdf http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.pdf

diego_moita 5y ago
You can infer the same from the map provided by the link, right? The map clearly shows that the most religious regions are precisely the most dysfunctional: Africa, Latin America and Southern Asia. > doesn’t prove that faith causes such things as teenage pregnancy, crime, and drug abuse, but it’s provocative. As a Latin American I suspect it is the other way around: a society that doesn't solve problems makes people despaired for any solution, even the ones that don't solve anything, like religion. Whe you can't get a remedy then at least you want a placebo.
- mistermann 5y ago
  > even the ones that don't solve anything, like religion Is this a fact supported by peer reviewed science?

gonzo41 5y ago

So, just for some added context. religion fell of the map in Australia about 5-7 years ago when there was a Royal Commission called into Institutional responses to child sexual abuse. For a few years there you'd hear some really shocking stuff on the radio about terrible events happening to kids at the hands of those in power in the churches. The Australian 2011 census has recorded pretty high engagement with religion, and after that 2016 there was a 10% decrease in direct reporting of affiliation.

throwaway2939 5y ago

Looking forward to a world free of religion, it can't come soon enough.

ykevinator3 5y ago

It amazes me how there are still believers. People like being drunk and can suppress reality if there is mob comfort in it.