Aug 12
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Religion is not disappearing around the world
ChristianGovernance eletter – August 9, 2012
It’s rather annoying to see silly headlines like “Religion in retreat, global poll suggests” in today’s papers. The Reuters story begins: “Traditionally Catholic Ireland has registered almost the steepest drop worldwide in people calling themselves religious in a new survey tracking international trends in faith and atheism in recent years.”
Those of you who understand Biblical worldview know that every person is always religious. Religion is inescapable. But you also know that the conventional definitions exclude humanistic and atheistic belief systems from the definition of religious. These definitions are also based on a model which pits “religion” against “science” and faith against reason.
Despite the erroneous terminology in the poll, the results are of interest. For example: “The countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96%), Nigeria (93%) and Macedonia (90%). The most convinced atheists were found in Japan (31%), Czech Republic (30%) and France (29%). …
“Africa topped the list of most devout regions of the world, with 89% calling themselves religious. After that came Latin America (84%), South Asia (83%) and the Arab world (77%).
“North Asia came in the least religious at 17%, followed by East Asia at 39%. North America reported 57% religiosity, Western Europe 51% and Eastern Europe 66%.”