Atheist societies?

Julian Sanchez has a post up, A “God-Shaped-Hole” Shaped Hole. He notes:

Which brings us around to the core problem with Stuttaford’s claim. As James Joyner observes, it’s a little doubtful whether the need to worship deities can really be an ineradicable, hardwired human trait when polls show that in much of Western Europe, the proportion of the population describing itself as atheist or agnostic approaches or exceeds the 50 percent mark.

This is a common perception, but I’m pretty sure it is also wrong. Sam Harris has described Sweden as an atheist society, while an American sociologist has written of Denmark as a society without God. I think the issue here is that the relative reference frame of the United States distorts the perceptions of American thinkers (combined with the sort of Europeans that they might meet at conferences or at the jobs expats land in abroad). Yes, the proportion of atheists in Scandinavia is on the order of 1 magnitude greater than the United States, but at less than 5% of the population in the United States that is still less than 50% of the population. Below the fold I’ve put data I gathered from The World Values (limiting to surveys performed from 1995 onward, because of the reality that East European nations exhibited a spike in God belief after the fall of Communism), the Eurobarometer 2005 and a BBC sponsored survey.

< td align="LEFT">Taiwan

	World Values Survey	Eurobarometer			BBC Survey
	Believe in God	Personal God	Life Force, Spirit	No God or Spirit or Life Force	No belief in God
Vietnam	18.8
Czech	40.3	19	50	30
Estonia	51.6	16	54	26
Germany	52.4	47	25	25
Sweden	54.7	23	53	23
Japan	54.9
Netherlands	59.6	34	37	27
France	61.5	34	27	33
Slovenia	64.8	37	46	16
Bulgaria	66.7
Hungary	67.4	44	31	19
Norway	68.8	32	47	17
Denmark	68.9	31	49	19
Russia	69.5				14
Great Britain	71.8	38	40	20	21
Belgium	73.1	43	29	27
Luxembourg	73.2	44	28	22
Latvia	76.2	37	49	10
76.4
Serbia	77
Ukraine	77.7
New Zealand	79.3
Belarus	79.4
Australia	81.8
Finland	82	41	41	16
Slovakia	82.2	61	26	11
Switzerland	83.1	48	39	9
Iceland	84.4	38	48	11
Armenia	85.6
Austria	86.3	54	34
Lithuania	86.3	49	36	12
Bosnia	86.6
Croatia	86.6	67	25	7
Uruguay	86.7
Spain	86.9	59	21	18
Singapore	87.1
Macedonia	87.4
Canada	89.3
Greece	91	81	16	3
Dominican Republic	92.7
Albania	92.7
Georgia	93.2
Northern Ireland	93.2
Argentina	93.4
Moldova	93.4
Italy	93.5	74	16	6
India	94.6				0
Kyrgyzstan	95
Mexico	95.4				5
Ireland	95.7	73	22	4
United States	95.9				5
Portugal	96.3	81	12	6
Romania	96.6	90	8	1
Poland	97.3	80	15	1
Chile	97.5
Azerbaijan	97.8
Turkey	98	95	2	1
Peru	98.3
South Africa	98.9
Bangladesh	99
Venezuela	99.1
Columbia	99.1
Brazil	99.1
Tanzania	99.3
Puerto Rico	99.3
Zimbabwe	99.4
Uganda	99.4
El Salvador	99.4
Iran	99.4
Malta	99.5	95	3	1
Nigeria	99.5				0
Philippines	99.6
Iraq	99.8
Algeria	99.8
Jordan	99.8
Indonesia	99.9				0
Saudi Arabia	99.9
Pakistan	100
Egypt	100
Morocco	100
South Korea					12
Lebanon					1
Israel					9

I’m pretty sure that the WVS result for Germany is screwed up by some problems with how they weighted the “East German” and “West German” results. There are also certainly some issues with how the question was worded (most surveys show fewer self-described atheists than those who agree with an atheist position in relation to God), as well as the problem of representativeness (it looks to me that for Third World countries like India the WVS is skewed toward a higher SES judging by the levels of education). But you get the picture. Europe and East Asia, unlike the United States, South Asia, Middle East, Africa and Latin America, have a great number of “unaffiliated theists.” This shouldn’t be too surprising to Americans, the proportion of atheists & agnostics among those with “No Religion” has remained constant for a generation from what I know, at around 25%.

Update: Because of questions in the comments I thought I would add the “fifth wave” WVS results from 2005-2008, which had a question which allowed people to sort themselves into “religious person,” “not a religious person” and “atheist.” Since people tend to avoid the term atheist this is a lowballing of the proportion who don’t believe in God. But, because of cross-cultural differences in what it means to be a “religious person,” that proportion might also be somewhat deceptive and an underestimate of those who are somehow affiliated with a religious denomination.

	Religious Person	Not Religious Person	Convinced Atheist
South Korea	30.1	41.3	28.6
Vietnam	39.2	37.3	23.6
Germany	42.9	38	19.2
China	21.8	60.3	17.9
Sweden	33.4	49.3	17.3
France	46.9	36	17.1
Taiwan	40.3	42.9	16.8
Andorra	48.1	37.6	14.2
Japan	24.2	62.1	13.7
Great Britain	48.7	40.9	10.4
Australia	52.1	38	9.9
Slovenia	72.6	17.6	9.8
Switzerland	64.8	27.3	7.9
Netherlands	59.9	35.6	7.5
Spain	45.6	47	7.4
New Zealand	49.8	43.3	7
Hong Kong	27.3	67.4	5.4
Bulgaria	63.6	31.2	5.3
Russia	73.6	22	4.4
Serbia	85.5	10.6	4
USA	72.1	24.4	3.6
Chile	64.7	32	3.2
Finland	60.1	36.8	3.1
Ukraine	80.7	16.3	3
Mexico	75.4	21.7	2.9
Italy	88	9.3	2.7
Iraq	54.7	42.6	2.7
India	77.9	19.5	2.5
Malaysia	89.1	8.6	2.3
Argentina	81.2	16.6	2.3
Cyprus	61.6	36.3	2.1
Burkina Faso	91.6	6.9	1.6
Peru	82	16.6	1.4
Poland	94.6	4	1.4
South Africa	81.3	17.5	1.2
Brazil	88	10.8	1.2
Moldova	84.1	15	1
Romania	93.4	6	0.6
Zambia	89.5	9.9	0.5
Ghana	91.5	8	0.5
Colombia	80	19.5	0.5
Trinidad & Tobago	84.1	15.5	0.5
Turkey	82.6	16.9	0.5
Mali	97.6	2	0.4
Ethiopia	81.1	18.5	0.4
Georgia	96.6	3.1	0.3
Indonesia	84.6	15.2	0.3
Thailand	35.5	64.3	0.2
Jordan	92.2	7.7	0.1
Iran	83.7	16.2	0.1
Rwanda	94.2	5.7	0.1
Morocco	91.8	8.2	0