Wednesday, February 1, 2023

Fading Faith

Power Line's Steven Hayward posts a chart or two every day, showing in pictorial form some set of statistics that might be of interest. Today's charts deal with the prevalence (or lack thereof) of religion in the daily lives of people in the U.K. and Europe. In large parts of the U.K. nearly half the population identifies as "atheist or non-religious." 

The chart asking about belief in hell - as a proxy for religious belief - lacks reports for Kosovo, Ireland, Moldova and Belgium. Fewer than one in five believe in hell in Scandinavia, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Czechia. 

Few of Europe's other supposedly Christian countries have a lot of belief in hell, except Poland and Romania. Muslim countries Turkey and Bosnia/Herzegovina have lots of such belief while Muslim Albania has about the same amount as France - roughly 1 believer in 4.