Does anyone know the estimated percent of athiests in the world? (sorry for spelling errors)

quote:Originally posted by Pillhead504:

Does anyone know the estimated percent of athiests in the world? (sorry for spelling errors)

I don't know the percentage, but it would be a lot lower thanks to the fall of the Soviet Union.

Why do you wanna know that?

I'm with beany on wanting to know why.

Anyway, I think it's estimated at less than 8%.

Then again, athiests in countries less free than America and most of Europe may be reluctant to state their beliefs.

Quite understandable, considering Islam's track record of dealing with people who go against Allah.

Check here

http://adherents.com/

The simple fact of the matter is that most of the civilized free world is atheistic, inasmuch as the people live their lives relatively impiously and just go through the motions of religion, without actually following the Bible, for example, as if it were a moral compass. The USA has a high declarative rate of religious adherence, yet contravening that are a booming pornography industry, over 1, 000, 000 abortions performed per year, Hollywood, secular music, Government which thinks it should police the world, etc. People are always going to act and think differently to what they declare ostensibly in surveys -- even anonymous ones like a national census. Atheism still has such a negative stigma attached to it, and therefore it is really impossible to accurately calculate the number of people who are atheists. Similarly, we don't know the true number of people who are homosexual because a lot of people are still loath to admit such a thing in many instances. However, in some European countries, especially in Eastern Europe, atheism doesn't have such a negative stigma, or religion was suppressed by the Government and the people there claim atheism more freely.

From Adherents.com:

"The Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance puts the number of non-religious worldwide at 806 million (17%) and the number of Atheists (not included in the foregoing) at 211 million (4%). "

Not following restrictions necessary for a culture 2,000 years ago but unnecessary now, does not make you an athiest, nor 'athiestic.'

quote:Originally posted by Keltoiberserker:

Check here

http://adherents.com/

Using this site: http://adherents.com/Na/Na_41.html#313

240,310,000

I wonder how this number is derived. It states that this comes from 91 records, but what records ?

This site: http://www.religioustolerance.org/worldrel.htm states that in 2000, the number of atheists worldwide came to 2.5%.

The actual data for this number came from this site: http://www.missionfrontiers.org/

Different numbers here: http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html

This page cites 21%, but that includes all non-religions, not just atheism: http://www.positiveatheism.org/mail/eml8794.htm (referencing Encarta)

Hope this helps.

thats almost impossible to count anyway.

It's impossible to know accurately how many people follow a religion.

4% seems a litte high for me. people who would say "i am athiest", insted of just not being religious seems like half a percent at best (but thats a total guess).

It depends on what do you mean under the word "atheist", because if you count all people who don't have a diety as atheists, then Buddhists will be among them, thence atheists will be the majority.