RE: Atheism in Sweden
June 6, 2012 at 5:37 am
(This post was last modified: June 6, 2012 at 5:57 am by Tempus.)
(June 6, 2012 at 2:23 am)kılıç_mehmet Wrote: I believe that non-religiousity may be directly to how much money you earn, and not vica versa.
The relationship between religiosity (or lack thereof) and other societal factors is interesting. For example, do higher country incomes cause higher rates of atheism? Or do higher rates of atheism lead to higher national incomes? Or perhaps better education causes both? I think it's always good to be on the look out for confounding variables and avoid jumping to conclusions about causal relationships from correlation.
ETA: Just thought I'd chime in about the Scandinavian atheist rate too - last I checked 70-85% was pretty high end estimates; but I may be wrong. Japan at 65% seems consistent with what I remember. Also, if I recall correctly, Estonia had the highest rate of atheism of any country surveyed. It's also important to compare the methodology of these surveys too (if multiple surveys are being used, that is), they could be defining "atheist" differently than each other. This is from memory alone though so I may be wrong.
