The resupts of the poll released on Monday by the Switzerland-based market research firm WIN Gallup, suggests that worldwide, 1 in 5 people today consider themselves “non-religious,” and 1 in 10 say they’re atheists. That’s a global pool of 1.5 billion non-religious people and 770 million atheists, among the largest numbers ever recorded for either camp, Crux reports.
In the United States, 56 percent of residents say they’re religious, 33 percent say they’re not, and 6 percent describe themselves as atheists. That’s roughly 180 million believers and 125 million who aren’t, meaning the fault line runs between two massive pools of Americans of increasingly equal size.
China, by consensus the world’s emerging superpower in the early 21st century, is also the world’s least religious nation, with 61 percent of the population identifying themselves as convinced atheists. An additional 29 percent of the Chinese say they’re non-religious, with only 7 percent professing religious belief.
According to the results, 63 percent of the world’s population remains religious in 2015 despite decades of secularizing pressure. In Africa and the Middle East, more than 8 out of 10 people — 86 percent and 82 percent respectively — are religious, while 7 out of 10 are religious in Eastern Europe and the Americas and more than 6 out of 10 remain religious across Asia.
The seven most intensely religious nations in the poll are Thailand, with 94 percent of the population saying it’s religious, followed by Armenia, Bangladesh, Georgia, Morocco, Fiji, and South Africa.
The survey by WIN/Gallup International involved speaking face-to-face, on the telephone or online with nearly 64,000 people in 65 countries.
Map from The Telegraph
