POLL SHOWS MORE ATHEISTS THAN CHRISTIANS AMONG YOUNG PEOPLE An ICM poll
for the BBC last week showed that among the 18-24 age group in Britain
there are more non-believers than Christians.

POLL SHOWS MORE ATHEISTS THAN CHRISTIANS AMONG YOUNG PEOPLE
An ICM poll for the BBC last week showed that among the 18-24 age group in
Britain there are more non-believers than Christians.

In answer to the question "Which of the following religions do you
yourself belong to?" 43% of respondents said they had no faith, while only
41% said they were Christian 10% said they were Muslim; 1% Hindu. The
average number of people defining themselves as Christian across all age
groups was 67%, with 22% saying they had no faith. Despite such large
numbers saying they were Christian, only 17% of them had the honesty to
say that they never go to church.

In answer to the question "How important do you think it is that British
society continues to be based on Christian values?" 26% thought it was not
important (rising to 35% of 18-24 year olds) while 72% thought it
important to some degree.

Commenting on these results, Terry Sanderson, vice president of the
National Secular Society, said: "This is very reassuring for us, not only
because such a large proportion of the population is prepared to say that
it doesn't have a faith, but that so many people have indicated that they
don't buy into organised religion."

Mr Sanderson's rationale is that personalised religion that didn't
organise itself into power-seeking blocs was much safer for society than
politically motivated groupings that sought to inflict irrationality on to
society as a whole.

The poll was conducted for BBC News 24, which had a 'faith day' last week.
Mr Sanderson asked: "Given that nearly a quarter of the respondents to
this poll were prepared to say they had no faith, where was their
representation in all this? Did News 24's 'faith day' look only at the
positive aspects of religion, or did we get the whole story, suicide
bombers, clerical abuse scandals and all? It is another indication that
the BBC is increasingly seeing itself as the nation's evangelist. It seems
to have been persuaded by pressure from religious interests that it has to
push religion as a 'good thing'. But the NSS does not see that
proselytising is a proper way to spend licence-payers' money."

Full results here:
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4434096.stm?dynamic_vote=ON#vote_4435361

Meanwhile, a detailed analysis of the Scottish census results for Glasgow
showed all religions except Buddhism to be declining (and the numbers of
Buddhists is tiny). But that the number of people declaring "no faith" has
risen 68%. Full story here: http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/50871.html

In another poll, conducted by Gallup, Greeks are shown as the most
religious people in Europe and the eighth most devout in the world. 86
percent of Greeks claim to be religious, according to the poll, which was
conducted upon a sample of 53,749 respondents by TNS ICAP in association
with Gallup International Association. The most devout people in the world
are Ghanaians, 91 percent of whom claimed to be religious. The least
religious were in Hong Kong and Japan, where only 14 percent and 17
percent respectively claimed to be religious. The poll defined "religious"
as believing in a faith rather than attending church regularly.