World Statistics
1990 - 7.5% of the population were nonreligious
2001 - 13.2% of the population were nonreligious
2008 - 16.1% of the population were nonreligious
I wanted to know the exact increase over the decades and since the population in 1990 was the not the same as the population in 2001 or 2008, I consulted the US Census Bureau for these numbers.
Between 1990 and 2000, world population had increased from 5.2 billion to nearly 6.1 billion. That's an increase of 13.2% in just one decade. The nonreligious population, on the other hand, increased by some 49% from 1990 to 2000. In actual population numbers, that means that in 1990, 400 million people identified themselves as nonreligious and by 2000 that number had grown to just over 800 million.
The current world population, according to GeoHive, is 6,671,202,855. So in the last seven or eight years, the nonreligious population has grown from 800 million to nearly 1.1 billion. Very Impressive. Christians are way ahead of us at over 2 billion and Islam has a couple hundred million more adherents than there are nonbelievers. I think that's very impressive.
Some other statistics mentioned in the video include:
Twenty-five percent of Americans between the ages of 18-29, have no affiliation with religion.
In Europe, 48% of the population does not believe in God, while 74% of Britons do not believe in a personal God. Also, among the young in Europe (ages 15-24), 56% do not believe in God. This makes me very happy since I was born in Europe. North America is still far too Christian for me.
And before I forget, divorce statistics are also included. Here are the percentages of divorces by religion/non religion (Atheism is not a religion, by the way):
Jews - 30%
Born-Again Christians - 27%
Other Christians - 24%
Atheists, Agnostics - 21%
Most importantly, a bunch of studies by someone (can't remember now), found a negative correlation between intelligence and religious belief. That is, the more intelligent one is and the more education one has, the less likely they are to hold religious beliefs. Well that makes sense. Intelligent people are harder to manipulate. No wonder religious people indoctrinate their kids while they're young.
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