Talk:List of countries by irreligion

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NPOV[edit]

This seems to be a catchall category that reflects people holding to very different perspectives and views. Combining these viewpoints into a single category is not a neutral point of view. It reflects the political desires of some rather than the perspectives of those who self identify in these thought traditions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.12.203.103 (talk) 21:18, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

More likely you just don't want to accept the fact that the most religious countries are also the absolute bottom of the barrel on the HDI lists. --||bass (talk) 00:52, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No, I do accept that ... the problem is that spiritualist and an agnostic are not the same category. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.12.203.103 (talk) 23:59, 8 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Since Wikipedia is based on reliable sources, and this article seems to be based on reliable sources, you will have elaborate precisely what it is that you are unhappy about concerning this article. --Saddhiyama (talk) 00:35, 9 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The press is very basic: the creation of a "catch-all" category that does not reflect the diversity of its components; that is a precise problem, isn't it?. This is not about sources, it is about definitions. Note that I had no objection to the arguments raised by Mmxbass. And given the recent discussion elsewhere, I have nothing further to add Saddhiyama. Good day. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.12.203.126 (talk) 23:47, 9 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The methodoly of the WinGallup polling is absolutely atrocious and does not deserve to be used in this manner. The online questionnaire in Canada was obviously confusing if it got that high result about non-religiosity, because NO polls ever published in Canada even come near to this. The WinGallop data ought to be scrubbed from this table. It is based on nonsensical methodology. Just another small example of the ridiculousness of it: 1000 online questionnaires to Canada (35 M people), 1150 online questionnaires to China 1.3 billion !! This poll is a joke.--Tallard (talk) 04:36, 19 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Margin of error FYI, the standard error for 1000 people (at 50%) is 1.6%. The 1.3B or 35M is irrelevant.

Polls[edit]

This article takes in consideration just three polls, there are many more, sometimes made by local institutes or by census and thus are more accurate, these should by included too. --DrkFrdric (talk) 16:39, 4 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hear hear - screw zimmerman. Use something else 120.21.81.165 (talk) 09:40, 10 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Please correct a small mistake[edit]

Under the title 'By population' the country Estonia is listed twice. Maybe these two entries 'Estonia 657,580' and 'Estonia 147,620' should be merged, or maybe one of them should be deleted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Termgrauzis (talk • contribs) 10:53, 9 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

One of these things doesn't belong[edit]

"(encompassing atheism, agnosticism, ignosticism, antireligion, skepticism, freethought, antitheism, apatheism, non-belief, secular humanism, or deism)" apparent attempt to force somekinda "spiritual not religious" into a series which is otherwise uniformly a rejection of that. Great to see the Dentsu result, refutes idiots who apparently seem to think Chinese "just have to be religious some way". When I explain that literate Chinese ceased to believe these things in European classical times it's like they just can't grasp it. 72.228.190.243 (talk) 15:39, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have no idea what you're trying to say here. Are you actually suggesting a change to this article or not? -- Fyrefly (talk) 04:47, 4 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, i.e. remove "deism" from the list of things with which it is inconsistent. 72.228.190.243 (talk) 06:18, 4 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
And ignosticism as well as a similar prevarication/assumption of the thing the others reject. 72.228.190.243 (talk) 07:19, 4 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well I would have to completely disagree with you on ignosticism. That does not seem like a religion to me at all. Deism does seem debatable, but I think the best course would be to see how the discussion at Talk:Irreligion pans out before making changes here. -- Fyrefly (talk) 17:06, 4 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Percentage[edit]

The Wikipedia article "Irreligion" talks about 36% nonreligious. Here it's 16%, huge difference. --77.1.153.154 (talk) 18:18, 1 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Apparent vandalism in the past[edit]

In 2011, Knowledge Examiner updated the Gallup Poll figures in the Countries table to 2006-2011 results.[1] Ever since, individual figures have been changed and sometimes changed, some several times. All the changes I've examined have had poor explanations or none at all. Some have been by IPs or editors with very brief contribution histories. Knowledge Examiner's other contributions seem to have been carefully commented and even meticulous. Though I can't access the Gallup Analytics data they used (and I've searched quite hard through the publicly available data more than once), I have much more confidence in Knowledge Examiner's work than changes such as reducing Ecuador's figure from 21% to 2%,[2] especially now that I see WIN-Gallup reported 29%.
I think the best I can do is restore the Gallup figures to their original values. Does that seem sensible? NebY (talk) 22:31, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Thank you for checking the figures! JimRenge (talk) 22:46, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It's noticeable that one of the vandals, 217.22.190.225 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) who repeatedly changed the Malta figure from 14% to 1%[3][4][5][6], also edited[7] the same sentence in the lede into which 141.8.61.233 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) inserted a false figure[8] and is now edit-warring over.[9][10][11]. NebY (talk) 16:18, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

What a coincidence, both IP´s are from Malta, and 217.22.190.225 is a confirmed proxy. JimRenge (talk) 16:25, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
IP is claiming a 2015 WIN Gallup Poll with higher figures. Any evidence for that new survey? Nillurcheier (talk) 09:47, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Meanwhile I found this newer Survey (done in 14 published in 15: http://www.wingia.com/web/files/news/290/file/290.pdf ans published in the telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/11530382/Mapped-These-are-the-worlds-most-religious-countries.html with a lot of country data. But the core message is: 63% religious, 22% not religious, 11% atheists. Hence compared to the 2012 study, there is a decline in nonbelievers but within the range of statistical uncertainty. How should we proceed? Nillurcheier (talk) 10:40, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
We should update the figures. Done. JimRenge (talk) 13:48, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
WIN/GIA's 2015 summary of their 2014 survey omitted some countries that are in their reports for individual countries[12] - I've added those. They didn't survey some countries that they did in 2012 and which we'd accidentally kept under "WIN-Gallup 2015". We could simply delete or annotate those results, but one way we lose data and the other risks confusion. The 2012 and 2014 results shouldn't be mixed; many have changed by 10% or more in either direction. There are many possible explanations (e.g. personal religiosity varies rapidly, social pressures affect responses, polling methods change, polling questions change, polling questions in some languages have come to be differently understood, sampling is inconsistent, quotas have been ill-judged) and this article may not be the place to provide them, but by showing both sets of results from WIN/GIA we may at least help the reader to avoid thinking the figures are true to the nearest 1%. NebY (talk) 21:32, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Gallup 2006-2011 source[edit]

The link in the table is dead, but I found this link http://www.gallup.com/poll/142727/religiosity-highest-world-poorest-nations.aspx#2 that has a breakdown of religiosity in different countries. However, the numbers differ somewhat, which means either that there's another source or that somebody changed the numbers to fit their POV. If we can't find the corrext source I think that the columns should be deleted or changed to fit the source we have. Comments? Sjö (talk) 11:49, 4 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That poll's used in the Importance of religion by country article. Yes, it is strikingly different; not everyone who has a religion regards it as very important, and there seem to be national variations in this - or maybe the question about importance means different things in different places and languages. There's been massive vandalism of both articles - see above and these repairs for this article. I'm in two minds about dumping the Gallup 2006-2011 material; it might simplify vandal-fighting if we did, but I've no reason to think the figures were transcribed wrongly back in 2011, we may only be facing one persistent vandal anyway, and it's a shame to lose material just because of vandalism. NebY (talk) 12:54, 4 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's meaningful to include different perspectives on irreligion, and because of that I see no problem with using polls that ask different questions. As long as the article clearly explains what the numbers mean I think all the polls can be included. The question in the link I gave is the same as in the dead Gallup poll link, so we could simply substitute the source and the numbers there rather than removing the column. Sjö (talk) 14:41, 4 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Somehow I'd quite missed that we were including a poll that didn't ask about irreligion; I'd simply accepted its presence. Thank you for clarifying that! As the importance of religion in one's life is quite a different matter from irreligion, and as we already have Importance of religion by country, I agree with your first suggestion, that we delete the column. Deleting columns is a terribly longwinded business in the classic editor but Visual Editor makes it very easy. NebY (talk) 18:37, 4 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree, the question fits the definition of apatheism which is included in the lede. Sjö (talk) 07:53, 5 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It also fits believing in the existence of a god or gods, or another belief that we call "religion", while simply not giving it much importance in one's life. Unfortunately, including that poll here does makes us think it concerns irreligion and apatheism rather than a mere lack of fervency. NebY (talk) 20:08, 5 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Well, maybe. I don't feel strongly about it and won't object if you delete it. Sjö (talk) 12:35, 7 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Talking about it with you has made me think more carefully about it. I do still think it's not really applicable and rather misleading to include it, so I'll go ahead and remove it. Thank you for the conversation and for actually saying you won't object. NebY (talk) 22:17, 9 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

‎217.22.190.233, please explain your recent edits. Why do you remove important details? JimRenge (talk) 13:17, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly support the position to keep this detailed information. Nillurcheier (talk) 15:37, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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Irreligion map should be update[edit]

this map is for the old data from 2006 that is about 12-13 years ago! I think the map had better change to the WIN\GIA new data. SerendiPity (talk) 08:35, 31 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Adding figures from Pew, merging from irreligion article[edit]

The irreligion article has a similar list, with different numbers, which seems like a WP:REDUNDANTFORK, and a bad idea... I suggest that they should be combined, and there should only be one such list here. It can be linked to from the main article. For some countries, that list uses Pew Research figures from their 2015 report "The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2050", a summary table is here: [13]. The numbers differ greatly in some cases from other sources, for example for India, Dentsu gives 7%, while Pew gives 0.05%. Is there any reason not to have another column for the Pew figures in this article? The other list also has a number of individual sources for some countries, in some cases multiple ones. Maybe another column for "other"? Finally, it's clear that numerous people have been "fudging" the numbers in that table, changing them arbitrarily in contradiction to the given sources, so care would have to be taken to check them. Comments? --IamNotU (talk) 11:03, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm concerned about including the Pew-Templeton figures too.
  1. The 2020 figures as well as the 2050 ones are projections taken from their report in 2015, and the report says they represent one of many scenarios, some of which they go into. Showing them alongside or below actual survey figures gives a misleading impression of confidence, especially looking at figures headlined 2020 in 2021, as if that is now the known past. Similarly, while WP:CRYSTAL allows for projections in reliable sources, using one particular set of projections in country-by-country detail taking up most of the article's vertical space looks WP:UNDUE.
  2. They do not report on irreligion. They include a figure for unaffiliated, described as "The religiously unaffiliated population, sometimes called the “nones,” includes those who self-identify as atheists or agnostics as well as people who say their religion is “nothing in particular.” Some religiously unaffiliated people do hold religious or spiritual beliefs."(my emphasis)footnote 42
  3. If we are to include them, we should use the percentage figures they publish[14] to make them comparable with the first table. If we're to include 2020 and 2050 Pew-Templeton figures we should put them together in one table, preceded by explanations and qualifications, and clearly headed Projections in the section header and table header itself. Indeed, if we're to include projections, we should perhaps use 2030 not 2020, for clarity, and consider not using 2040 or 2050 as being too far ahead. NebY (talk) 18:39, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I went ahead an reverted the 2050 figures since those are just projections and those are always wrong. They do not need to be featured as a massive part of the article.Ramos1990 (talk) 02:10, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I've pulled the 2020 figures likewise, because they're old projections for 2020, not factual survey results, because they're not for irreligion, and per above concerns. I've restored Zuckerman's figure instead, which had been overwritten with these "2020" figures. NebY (talk) 20:36, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

WinGallup results for Turkey seem off[edit]

The WinGallup data for Turkey is very strange; it changes from around 15% to around 75% between 2012 and 2015. I think this is very unlikely to be a real change, and the fact that WinGallup reports these numbers should call them into question as a data source.

Reallyeli (talk) 06:52, 7 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

WinGallup is not that reliable since other researchers have suggested caution with their numbers. It is a mixed bag. If you have a better source, you can insert it in the article and correct/update it if you feel so inclined.Ramos1990 (talk) 22:23, 7 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Also, the link seems to be dead so it would be great if someone could find the original source and check it against the numbers. Articles like these are often targets for vandalism by changes to what someone thinks the numbers should be. Sjö (talk) 03:40, 8 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The original document does say 73% "not religious" on page 16. See link [15], but they have a note in the report on page 12 on asking the researchers in the field to investigate why such an "extra-ordinary shift". Will make a note on the article for now because in WIN/Gia 2015, the number goes way down to 15%. Perhaps the 2012 value can just be removed too if the note looks odd.Ramos1990 (talk) 05:07, 8 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It would be interesting to see the comments in the 2015 report, but as I said the link seems to be dead and pasting the link into Wayback Machine only yielded a press release. However, this seems to have the data. Sjö (talk) 06:16, 8 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What you pulled up was essentially it. I think this is the original report [16]. I checked my own records as I collected their reports and this seems to be all they did. The 2012 report was much more detailed. The 2015 and 2017 reports were very short and more like press releases. They did not make as much of a splash as the 2012 report did.Ramos1990 (talk) 07:20, 8 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Irreligion and unaffiliation[edit]

It's worth remembering that the various studies have very different methodologies and frameworks. Some may include a question about religion in general state-of-the nation/world surveys.Some may specifically study the growth of outright atheism or of atheism and agnosticism together, or consider people who do not have religious beliefs. Pew Templeton's framework is in part a reaction to that, rather as we also see with the Tempeton Prize's interest in the intersection of science and religion and in prominent scientists' religious beliefs. Among other things, Pew uses a broader category of unaffiliated, rather than irreligious, which facilitates a view that many who are not normally counted as religious do in fact have religious beliefs, explicitly or implicitly in occasional religious practices. Pew's statements about that category don't apply to the categories studied by others, and may be open to sharp questions about whether eg attendance at a family wedding counts as religious observance. In summarising different results, we need to take care not to blend these different approaches. NebY (talk) 20:25, 1 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Pew actually defines it in the source: "The religiously unaffiliated include atheists, agnostics and people who do not identify with any particular religion in surveys.. In another source, Pew explicitly defines the religiously unaffiliated as "nones": "The number of religiously unaffiliated people, also known as religious “nones,” is increasing in places such as the United States and Europe, and we project continued growth."[17]. They have many other reports on it. For instance, [18] is dedicated to it. Gallup even states that similar terminology is used among other studies done by Gallup and NORC as Pew's see first paragraph in [19]. So the categories are similarly named. They are not different. They use synonymous terms referring to the same wide range of phenomenon: includes people who do not have a religion, agnostic, or atheist.
I agree that there are different methodologies used (questions in surveys do differ) but many of them seem to slide off interpretations of irreligion from studies on religion. WIN/GIA has the same issue. As far as I have seen, no study ever measures irreligiosity directly and none have ever used the term "irreligion" as a measure (certainly none of the sources in the article like Zuckerman or WIN/GIA or other organizations like NORC or Gallup). It is all deduced from low levels of religious identification and participation. However, even lack of belief in god is not a measure of irreligion because most religions that have ever existed have not had gods in them (Eller, Jack. 2010. "1. What Is Atheism?". In Phil Zuckerman (ed.). Atheism and Secularity Vol.1: Issues, Concepts, Definitions. Praeger.) So irreligion is indeed hard to isolate because very few are truly irreligious and there is overlap among beliefs and participation, and self identification.
As far as blending the results of these studies, I agree that the "not a religious person" and "convinced atheist" are not the same but looking at the tables in this article they are combined for some odd reason probably to give off an illusion of mass irreligiosity. Ramos1990 (talk) 22:26, 1 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't go as far as saying the terms were used to present an illusion of mass irreligiosity, rather that the growth of irreligiosity was and is a valid and timely subject of study, being something that many see as having wide social consequences as well as determining personal fates. We also see different perspectives that bring out growths in religiosity in some parts of the world or - as we're discussing here - find element of religiosity even among the apparently irreligious. The very terminology used influences the studies and colours the reception of results. Pew's preferred terminology has consequences, and we can spell them out but WP:NPOV prevents us from embracing that framing. This only requires a little care in our phrasing, a little restraint, and I'm sure we can find that. NebY (talk) 19:51, 3 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Irreligion by population[edit]

Ramos1990, the title of this page is irreligion by country. The section “countries and regions” is about irreligion and has different studies from different years. So how can the next section “by population” only include atheists? The description in the section says “the percentage of non-religious people according to Zuckerman” so of course I can include a column for the amount of non religious people according to Pew.Foorgood (talk) 17:22, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The Zuckerman source is not about all demographics of non-religion. Non-religion is a broad category which includes people who are not affiliated with any religion - incudes deists, atheists, agnostics, no religion in particular, new age, etc. The Zuckerman source is about one small fraction of that demographic - atheists only. That had to be cleared up, per the source. The pew column clearly showed confusion since it equated irreligion with only atheism and it said that Zuckerman was about nonreligion, when it was about a smaller demographic within the non-religion. Since only the Pew source was used for one country and since the categories were messed up, it made no sense to keep the extra column only for one country.Ramos1990 (talk) 18:15, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I understand about the one country but as I said this page is about irreligion and the section above has different studies about percentage of irreligion for different years and is missing some countries as well. That being said you forgot my second source I cited which was this study strictly on atheists- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1948550617707015?journalCode=sppa. It has been cited all over including here https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-number-of-americans-with-no-religious-affiliation-is-rising/. I was going to ask you if you can show me where in the zuckerman source does it show the amount per country of strictly atheists? In any case I’m going to make another table for this- https://www.researchgate.net/figure/1-Percentage-nonreligious-and-atheist-by-North-American-country_tbl1_290812706. It is specific to irreligion as this pages title and doesn’t need to show every country in the world as the ones above don’t eitherFoorgood (talk) 18:30, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The Gervais and Najle study you cited above is not an empirical study. They did not survey people to get their estimate. They used indirect probabilistic methods (Bayseian analysis) with considerable uncertainty and estimated that 26% of Americans are atheists. In terms of Zuckerman's article (Atheism: Contemporary Rates and Patterns), he literally states "Below is a presentation of the findings of the most recently available surveys concerning rates of non-belief in God in various countries worldwide." and proceeds to give the number for numerous countries from which the current table in the article is made from. The whole paper is about the number of people who do not believe in god. It does not include other non-religious populations like New age, deists, spiritual but not religious.
The other table you are talking about, would be ok as long as it is based on reliable sources. It should split between "nonreligious" and "atheists" like it says on the source to not confuse those 2 populations. Clearly even there is shows that atheists are very small relative the wider nonreligious population. However, I am suspicious about the "Nonreligious" numbers because they are based on the question "is religion an important part of your daily life?" from Gallup - many religious people would also answer no to that too - like indifferent Catholics or people who are low or moderately religious. If you look at Gallup, self-identification is a more clear metric for how many people would be nonreligious because nonreligious people would generally not affiliate with a religion at all. And Gallup says only 20% of Americans do not affiliate with a religion. [20].
Pew did a global study on the nonreligious. This is probably better source for the table you want to make for the "nonreligious" [21] column. Ramos1990 (talk) 18:49, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ok Ramos sir we may have a compromise on that 2010 Pew source but we have to write what it says in the second sentence- "The religiously unaffiliated include atheists, agnostics and people who do not identify with any particular religion in surveys." Because this page is Irreligion not strictly Atheism like Zuckerman table. And finally we would put it above the Zuckerman table because it's more recent and because its Irreligion not just Atheism. It would be the table with the top 10 countries and amounts. I can create the table tonight.Foorgood (talk) 19:30, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to put the top ten then that would work. It also has regional table so may be a good idea to show the numbers by regions before the countries. Pew has a complete table for each country [22] by the way. The current WIN/GIA tables are all over the place at the moment and show very little coherence. Perhaps update that table with consistent numbers from Pew too?Ramos1990 (talk) 19:44, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes sir I will create the table tonight. For the record the Gervais and Najle did a survey- "All the participants had to do was simply write down the number of statements that were true for them...one statement added: “I believe in God.” from here https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/13/15258496/american-atheists-how-many. But I understand it's not as definitive.. I was also interested how Zuckerman got such high numbers of pure atheists for Germany and France when their religion wikis just say 40% "no religion" meaning it's hard to believe he came up with about 40% atheists if they all simply say no religion.Foorgood (talk) 19:53, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes they did a small online survey (2,000 respondents with a replication of 2,000 respondents) but the empirical result from that was much less than 26% - it was about 17%, according to the actual study. (Online surveys have their own problems because usually it is younger people who have access, time and willingness to even take a survey online). The actual 26% was extrapolated from a probability calculation which assumed that people confirmed premade statements about God the same way they confirmed statements about eating meat or if 2+2 was greater than 13 (these were actual questions in the study). But there have been numerous studies already (Pew, ARIS, etc) with massive samples (tens of thousands to more than 100,000 respondents) that allow for respondents to answer with many options on God directly with nuances. These have consistently yielded low numbers for the US.
You are right about the differences not always aligning. Even the global Pew study notes that "belief in God or a higher power is shared by 7% of Chinese unaffiliated adults, 30% of French unaffiliated adults and 68% of unaffiliated U.S. adults". So belief in God does not define if one is religious or not and vice versa. Its pretty complicated. Ramos1990 (talk) 20:59, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ok sir it took me a long time to configure the table on my iPad but I wanted to make sure you saw this-People who are atheists, agnostics, or don’t believe in god Italic text(Zuckerman 2004) [1][2] Look at the two sources so it actually makes sense in this page now vs it just being atheists. It's Zuckermans table in the book you can download the pdf yourself and remember mine was also copied from the second sentence in my source.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Foorgood (talk • contribs) 01:10, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like a good start, but since the wording is so similar (can be condensed) and since the wording to very long (columns look really huge), I am thinking of color coding and simplifying so the columns look more compact.Ramos1990 (talk) 02:47, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ramos1990 the pew is great but I’m sorry sir can u please reformat the list so the years are in order left to right most recent year to oldest year(meaning 2017 first one on the left). That’s how it was before, that’s how it’s below and that’s how it’s across Wikipedia so that people see most recent data first. It would take forever on my iPad but if u can’t do it tonight I’ll do it tomorrow at work. Thanks.Foorgood (talk) 00:52, 25 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It is not by year that the columns go by necessarily. It is by study. Pew is the most reliable out of the global ones and has a more complete data set. Also the Religions by country wiki page mainly uses Pew only. Doe snot even use WIN/GIA there probably because WIN/GIA is not as reliable since it has inconsistent bloated numbers. For example, global atheism estimates from WIN/GIA went from 4% in 2005 to 13% in 2012 to 11% in 2015 to 9% in 2017. The world does not triple then declines that much in 1 decade. there is a note on it above the table about advising caution with their numbers.Ramos1990 (talk) 01:28, 25 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
See my last comment. It is not as reputable as Pew and their numbers are off. The organization was a marketing company, not social science, and does not exist any more. Plus they have been criticized by experts in secularism demographics - for instance Keysar, Ariela; Navarro-Rivera, Juhem (2017). "36. A World of Atheism: Global Demographics". In Bullivant, Stephen; Ruse, Michael (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Atheism. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199644650 because their number are over bloated. The authors note that the World Values Survey - which has been done for decades and from which WIN/GIA borrowed their wording - consistently showed lower numbers than WIN/GIA. You can see that their numbers are off quite a bit too on the existing table. Just because it is recent does not mean it is accurate.Ramos1990 (talk) 07:06, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ https://www.pdfdrive.com/the-cambridge-companion-to-atheism-d187156887.html
  2. ^ https://ibb.co/nBN7JT6

Map Color is Inaccurate/Misleading[edit]

China’s population is 1.338 billion in 2010 and it is stated that 200 million people are non religious in China. The map shows China having a nonreligious region over 50%. The shading appears to be in the >50% region. 68.170.74.232 (talk) 04:36, 26 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Misleading map - uses official registration not religious belief[edit]

The map used at the top of the page doesn't provide its origin (https://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/religious-projection-table/), but would appear to be based on official church registration rather than any survey or census of religious belief. See for instance the very low level of irreligion in Denmark. I would suggest using this image, until more recent data can be found: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Irreligion_map.png Fedjmike (talk) 03:36, 22 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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