Tag Archives: religious values

What do people mean when they say they believe in God

Posted on by
Reply

I recently came across the 2017 Pew Research Center survey of more than 4,700 U.S. adults which found that of those who say they believe in God, 30% say they believe in some other higher power or spiritual force in the universe rather than the God of the Bible. Among those who say they do not believe in God (aka atheists), 47% say they believe in some other higher power or spiritual force. What do people mean when they say this? And do atheists and theists mean the same or different things?

Before discussing this, I first present some similar data for the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada (the mother country and two other English speaking ex-colonies).

A 2020 YouGov poll in Britain found that 27% say they believe in “a god”, 16% say they believe in the existence of a higher spiritual power, but not a god, 41% do not believe in a god or a higher power and 18% don’t know.  Among British Christians, just over half say they believe in God, 16% believe in a higher power, 10% don’t believe in God or higher power, and 16% don’t know.

The 2019 Australian Community Survey found that 29% of Australians say they believe in a personal God and 32% say they believe in some sort of spirit or life force. Around two in 10 (21%) do not believe and 18% remain unsure.

A very recent Canadian survey carried out in November 2022 found that just over a third of Canadians believe in God or gods (33.6%), with a further 32.1% saying that they believe in a higher power or spiritual force, but don’t necessarily believe in a god or gods. More than one-in-five (22.1%) don’t believe in any spiritual power. 

Personal god(s) versus an impersonal higher power

Survey questions probing beliefs about “god” vary widely in wording and you don’t have to look at many surveys before you realize that question framing, wording, context dramatically affect responses.  What do people (and survey writers) mean by “God” or by other powers or forces. Here are some of the phrases I have come across that are contrasted with god or gods: higher power, spiritual force, life force, fate, karma, universal consciousness, the Absolute, the ground of being.

A personal god or goddess is a deity who can be related to as a person, instead of as an impersonal spirit or force, such as the Absolute, or the “Ground of Being”. A personal god is conscious, sentient, has will and purpose, and is capable of feelings.

A god that is not personal cannot be worshiped or prayed to, let alone answer prayers. Only a personal god dispenses rewards and punishments in this life or an afterlife. This is not something an impersonal force would do.

An impersonal force or spirit is usually much less defined for people who say that is what they believe in rather than a personal god.  It can refer to impersonal forces such as karma or fate, or to some guiding force underlying the universe, or perhaps to a universal life-force or to a universal field of consciousness. The “god” of pantheism is an impersonal god (God is everything) as is the god of panentheism (God is in everything).

The god of deists is a creator god who does not intervene in or react with the universe after its creation. I find it quite puzzling why someone would bother thinking up this type of god. I assume it must be because many people seem to have a compelling need to make up a reason for the existence of the universe in the absence of any evidence or proposed mechanism.

The apparent need for a creator is claimed by many theists to be an important reason to believe in a personal god, though clearly an impersonal god or force could also be responsible for creation. God-did-it or The-Force-did-it are equally unhelpful non-explanations for a postulated creation. And who knows, possibly some as yet theory of everything that combined all the known physical forces in a single theory, and included an explanation for consciousness, might also contain an explanation for the existence of the universe. And those who say they believe in a universal life force might say, aha, that theory of everything is exactly what we have been talking about.

Christianity and Judaism conceptualize a God who is both universal, like The Force, and personal. The Abrahamic God is able to be everywhere at once. He has all energy and power; in fact, he created the universe. At the same time, he is able to visit individuals, speak with them, express his feelings, thoughts and opinions to them, and do things for them in a very personal way.

I have no knowledge of Islamic theology but was surprised to find that Wikipedia describes Islam as rejecting the notion of a personal god as anthropomorphic. This is certainly in conflict with my impressions from what I have heard and read various Muslims say and with the data from the Integrated Values Survey which I discuss below. Based on limited data for Muslim countries, Muslims have the highest level of belief in a personal god of any of the major religions or culture zones.

An analysis of global survey data on belief in a personal god

In my previous analysis of the worldwide prevalence of and trends in atheism and religiosity (see here and here), I used questions in the World Values Survey and the European Values Study asking whether you believe in God (Yes/No/Don’t know), but also “Are you a religious person” (Religious, Non-religious, Confirmed Atheist) and questions on frequency and type of religious practices, and on the importance in your life of religion and God. The combined data of these two survey programs is referred to as the Integrated Values Survey (IVS) covering the period 1981-2020 and 105 countries.

The IVS includes a question on whether belief is in a personal god vs. a spirit or life force in surveys in 54 countries, predominantly in Europe. The surveys for the USA and Canada that included this question were carried out in 1981 and 1990, when the prevalence of atheism was lower than now.  This will obviously impact the prevalence of those who believe in a personal god.  The UK included this question in five surveys across the period 1981-2018 and I plotted the distribution of responses separately for theists (those who said they believe in god) and atheists (those who said they did not believe in god). As can be seen in the graphs below there is very little change in the distribution of responses across time within each group. 

On the assumption that this is generally the case in other countries, I have estimated the distribution of beliefs in 2023 as follows.  I estimated the distribution of beliefs within each of four religiosity categories (practicing religious, non-practicing religious, non-religious, atheist) using the pooled IVS survey data for each country for the entire period 1981-2020.  I estimated the prevalence of each of these religiosity categories by projecting previously estimated recent time trends for 2015-2020 three years forward to 2023. To be a little conservative in the projections, the projected rates of change were adjusted downwards 20%.  The distribution of beliefs for each of these categories was then weighted by 2023 prevalences of religiosity categories and added to give an overall estimate of belief prevalences by country and culture zone in 2023. Table 1 gives the results tabulated by culture zone.

* See Endnote for definitions of culture zones

Belief in a personal god is lowest in the Sinic East (based on data for China and Japan), the Indic East (based on data for India) and the Reformed West (based on data for 10 countries).

Despite Wikipedia’s documented description of the God of Islam as a non-personal god, the survey data above show that the Islamic East has the highest prevalence of people, at 90%, who say they believe in a personal god. The only survey in the Islamic East which included the meaning of belief question was for Turkey.  Its possible Turkey is non-representative of other Islamic countries. However, I also analysed the prevalence of belief in personal vs. impersonal god by religious affiliation and there are many Muslims in other countries outside the Islamic East. The table below tabulates the prevalence of beliefs by religious affiliation. Muslims still have the highest level of belief in a personal god.

* Note that the prevalences in this table relate to the 54 countries which included the belief question in surveys and may not accurately reflect the belief distribution in all members of a religious affiliation globally.

Countries ranked by prevalence of belief in a personal god

For the 54 countries with data on the distribution of beliefs concerning god(s), I also estimated the prevalence of beliefs in 2023 using the same methods as above. The following table ranks countries from lowest to highest prevalence of belief in a personal god.

A number of key points to note about these results. Two of the three countries with very low prevalence of belief in a personal god are China and Japan. The other is Czechia.  China has high prevalence of non-religious and atheists and its main religions are non-theist. The main religions of Japan are Buddhism and Shinto. Buddhism is non-theist and Shinto, while it has many gods, these are mostly sacred spirits which take the form of things and concepts important to life, such as wind, rain, mountains, trees, rivers and fertility.

As expected, levels of belief in a personal god are low in most of the formerly Protestant countries of western and northern Europe, where levels of atheism are also high. My estimate for the UK that 22% believe in a personal god is somewhat lower than the earlier 2017 estimate of 27%, but probably not inconsistent given the continuing decline of religion in Britain since then.

My estimate that only 49% of Americans believe in a personal god in 2023 is also reasonably consistent with the Pew Survey of 2017’s finding that 56% of Americans believe in the God of the Bible, given the IVS data for America that shows and acceleration in the prevalence of atheism in recent years, likely in response to the increasing right-wing extremism of Christians in the USA. At the bottom of the table are some predominantly Orthodox Christian countries and two Muslim countries where the prevalence of belief in a personal god is around 70% and 90% respectively.

Some questions and conclusions

I will look a little more closely at the distribution of beliefs in atheists and theists in the Reformed West. These are the largely Protestant countries of western and northern Europe, characterized today by a low proportion of the population practicing religion and a large minority or majority of the population who are atheist. This culture zone includes Britain, Australia and Switzerland as well as the Scandinavian countries. The table below shows the distribution of beliefs for theists and atheists in the Reformed West.  Only 39% of people who say they believe in God believe in a personal god. A higher proportion (43%) say they believe in a spirit or life force and 15% don’t know what to think.

Among atheists (those who say they do not believe in God) 25% say they believe in a spirit or life force and only 42% are clear that they do not believe in God, spirit or life force.

I am not surprised and somewhat comforted by the low level of belief in a personal god among theists. It’s the personal god who is responsible for most of the unacceptable behaviour of religious people in trying to impose their views of moral behaviour on others and in promoting hatred and discrimination against others.  An impersonal force is not going to care about your sexual preferences, the colour of your skin or whether you believe in it, let alone judge you and send you to heaven or hell.  Premodern beliefs and values assocated with concepts of a personal god are increasingly hard for modern well-educated people to accept.

Given the continuing decline in religious belief, I can hope that the proportion of people who believe in the God of the Bible continues to drop. It is already less than 50% for Americans if my projection is reasonable, and around 20% for the UK, Switzerland, France and the Netherlands. I don’t have data from IVS for Australia, but the proportion of Australians who believe in the God of the Bible will be less than 27% now. For both the Reformed West and North America, the countries where Protestantism has been the leading form of religion, it is now the case that less than half the adult population believes in the God of the Bible.

One quarter of atheists (those who say they do not believe in God) also say that they believe in a spirit or life force.  Are these beliefs similar to those of the theists who say they believe in a spirit or life force? I have not come across research looking more closely at this, but I suspect there are differences.  I think its likely the theists who say they believe in a spirit or life force are those who have rejected the mythical bearded father figure in the sky but are not yet ready to fully let go of belief in a god. Their impersonal god is likely a fuzzy ill-defined thing, perhaps with residual “personal” characteristics eg.  God is love, or god is creative power.

The atheists who believe in a “spirit or life force” may include some who have stepped away from theism but not entirely comfortable with letting go of any belief in something “larger than themselves”.  But it may also include those atheists who are not out-and-out materialists or reductionists. For example, Buddhist atheists, and some others, might believe that non-dual consciousness is some sort of universal field or ground of being.  

From time to time I come across atheists or philosophers, even atheist philosophers, who assume that all atheists must be materialists or believe only physical things exist. This is clearly not the case, since the proportion of atheists who positively state that they do not believe in god, spirit or life force is relatively low, ranging from around 25% in the USA to 30-40% in other regions where Christianity is the dominant religion. Other atheists may simply have some vague feeling that there is something more to reality that they don’t want to pin down and conceptualize as something with specific attributes, or simply don’t know what to think, or they may have some well-developed view of reality (in their mind) which might involve some non-physical field or force (universal love, consciousness etc). It would be interesting to interview people and find out more about what they mean when they say they believe in a higher power or other similar phrase, and how this might differ between theists and atheists.

Endnote. Definitions of culture zones used to group countries

I am using the 10 culture zones defined by Welzel [1], with one modification. Because Australia’s and New Zealand’s culture values are much closer to the countries of the Reformed West than to those of the USA and Canada, I have included Australia and New Zealand in the Reformed West and renamed the New West as North America. The culture zones are defined as follows:

Reformed West — Western European societies strongly affected by the Reformation: Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, plus Australia and New Zealand;
North America — USA and Canada;
Old West — Mostly Catholic parts of Western Europe being core parts of the
Roman Empire: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembrg, Malta, Portugal, Spain;
Returned West — Catholic and Protestant parts of post-communist Europe returning
to the EU: Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia;
Orthodox East — Christian Orthodox or Islamic parts of the post-communist world,
mostly parts of former USSR;
Indic East — Parts of South and South East Asia under the historic influence
of Indian culture: Bhutan, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Timor-Leste;
Islamic East — Regions of the Islamic world that have been parts of the Arab/Caliphate,
Persian and Ottoman empires;
Sinic East — Parts of East Asia under the historic influence of Chinese culture: China, Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam;
Latin America — Central and South America and the Caribbean;
Sub-Saharan Africa — African countries south of the Sahara.

Reference

[1] Welzel C. Freedom Rising. Human Empowerment and the. Quest for Emancipation. 2013. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/freedom-rising/80316A9C5264A8038B0AA597078BA7C6

Belief in heaven and hell – Part 2

Posted on by
Reply

In Part 1 of this post, I examined global variations in the prevalence of belief in heaven or hell, both in the total adult population and among Christians and those with other religious affiliations. I found that the prevalence of belief in heaven and hell among Christians in the USA is much higher than in any of the “West” culture zones, or the Orthodox East. In the developed countries other than the USA, only 52% of Christians say they believe in heaven, and significantly fewer say they believe in hell (42%). In contrast, Christians in the USA have a much higher level of belief, and similar levels of belief in heaven (85%) and hell (81%).

In social media, I’ve seen quite a few questions from Christians to atheists, essentially asking why they do not fear going to hell. And responses from atheists like myself, who simply cannot imagine how anyone could believe that a supposedly loving god would condemn people to eternal torture for a list of transgressions which seem to vary across flavors of Christianity and to be cherry-picked from a long list of sins mainly appearing in the Old Testament. A good starting point for understanding such different views are the levels and stages of moral development identified by Kohlberg [1]

Kohlberg’s theory proposes that there are three levels of moral development, with each level split into two stages. Kohlberg suggested that people move through these stages in a fixed order, and that moral understanding is linked to cognitive development. The three levels of moral reasoning include preconventional, conventional, and postconventional.

The preconventional level is characterized by a morality determined by fear of punishment or expectation of reward. At the conventional level, moral decisions are based on the expectations of social groups or society at large. In modern societies, most children transition from the preconventional level around age 8-10 years to the conventional level. In late adolescence or adulthood, some adults move to the postconventional level, in which inter-individual’s judgements of good and bad become influenced by universal moral principles. If necessary, people at stage 6 may well take actions based on moral assessments derived from universal values, even if they conflict with laws and societal values. Kohlberg had relatively limited empirical data and estimated that around 10-15% of adults in developed countries reached the postconventional level.

There has been controversy around Kohlberg’s theory, particularly as to universality and applicability in non-Western cultures and as to whether people progress in a regular sequence through the levels and stages. Some studies that found around 20-30% of people appeared to regress to a lower stage in the years after finishing high school, and this led Kohlberg to refine his criteria to minimize the apparent regression by raising the threshold for the postconventional level. However, this resulted in lower prevalences of people at postconventional level, and some researchers argued that the postconventional level was not universal but specific to “Western” culture [2].

A 2007 review [3] of 120 studies in 42 countries found that “Kohlberg was in principle correct regarding the universality of basic moral judgment development, moral values, and related social perspective-taking processes across cultures.” In the years from late childhood to early adolescence, a qualitative shift from preconventional to conventional morality was observed across difference methods of assessment and diverse cultures. The shift typically occurs somewhat earlier for females and much later, if at all, for delinquents and prisoners.

The evidence suggests that moral stage development is facilitated by social perspective-taking opportunities. Higher stages of moral development were associated with education, social class, urban settings and in adults in volunteer community service, or in university or complex work settings. Gilligan [4] has further developed Kohlberg’s framework to take into account the somewhat different . Gebser [5] and Wilber [6, 7] have elaborated the link between these stages of individual development and the broad evolution of cultures over the course of human evolution through magic, mythic, rational, to integral stages. Wilber also refers to the mindsets associated with the three broad stages of moral values as egocentric, ethnocentric and worldcentric.

When it comes to religion, and specifically Christianity, people at preconventional level are motivated primarily by (future) divine punishments and rewards. People at this level interpret heaven and hell in literal terms as the places where they will be rewarded or punished after death for their actions (and in some cases even for their thoughts). This preconventional basis for moral decisions can easily be twisted into a basis for threatening non-believers or into a justification for violence as punishment for those who are perceived as sinful.

Religious people at the post-conventional level, by contrast, are not really concerned with punishments or rewards. Heaven and hell are not prominent concepts and indeed hell in particular is very unlikely to be believed to be an actual place as opposed to a metaphor. People at this level are rather concerned with following universal moral principles (love thy neighbour as thyself etc) and caring for others, even if that entails conflict with the laws or general social beliefs. It is these people who will protest against nuclear weapons or leave water in the desert for refugees.

At the conventional level, where most adults are, moral decisions and beliefs will be heavily dependent on the general level of education and cognitive development, the degree that their society encourages social perspective-taking, as well as the levels of belief in things like heaven and hell at societal level (from where the conventional moralist take their guidance). 

I think these factors go some way to explaining the differences in prevalence of belief in heaven and hell between the USA and most other developed countries.  Outside the USA, involvement in religious practice has been declining for decades, and atheism and non-religiousness have been increasing (see here). There are quite a few countries where the irreligious (atheist or religion unimportant) are a majority of the population. Most of these countries have high levels of education and a strong acceptance of the need for social safety nets such as universal health insurance, unemployment benefits, paid sick leave and parental level etc.

In contrast, the USA still has relatively high levels of religious belief and participation, an unusually high proportion of Christians who are fundamentalists, lower levels of education with fewer universal standards or curricula, and a very individualistic culture with very limited social safety nets and a fairly widespread belief that people who cannot pay for services should not get them.

In the USA, not only those at preconventional level, but also many religious people at conventional level, are likely to believe in heaven and hell because such beliefs are widespread in a culture which has large numbers of people with egocentric and ethnocentric mindsets.

In other high -income countries, not only are more religious people at a higher stage of moral development, but the general culture largely rejects belief in hell because it conflicts with universal moral principles (such as finite penalties for finite transgressions) and, for a large minority, because it is incompatible with a worldcentric mindset. For the many young people galvanized by the global existential issues facing humans today, a belief that the majority of people outside their culture/religion are destined for eternal torture is not only unacceptable but also unbelievable.

References

  1. Kohlberg, L. The Psychology of Moral Development: The Nature and Validity of Moral Stages (Essays on Moral Development, Volume 2). Harper & Row: 1984.
  2. Snarey, J. (1985). The cross-cultural universality of social-moral development: A critical review of Kohlbergian research. Psychological Bulletin, 97, 202–232.
  3. Gibbs, J. C., Basinger, K. S., Grime, R. L., & Snarey, J. R. (2007). Moral judgment development across cultures: Revisiting Kohlberg’s universality claims. Developmental Review, 27(4), 443–500. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2007.04.001  
  4. Gilligan, Carol. In a different voice: Women’s conceptions of self and of morality. Harvard Educational Review. 1977, 47(4), 481-517
  5. Gebser, Jean. The Ever-Present Origin, authorized translation by Noel Barstad with Algis Mickunas, Athens: Ohio University Press, 1985.
  6. Wilber, Ken. Up from Eden. Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1981
  7. Wilber Ken. Integral Spirituality. Integral Books: Boston and London, 2007.

Belief in heaven and hell – Part 1

Posted on by
Reply

My father was a Protestant minister and I grew up in a rural Protestant culture in Australia, went to lots of church services and never heard anyone trying to claim hell was a real place rather than a metaphorical place. Belief in a real hell tends to be reserved for fundamentalists who are a relatively small proportion of Christians outside USA and some other countries. I think for religious people focused on love and kindness it is clear that hell is a mythological concept dating from primitive times and literally believing your God would torture people for eternity marks you out as having premodern values. While I don’t know about the distribution of the real beliefs of individuals in the Christian community I grew up with I was not aware on any discussion of hell as a real place.

Recently, on social media forums, I’ve seen quite a few questions from Christians asking why aren’t atheists terrified of ending up in hell. And assumptions (mainly from Americans) that belief in hell is the mark of being a Christian. At least in the mainstream media, hell tends to only get a mention as part of the rantings of fundamentalists and religious extremists. These are a tiny minority in Australia and Switzerland. So I decided to see what the data from the World Values Survey (WVS) and the European Values Study (EVS) tell us about the prevalence of belief in heaven and hell.

Continue reading →

Values and religion in 2020: an updated map

Posted on by
Reply

In my previous post, I presented updated estimates of trends in average religiosity and religious values for 110 countries using latent variable analysis of data from the World Values Survey and European Values Study [1-4]. The map below plots these countries according to their latent variable values for modernity (horizontal axis) and religiosity (vertical axis) in the year 2020. The colours indicate culture zone and the shading roughly indicates the main domain of countries in each culture zone. Moving downwards to the right on this graph indicates increasing modern values and decreasing religiosity. The inspiration for this map presentation was the culture zone maps produced for earlier waves of these surveys by the political scientists Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel [5]. The culture zones are defined in a previous post here.

Apart from the uncertainty in these values resulting from survey sample size limitations, differences in the ways surveys were administered, and differences in translation and cultural understanding of questions, there is also statistical uncertainty in the latent variable estimation process.  Not too much should be made of small differences between countries, and I focus on the broader patterns.

The degree of premodernity of religious values is fairly similar for the Islamic East and Sub-Saharan Africa, but the African region is somewhat more religious than the Islamic region. The Indic East has higher levels of premodern values than either of these regions. One manifestation of this is the current rising level of Hindu nationalism in India along with the violent persecution of Indians of other religions. The degree of modernity of values is similar for the majority of Latin American countries and the former Soviet bloc countries, but religiosity is significantly lower in the latter, where religion is largely a marker of national identity and most are non-practicing.

The North America culture zone includes only two countries, the USA and Canada. It is clear from the map that Canada belongs with the Reformed West countries in contrast to the USA, which sits in the Old West zone close to Italy, and also not far from three South American countries: Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. Malta and Cyprus are also outliers for the Old West culture zone, with higher levels of religiosity and less modern values. Along the decreasing religiosity-increasing modernity axis, Qatar is at the top end and Sweden at the bottom end. China is an outlier to the lower left, with the lowest level of religiosity of all the countries, but also a modernity value towards the middle of the scale between modern and pre-modern.

It should be emphasised that this map reflects national averages for individuals and may not be reflected in laws and form of government. Increasingly authoritarian regimes across the world are imposing values that a substantial proportion of their population do not accept. The USA has a growing proportion of the population rejecting democracy in favour of minority rule and the restriction of various rights particularly for women and minority voters. Unhappiness with the results of neoliberal economic and social policies over recent decades has been successfully redirected into “values wars”  rather than addressing the real causes of declining average incomes and reductions in social safety nets along with the reduction of taxation and regulation for high income individuals and companies.

References

  1. Inglehart, R., C. Haerpfer, A. Moreno, C. Welzel, K. Kizilova, J. Diez-Medrano, M. Lagos, P. Norris, E. Ponarin & B. Puranen et al. (eds.). 2014. World Values Survey: All Rounds – Country-Pooled Datafile Version: https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWVL.jsp. Madrid: JD Systems Institute.
  2. Haerpfer, C., Inglehart, R., Moreno,A., Welzel,C., Kizilova,K., Diez-MedranoJ., M. Lagos, P. Norris, E. Ponarin & B. Puranen et al. (eds.). 2020. World Values Survey: Round Seven–Country-Pooled Datafile. Madrid, Spain & Vienna, Austria: JD Systems Institute& WVSA Secretariat[Version: http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWV7.jsp].
  3. Gedeshi, Ilir, Zulehner, Paul M., Rotman, David, Titarenko, Larissa, Billiet, Jaak, Dobbelaere, Karel, Kerkhofs, Jan. (2020). European Values Study Longitudinal Data File 1981-2008 (EVS 1981-2008). GESIS Datenarchiv, Köln. ZA4804 Datenfile Version 3.1.0, https://doi.org/10.4232/1.13486.
  4. EVS (2020): European Values Study 2017: Integrated Dataset (EVS 2017). GESIS Data Archive, Cologne. ZA7500 Data file Version 3d. WVS. Archived from the original on October 19, 2013.
  5. Ronald Inglehart; Chris Welzel. “The WVS Cultural Map of the World”. WVS. Archived from the original on October 19, 2013.

Modern and pre-modern religious values: an update

Posted on by
Reply

In a recent post, I presented revised estimates for trends in the prevalence of atheism and religiosity for 110 countries over the last 40 years. This was based on a new analysis of the 2021 release of combined data for the WVS and EVS in the Integrated Values Surveys (IVS) 1981-2021 [1, 2]. The main revision to the dataset was to correct an error in the data for the USA. This post summarizes my updated analysis of modern and pre-modern religious values and for the first time  I have also carried out an analysis of time trends from 1980 to 2020. See here for full details of the construction of a revised latent variable for modern values and the analysis of time trends.

My earlier post discusses in some detail the conceptualization and operationalization of modern and pre-modern religious values. I here give a very brief overview of this in terms Kohlberg’s three stages of moral development. Stage 1 moral values focus on absolute rules, obedience and punishment and an individual is good in order to avoid being punished. In stage 2, the individual internalizes the moral standards of the culture and is good in order to be seen as a good person by oneself and others. Moral reasoning is based on the culture’s standards, individual rights and justice. In stage 3, the individual becomes aware that while rules and laws may exist for the greater good, they may not be applicable in specific circumstances. Issues are not black and white, and the individual develops their own set of moral standards based in universal rights and responsibilities. As moral values evolve through the three broad stages, the size of the in-group (“us”) with which an individual identifies typically expands from tribe to ethnic group or nation to all humanity.

Continue reading →

Global, regional and country-level trends in religiosity and atheism: an update

Posted on by
Reply

In two earlier posts (here and here), I examined global, regional and country-level trends in religious belief and practice, and the prevalence of atheism. The analysis was based on data from the  World Values Survey (WVS) and the European Values Study (EVS), covering the period 1981 to 2020. Earlier this year, I discovered that the World Values Survey dataset has been updated. Some data collected using a mobile phone app in the most recent US survey was incorrectly coded and this mainly affected the religiosity categories.  Comparison of the US prevalences for religiosity show that the coding errors resulted in an overestimate of the atheist and non-religious categories as shown in the following table:

Comparison of religiosity prevalence estimates
 for USA in year 2020

I have now updated the previous analyses using the 2021 release of the combined data for the WVS and EVS in the Integrated Values Surveys (IVS) 1981-2021 [1-3]. In carrying out these updates, I also addressed some definitional issues which have resulted in mostly slight changes to estimates for other countries. The details of the updated analysis are described elsewhere.

Continue reading →

Premodern religious values and happiness

Posted on by
Reply

I recently came across a ranking of countries by average reported happiness. This year’s World Happiness Report, released on March 20, uses data from the Gallup World Poll to calculate average reported happiness by country for over 150 countries for years 2005 to 2020. The focus of the report is on the impact of COVID-19 on happiness in 2020 by comparison with years 2017-2019. I was interested to see to what extent modern versus premodern religious values might explain variations in happiness across countries, along with a number of other factors that were examined in the World Happiness Report. I have posted here previously on my analysis of premodern or “fundamentalist” religious values.

The main measure used for happiness in the World Happiness Report is based on the national average response to the question on life evaluation in the Gallup World Poll (GWP). The English wording of the question is  “Please imagine a ladder, with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?”

The following graph shows the happiness rankings of 101 countries for which I have both happiness measures and estimates of the modern/premodern religious values index I developed (see here). The happiness scores are averages for years 2017 to 2019.

Continue reading →

Prevalence of pre-modern values across the world

Posted on by
Reply

In a previous post, I described my use of the World Values Survey (WVS) and European Values Study (EVS) to develop a measure of pre-modern religious values (approximately corresponding to “fundamentalism”). I have used this to calculate the prevalence of pre-modern religious values using data from waves 5-7 of the surveys, covering the period 2005-2020, but with most results relating to the recent decade 2010-2020. I somewhat arbitrarily chose a cutpoint of 6.45 on the religious values scale to classify people as having pre-modern values (<6.45) versus modern values (>=6.45). The value 6.45 was chosen as the point where the distribution of scores for individuals 2 and 3 (described in the  previous post) crossed over.

The following graph shows the prevalence of pre-modern values (as % of adult population) for countries in waves 5-7, ranked from lowest (Denmark at 13% and Sweden at 14%) to highest (Bangladesh, Myanmar and Qatar at 100%).

Continue reading →

Global and country-level prevalence of atheism in 2020

Posted on by
2

My previous post examined trends in religious belief and irreligion (non-religious and atheism) over the last 40 years using data from the World Values Surveys (WVS) and European Values Study (EVS) [1-4]. There is considerable interest in the prevalence of atheism, particularly from Americans, and a variety of quite different statistics are quoted, and have been written about in various media. In this post, I present my estimates of global prevalence of atheism for the year 2020 and discuss the various other sources of international statistics and the definitional issues. But first, here is my global map based on data from the WVS/EVS (see here for details of analysis).

And here is a closer view of the map for Eurasia. Further below in this post, I have included a more detailed country-level plot of all the religiosity categories (practicing religious, non-practicing religious, non-religious, atheist) for 2020.

Continue reading →

Is religious belief in decline and atheism on the rise?

Posted on by
5

Ronald Inglehart has recently published an article in Foreign Affairs called “Giving up on God: the global decline of religion” in which he uses data from the most recent wave of the World Values Surveys (WVS) to claim that between 2007 and 2019, the importance of religion has declined in most countries [1]. This is based on a single question on the importance of God in the respondent’s life on a 10-point scale. The average importance declined in 39 countries and increased in only 5.  Apart from the fact that this is based only on a single question on the importance of God, it also does not tell us how regional or global average ratings have changed. Depending on the relative populations and scale shifts in different countries, it could potentially even be consistent with a global average increase.

I’ve taken a closer look at trends in religious belief and practice using data from the World Values Survey and European Values Study [2-5] which have interviewed over 630,000 people in 110 countries in seven waves of the surveys over the period 1981 to 2020. These surveys include a direct question on whether you believe in God (Yes/No/Don’t know), but also “Are you a religious person” (Religious, Non-religious, Confirmed Atheist) and questions on frequency and type of religious practices, and on the importance in your life of religion and God. Of the 105 countries, 76 have data for years in range 2017-2020, and another 17 have data on or later than 2010.

Continue reading →