This is such good news! And yet, and yet . . . The way they phrased the question: YES, NO or NO GOD (atheism) might have skewed the results. What if they had asked about “spirituality” as contrasted with “religion.” What would have been the result? In any case, it does appear that the hierarchy-controlled “religion” aspect of the global trance is beginning to dissolve, thanks, most likely, to all the ravaging priestly pedophiles.
BTW: now that pedophilia has been long noted at Boys Town, among Indiana tribes in Canada and Alaska, and beginning to be documented in college sports (think Penn State), and oh yes, this just in, in the Boy Scouts — will these aspects of the trance also slide downhill?
I saw somewhere, recently, a report that pedophilia is at the bottom of everything. True?
Religiosity slides worldwide, plummets in scandal-hit Ireland
 A crucifix is seen at the central cemetery in Vienna (LEONHARD FOEGER, REUTERS / August 8, 2012) |
Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of the RED C Research company in Dublin that conducted the Irish poll, cited two factors that put Ireland just behind Vietnam as the country where religious feeling fell off most steeply.
“Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said, referring to the repeated revelations of child sexual abuse by priests that have gravely damaged the image of Roman Catholicism there.
“Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion,” she said. “We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.”
The countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent). The most convinced atheists were found in Japan (31 percent), Czech Republic (30 percent) and France (29 percent).
AFRICA MOST DEVOUT REGION
Identifying with a faith tradition did not always equal religiosity. Of the 51,927 people surveyed, 97 percent of the Buddhists, 83 percent of Protestants, 80 percent of Hindus and 81 percent of Catholics described themselves as religious.
The average dropped to 74 percent among Muslims and only 38 percent among Jews, the survey said.
Africa topped the list of most devout regions of the world, with 89 percent calling themselves religious. After that came Latin America (84 percent), South Asia (83 percent) and the Arab world (77 percent).
North Asia came in the least religious at 17 percent, followed by East Asia at 39 percent. North America reported 57 percent religiosity, Western Europe 51 percent and Eastern Europe 66 percent.
Religious attachment ran high in what the survey called global flash-points — mostly Muslim Iraq (88 percent), Pakistan (84 percent), Afghanistan (83 percent) and Palestinian territories (65 percent).
The survey, now being issued by the member companies in the network, offered no analysis of its results other than providing figures supporting a decades-old trend of religiosity dropping in most countries as economic development progresses.
It was not clear why Vietnam, where the communist government has allowed some religious freedom but also harassed some faith groups in recent years, led the world in the drop in religiosity.
Britain was not included in the survey because of technical problems when it was carried out from last November to January, Mooney said.
(Reporting By Tom Heneghan; Editing by Michael Roddy)
