As a follow-up to Irenicus's posting about religion, I've been browsing public opinion on religion in the US and other countries. One especially striking result comes from surveys by the Pew Center on the
differences in values between Americans and Europeans. While Americans are perhaps not surprisingly much more individualistic than Europeans, one other item nearly jumped off the page. When Christians in the surveys were asked if they identified themselves first by their religion or first by their nationality, American Christians were evenly split, with 46% choosing one or the other option. In Britain, Germany, and Spain, only a quarter chose their religion, and in anti-clerical France that figure was a mere eight percent. A majority of Americans (53%) say that a belief in God is a requirement to be a moral person and have good values. In the European countries that figure ranges from a third of Germans to 15-20% in the other three nations.
When surveyed, Americans have always far surpassed most other countries in their expressed belief in God. A
study by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago found just three percent of Americans in 2008 said they did not believe in God. Only Chile, Cyprus, and the Philippines had lower rates of expressed athiesm. Topping the list were respondents in the former East Germany where half claimed to be athiests.
Japan is rather an interesting anomaly. Only 8.7% of Japanese agreed with the statement "I don't believe in God," but the Japanese also had the lowest level of agreement (4.3%) with the statement "I know really God exists, and I have no doubts about it." I suppose that could be read to mean that Japan is largely composed of agnostics, or it could mean that the term "God" does not have the same meaning across cultures, or both.
Americans do not just believe in God; many of them accept the Bible at face value.
Nearly half of Americans say that God created humans in their current form within the past 10,000 years, a figure that has remained rather constant for two decades. The proportion accepting evolution as a process without any form of divine guidance has increased slowly over that period from a mere 9% in 1982 to 16% in 2012. (The remainder agree with the statement that evolution occurred but was guided by God.) Apparently whatever we teach about science in schools is no match for the power of parents and pastors.
Anyone trying to understand America and American politics needs to understand what a religiously devout society my country is. The politics of magical thinking, where raped women can
mysteriously wish away conception, is alive and well, and very powerful, within the supposedly "advanced" nation called the United States.