Religion: Believers & Dpubters

Brazilians are the world’s most Godfearing people; Frenchmen the least. The U.S. has only a few more atheists and agnostics than Australia or Canada. These too-sweeping generalities might have been deduced last week from a Gallup poll.

In a sampling of ten nations, pollsters had asked: Do you, personally, believe in God? The replies:

Yes No Don’t Know Brazil 96% 3% 1%

Australia 95 5 —

Canada 95 2 3

U. S 94 3 3

Norway 84 7 9

Finland 83 5 12

Holland 80 14 6

Sweden 80 8 12

Denmark 80 9 11

France 66 20 14

A further sampling of France’s 1,000,000 Communists showed them 64% atheistic, 17% believers, and 19% agnostic.

On the question Do you believe in life after death?, doubt was more widespread. The U.S., with 68% sure of a hereafter and 19% undecided, ranked fifth.

Most U.S. believers, apparently thinking of the afterlife as bliss unalloyed, described their views of it as “complete happiness, joy, peace, quiet.” Other views of the hereafter: “reward for virtue, punishment for sin, heaven or hell”; “dreamlike, disembodied, inanimate, spiritual”; “as described in the Bible.”*

*The Bible contains no clear, undisputed picture of an afterlife.