According to this op-ed piece in The Australian the number of godless people has been on the rise for some time now:
Even so, the percentage claiming no religion is likely to be higher than it was in the 2001 census, when it was a little more than one-fourth, because the numbers of non-believers have been growing steadily since 1971. (I use the term non-believers for convenience; because people don’t believe in God it doesn’t mean they don’t believe in anything.) Even better news is the finding of a new survey that only 48per cent of young Australians (those born between 1976 and 1990) believe in God, though the result is unlikely to be viewed as good news by the Catholic University and the Christian Research Association, which, together with Monash University, commissioned the survey.
So Australia is an obvious choice, but then so are a few other liberal democracies:
Despite the general view that religious belief is on the rise everywhere, the picture around the world is that in nearly all prosperous liberal democracies, atheism is strong.
In Britain, about 44 per cent claim no religion; in France it is 48 per cent; in Canada, 30 per cent; in Sweden, surveys have put the proportion of those who describe themselves as agnostic or atheist at between 46 per cent and 85 per cent. Even in the most religious of Western countries, the US, a 2004 Pew Forum survey found 16 per cent of Americans had no religious affiliation.
The author is being gracious with that last bit about the United States as 16% isn’t exactly anything to brag about. Still, it’s a start and hopefully a trend that will continue to grow as the Fundamentalists attempt to subvert the country.
Found via Tom Morris’ blog.


















In New Zealand’s census 4 out of 10 did not select a religion. Not exactly the same as atheism, but close enough.