No not one
Oh the envy. Iceland Magazine reports that ZERO Icelanders age 25 or younger believe God made the world. ZERO.
Iceland seems to be on its way to becoming an even more secular nation, according to a new poll. Less than half of Icelanders claim they are religious and more than 40% of young Icelanders identify as atheist. Remarkably the poll failed to find young Icelanders who accept the creation story of the Bible. 93.9% of Icelanders younger than 25 believed the world was created in the big bang, 6.1% either had no opinion or thought it had come into existence through some other means and 0.0% believed it had been created by God.
0.000000000000000%
0.000000000000000%?
Not really. This is a poll with a finite sample size, which means a finite probability that it missed some theists by chance. I can’t find the details on this one, but most polls have a margin of error of 1% or more.
PS The sample size was 821 total, so presumably a lot less for the under 25s. That means a probable error of a few per cent.
Yeah,
Oops. Pretty obviously screwed that last post up.
My biggest reservation about this poll is that in any poll of significant size, we should generally expect to see at least one or two people who screwed up and checked the wrong box, or gave the wrong answer, our of sheer carelessness. It makes me worry that there weren’t very many people in that age range.
I know, I just wanted to say 0.0000000000000%. Give or take a few.
I was in Iceland just a few months ago. Fantastic place and lovely people. There is a state tithe on personal tax which goes to religious organisations. There is also significant religious symbolism around the country and the formal goodbye (seldom used in our experience) is Bless Bless, often shortened to bless.
We also had absolutely zero instances in two weeks of anyone mentioning religion, calling on god for praise or thanks and the society ran on lines that appeared as secular as anyone raised in NZ could hope for. In short, there may well be many deeply religious people in Iceland, but they appear to be happy to mind there own business and let society run in a secular manner (barring the tithe :-|).
Oh, citizens under 25. We saw a tiny number. Following the GFC there was apparently a flight of younger working and university aged people to other mostly Scandinavian countries. I could well believe that given that the shops, restaurants and accommodation we went to were almost exclusively operated by people in their 30’s-60’s. The few under 25’s we dealt with were (almost but not quite universally) uncommunicative to the point of morose. A complete contrast to pretty much everyone else.
It’s almost like there’s some weird correlation between not knowing where your next meal is coming from and being loudly religious. The better the social laws, the less godbaggery. But I’m sure it’s just a correlation with no causal connection whatsoever.
I wonder if youth moroseness there is tied to the fact that the other age groups are mostly content. I mean, if they are, how else can you rebel against all those pleased petty bourgeois?
The nitpicking. Oy.
Quixote, the impression I got is a very stable society with very low rate of population/economic growth. I suspect the options for rebellion, creating mayhem or becoming unaccountably rich without hard work are limited. Add to that the winters and the fact the population of the entire country is about that of a decent sized town and I can understand some feeling morose. I loved it, but then I didn’t have to stay for the winter!
“93.9% of Icelanders younger than 25 believed the world was created in the big bang,”
Eh? An ‘F’ for science education in Iceland.
RJW, possibly a spot of poor translation. Hopefully the question was phrased as universe rather than world.
Holms,
Yes, you’re probably correct, I was unfair to the Icelandic education system, which seems to be performing very well indeed. I’ll give the ‘F’ to the journalist.