Posted by Jurassosaurus [63.191.8.194 - sdn-ap-014caburbP0194.dialsprint.net] on 30 November 2003 at 02.01.53 ZuluTime:

     
     

Here's some of what it had to say:
     
     

Atheists actually make up less than one-tenth of one percent of the population in many countries where large numbers claim no religious preference, such as the United States (7.5% nonreligious) and Australia (15% nonreligious).
     

Kinda makes one feel special now doesn't it? >:)
     

The highest figure we have for "Nonreligious" is 20% of the world population, or about 1.2 billion: "Over 20 percent of the world's population does not claim any allegiance to a religion. Most are agnostics. Others are atheists, who deny the existence of God." (O'Brien, Joanne & Martin Palmer. The State of Religion Atlas. Simon & Schuster: New York (1993). Pg 41.)
     

I"m not entirely sure I agree with that this O'Brien guy used to define atheism. He makes it sounds as if the existence of a god is a proven fact that atheists just choose to ignore. I suppose it could be worse though, he could have said: Atheists hate god.
     

But such a high figure is difficult to support with current country-by-country statistics, and perhaps reflects Communist-era official government statistics. Most current estimates of the world number of secular/nonreligious/agnostic/atheist/etc. are between 800 and 1 billion.

Estimates for atheism alone range from 200 to 240 million. But these come primarily from China and former Soviet Union nations (especially Russia). ...
     

It appears that the numbers are picking up some. Then there's this:
     

China probably does have the largest number of actual atheists of any country in the world and many Russians clearly remain atheists. But at this point, it is impossible to accurately determine how many of those classified as atheists or nonreligious during Communist-era USSR and by the current Chinese government are actually atheists according to their personal beliefs, and how many are unregistered religious adherents or participants in less-organized traditional systems that are oriented around ancestors, animism, shamanism, etc.
     

So that is certainly interesting. Almost seems like there might still be some hope for mankind.
     

Many people are unaware, for instance, that China has one of the largest, most active Christian communities in the world...
     

So much for hope.
     

In the Western world, Europe is by far the place with the most self-avowed nonreligious, atheists and agnostics, with the nonreligious proportion of the population particularly high in Scandinavia. The Encyclopedia Britannica reports approximately 41 million atheists in Europe.
     

Hmm, Western world created Christianity. Western world now has one of the highest nonreligous populations on Earth.

Coincidence?

The site also features a rundown of the top 10 countries with the most Atheists. It should be noted, though, that the paper that this data was based off of, was not dedicated to finding out relgious affiliation, but rather, government oppression. As such, the stats might be misleading.

All in all, this is a fairly interesting and informative site. It's a good source of religious demography. The site contains some other interesting, though probably entirely useless, trivia such as what Zoroastrianism is.

The site also states that animal rights is a religion. Go figure.