Cherry Picking Iceland. Not an Atheist Majority

I’m not quite sure where the stats for this meme came from. Iceland doesn’t have a standing army. They did jail some corrupt bankers. Crime rates are among the lowest in the world. There economy is rising. But atheists only make up 10% of the country, while 80% identify as Lutheran.

There currently aren’t any countries that have a majority atheist population. China is the closest with 47% of the population being atheist.

So the foundation of the argument simply doesn’t work as it’s false. There is a bigger issue with the argument though, and that is cherry picking data.

Finding one country that has low crime, is prosperous, is morally good, doesn’t really say anything in general besides things are working there. Trying to find a correlation between a group of people and how the country is doing in general makes little sense as correlation is not causation.

In order to show that atheist countries are better, you’d have to find multiple countries that show this to be true, and that the major factor is atheism. Yet in Iceland, most of the population is Christian. The only country that comes close to being a majority atheist country is China, and they rank number 55 in crime rates.

In sum, the meme simply is wrong as Iceland is predominately Christian, and there are many more factors that come into play apart from the religious beliefs of the people.

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Dustin Written by: