Over at Island of Doubt James Hrynyshyn says:
As far as I can tell, North Carolina's no different from the rest of America when it comes to religion. About a tenth of the population is free of religious conviction....
Well, I was pretty sure that there is a statistically significant difference between most Southern states and the rest of the country in regards to these things, so I decided to check out the data in detail. The US Religious Landscape Survey allows me to see what proportion of each state's population are atheists; that is, they don't believe in God. Unfortunately the margin of errors are relatively big because of small sample sizes from the unbelievers for most states, so I wanted an outside "check," and luckily the American Religious Identification Survey has state-by-state breakdowns as well. But, their breakdowns are for those with "No Religion," a category where the rule of thumb is only 1/3-1/2 are atheists. Out of curiosity I plotted the number of atheists on the X axis vs. the nonreligious on the Y axis.
The geographic patterns are interesting. Note that the West has many nonreligious, or those who are not affiliated. In contrast, parts of the Northeast have a great number of atheists, but lack of affiliation is relatively rare in comparison to someplace like Washington or Wyoming. The American South is a relatively distinctive cluster as well, with low levels of atheism and high rates of affiliation. The Midwest is a bit more diverse, but you can also see a discernible cluster there, with similar rates of affiliation as much of the Northeast but lower rates of atheism. The raw data is below the fold....
| Does not believe in god | Has no religious affiliation | |
| Vermont | 9 | 22 |
| Oregon | 9 | 21 |
| Connecticut | 9 | 12 |
| Rhode Island | 9 | 15 |
| New Hamsphire | 9 | 17 |
| Massachusetts | 8 | 16 |
| Maine | 8 | 16 |
| Colorado | 8 | 21 |
| New York | 7 | 13 |
| California | 7 | 19 |
| Washington | 7 | 25 |
| Washington DC | 6 | 13 |
| Iowa | 6 | 15 |
| Nevada | 6 | 20 |
| Arizona | 6 | 17 |
| Maryland | 6 | 13 |
| New Jersey | 6 | 15 |
| Florida | 6 | 12 |
| Virginia | 5 | 12 |
| South Dakota | 5 | 8 |
| Delaware | 5 | 17 |
| North Dakota | 5 | 3 |
| New Mexico | 5 | 18 |
| Idaho | 5 | 19 |
| Michigan | 5 | 15 |
| Pennsylvania | 4 | 12 |
| Ohio | 4 | 15 |
| Wyoming | 4 | 20 |
| Wisconsin | 4 | 14 |
| Illinois | 4 | 14 |
| Montana | 4 | 17 |
| Kansas | 4 | 15 |
| Minnesota | 3 | 14 |
| South Carolina | 3 | 7 |
| Missouri | 3 | 15 |
| Utah | 3 | 17 |
| Indiana | 3 | 16 |
| West Virginia | 3 | 13 |
| Louisiana | 2 | 9 |
| North Carolina | 2 | 10 |
| Tennessee | 2 | 9 |
| Oklahoma | 2 | 14 |
| Texas | 2 | 11 |
| Arkansas | 2 | 13 |
| Georgia | 2 | 12 |
| Alabama | 2 | 6 |
| Nebraska | 1 | 9 |
| Kentucky | 1 | 14 |
| Mississipi | 1 | 7 |
Humanities & Social Science
Comments
In Canada, places in the far west like Alberta and British Columbia contain a higher percentage of atheists and other non-religious, but also a higher percentage of evangelical Christians.
Posted by: Thursday | August 29, 2008 11:38 AM
So where are Alaska (where I live) and Hawaii? I'd really be interested to know...
Posted by: OmegaMom | August 29, 2008 2:19 PM
both were not in the american identification survey, so i left them off. but they are here:
http://religions.pewforum.org/maps
Posted by: razib | August 29, 2008 2:30 PM