[Thor]

Originally Posted by Itse

Hmm, no.

Finland has a state church, so in a way it's actually further from being an atheist state than the US. It's not even an atheist country.

Sorry I didn't make my point clearly, what I was referring to is the percentage of people who are not religious, atheist and agnostic. These countries have the highest % of that, and thus identified as the most atheistic nations in the world.

Theres even a book which makes the case that a state church which is found in most EU/Nordic nations helped create this backlack of non belief. The book is Society without God, what the most irreligious nations can teach us.

To put it very shortly, this rather common confusion comes from the difference in Christianity. In here, religion is a very personal thing, private even. It's often considered impolite to inquire into other people's religious beliefs, and preaching your moralities upon others is in general frowned up, to the point that religious paraphernilia is considered a little odd, except maybe for a simple cross. To an outsider, this can easily look as if people are not religious at all.

Yeah, religious is very private here too in Iceland. The thing is most people's religious views are very vague and too, say an American Christian would seem agnostic. People don't take the bible literally, don't believe in hell, have this vague religious belief that at its core is quite unreligious. The fact is nordic nations just don't really care much about religion, its very much in the background and I for one love that

Finlands humanist group has close ties with us (ismennt.is) in Iceland and we've been very fortunate for all their help and support.

Iceland is in the middle of writing a new constitution to remove the state church and create a true separation of church and state. Reykjavik city was the first to ban priests from coming into elementary schools and preaching to kids, handing out bibles, etc.. This has been a hot topic over the traditions but not really the God part, just the identity of the people; its an interesting twist to what I'm used to in America, people really could care less if people believe in God but they like the traditions.

So the schools can continue to have Christmas events, but people in the majority are against a state church and priests being allowed access to preach to young children in public schools.