For the first time, atheists outnumber believers

Do you believe in God? No, was the answer majority of Norewgians have answered. The number of people (Norwegians) who say they believe in God has been going down and has now reached the lowest over the last over 30 years.

According to an annual survey answered by around 4,000 Norwegians revealed that those replying “no” or “don’t know” to the question “Do you believe in God?” now comfortably outweighed those who said “yes”, The independent reported.

According to The Local, 39 per cent said “no” when asked whether they believed, compared to 37 per cent who said “yes”, while the remaining 23 per cent said they did not know.

The number of those saying they do not believe in God has reached an all-time record and eclipsed those who do believe for the first time ever, according to reports.

When the question was first asked in 1985, a full 50 per cent said they believed in God while only one-fifth said they did not.

Jan-Paul Brekke of Ipsos Norway, who led the survey, said that since they started asking 30 years ago “the percentage of those who said they aren’t sure has been about the same”. The figures mark a clear change from just two years ago, when the number of believers versus non-believers was still equal.

In the country’s capital, Oslo, only 29 per cent said they were believers, while the sparsely-populated county of Vest-Agder in the north-west had the most believers at 44 per cent. Mr Brekke noted that not all religious groups were strongly represented in the country-wide assessment, and that ‘God’ was not defined in the question.