You mean like the Buddhists, the Daoists, the Christians, etc? Oh yeah, very atheist, I’m sure…
1.1 billion, let’s go.
Additionally, you have just handwaved the notion that many, indeed most, of the people who claim to belong to a group, don’t believe the spiritual claims.
Here is a WIN / Gallup poll that found 67% of Chinese describe themselves as atheist.
Puzzlegal - I am not ignoring you, but at this point, I do not want to add anything to the OP / explanation above, because of the contentious turn in the discussion. Its been a hard time during Covid and have lost a few close relatives and IMO this adversarial turn in the discussion feels surreal to me.
fair enough.
I’m not really sure what you are trying to get at with this discussion. I feel like most everyone I interact with makes moral decisions without consulting any religion. (Not everyone, but a large majority). I don’t know that you need a majority of a country to answer these questions – a majority of a community seems like a large enough sample set to give meaningful information.
That is interesting, but I would want to know how the actual questions were phrased before I considered that it overruled the other data that say different. For instance, is it phrased in such a way that it amounts to “Do you believe in God, yes or no?” where “God” there is clearly understood to be a monotheistic deity? And then everyone who says “No” is marked as “atheist”.
It’s exactly the opposite for me, people around me reference religious motivations for things all the time. Most frequently in areas of charitable giving and social justice.
I have the same experiences as puzzlegal, especially in the case of social justice. I’ve worked for many years for two different Catholic non-profit social institutions, one educational institution for helping socially handicapped youths to get a foot into the working world, and one workshop for physically and/or mentally handicapped people. Though both institutions are nominally under the lead of the Catholic church, all the employees (which are mostly social workers) I’ve met always acted in a secular fashion. In twenty years, I’ve not witnessed once someone making a religious remark, let alone say a prayer, in any situation. The only time you were reminded that it was Catholic was when a new division was dedicated, some priest said a quick prayer and sprayed some holy water and the chairman (who was never from the clergy) spoke some introductory words stressing that it was a Christian institution. But in everyday work life, you wouldn’t have guessed that, it could as well have been secular institutions.
Now I cannot look into the heads of people, and I’m sure some of my colleagues worked there out of a motive of Christian neighborly love, but they never let it be known and they didn’t differ from those who did it out of secular motives. I think the general motivation was simply a general social consciousness, independent from religion.
I’m not saying people drop and pray over every donation, but they certainly reference things like parables or Bible verses when discussing their giving, and the Muslims reference making zakat often.
I believe you, but as you know I live in a different country, and have never witnessed such behavior.
It’s not inconsistent with other data. That’s the whole point.
A large number of people will tick “China folk religion” or Buddhist or whatever in China that have no actual belief in deities; they just self-identify with the group and traditions.
I knew you’d ignore this cite, because you also ignored what I have been telling you about living in China. You also ignored your own cite when it told you a mere 300m even identified as “China folk religion” (and what that implies about the number of non-religious, being as CFR is by far the biggest religion).
Simply because: you’ve made a WAG, and it wouldn’t matter if everyone in China were to march in now and tell you you are wrong. Your WAG is the only truth.
I did nothing of the sort, but if you read my last response as “ignoring”, feel free, I’m done responding to … whatever it is you’re doing, as it’s clearly not going to be productive, and moreover isn’t desired by the OP.
I don’t doubt you. I, too, know a some people like that, and i know there are whole communities of such people. Heck, I’ve even volunteered with groups that are majority-religious in terms of using their religion as a moral touchstone. For instance, my synagogue’s “immigration justice” group is heavily informed by Jewish moral reasoning. (We started as a Syrian refugee resettlement group, and successfully sponsored a few Syrian families in the US before the door closed to refugee entry. 
)
But the community i spend most of my time in is majority atheist. And it’s a big majority. And they engage in moral reasoning, and talk about moral issues, and never reference religion or God.
My claim is that the existence of such communities is enough to discuss the impact of “lack of religion”, and it’s not necessary to prove that this or that nation is majority non-religious to examine how life works, and how people make moral decisions, in the absence of religion.
I totally agree with that.
Are there any reliable surveys that ask something along the lines of
“How important to you is the idea of God, when making decisions about your life?”