7th June, 2005
An international poll of attitudes toward religion has found that only 32 per cent of Australians say they have no doubt God really exists compared with 70 per cent of people in the United States, 80 per cent in Mexico and 23 per cent in the United Kingdom.

The statistics were among a number of findings coming out of a recent international Associated Press poll conducted by the Ipsos research group. It involved interviews with about 1,000 people in each of 10 different nations including Australia, the US, Canada, Mexico and South Korea as well as the UK and European nations France, Germany, Italy, and Spain.

The survey found that 75 per cent of people in Australia think religious leaders shouldn’t try and influence government decisions - a result similar to that of other nations involved in the survey.

Fifty-five per cent of Australians said religion was important in their lives compared with 86 per cent in the US and Mexico, 43 per cent in the UK and 37 per cent in France.

Only 26 per cent of Australians said religion was very important in their lives compared with 62 per cent in the US and 18 per cent in the UK.

In Australia, 27 per cent of people identified themselves as Catholic, 16 per cent as Protestant, and one per cent each as Jewish, Muslim or Buddhist. Twenty-four per cent said they had no religion compared with only nine per cent in the US and five per cent in Italy (where 92 per cent of people said they were Catholic).

- DAVID ADAMS