Well, I presume that some sort of disaster that could set humanity back a couple of hundred years might happen within the next 20 years. That or some sort of opressive religious dictatorship conquering Europe.

hmmm.....religious dictator conquering Europe. Sounds good video game potential.

who is talking about agonistics?  we were talking about religious people ( belief in God ) and atheist people ( dont believe in God or spirit) I love how you have to combine graphs to make your point.

THE FACT STAYS: RELIGION>>>>>>>ATHEISTS in Europe

In 2005 your right. Will have changed yet more since then. Give it 20 years time and the countries which are Christian now will have declined further. Science is being taught in (all?) schools in Europe now. That hasn't always being the case so people never had an alternative to believe in.

@pizzahut451

Well yeah... but atheism is growing much more than religion (which is actually declining) in Europe.

Edit: What FootballFan said.

In terms of year on year growth in Europe I think it goes Atheism , Islam , Hinduism , Buddhism  and Judaism then Christianity- in that order.

FTR, I'm not 100% sure, but I honestly don'think that many European natives actually convert to Islam and Hinduism (maybe to Buddhism cause that seems to be popular). The increase of those religions is actually due to  imigrants from Asia. In a couple of generations, after they've been integrated, they'll most likely become as religious as native Europeans.

From European Values statistics 2008: http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/eb/eb69/eb69_values_en.pdf

"It should also be noted that 27% of respondents in Cyprus, 26% in Malta and 19% in Romania mentioned religion as one of the most important values for them personally, compared with 7% on average for the European Union."

Religion simply isn't widely encouraged in Europe. As sad as it is for it to be the last one standing, as far as Christianity goes, the Roman Catholic church will probably last the longest in terms of any real influence, and they've been working hard on alienating people as of lately.

For scientific purposes belief in some spiritual force might, in some people, come close to a belief similar to one of the religious ones.

However, from an organized religion standpoint, those people don't believe in one of the religions' gods, or at least not in a way that the respective church requires. Basically, from a church point of view, they are heretics or pagans.

In a social or personal aspect their values do not necessarily overlap with those of a certain religion and they might not accept to share a point of view taught by that church. Which btw can be the case for many who do condier themselves believers and belonging to a church, know a few basic things, go light a candle sometime, get married in a church etc but don't otherwise have any interest in the actual teachings of that church.

Notoriously difficult to get actual statistics on this sort of thing, however that is slightly misleading.

This link gives a more in depth view of the actual situation

http://web.archive.org/web/20070610084208/http://www.pitzer.edu/academics/faculty/zuckerman/atheism.html

With interesting statistics such as

"According to Norris and Inglehart (2004), 64% of those in Sweden do not believe in God. According to Bondeson (2003), 74% of Swedes said that they did not believe in “a personal God.” According to Greeley (2003), 46% of Swedes do not believe in God, although only 17% self-identify as “atheist.” According to Froese (2001), 69% of Swedes are either atheist or agnostic. According to Gustafsoon and Pettersson (2000), 82% of Swedes do not believe in a “personal God.” According to Davie (1999), 85% of Swedes do not believe in God."