Two international surveys were conducted during 1991 and 1993 by the International Social Survey Program (ISSP). This is currently located at the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago.
Seven questions were asked in 1991:
God: I know God exists and I have no doubts about it
Afterlife: I definitely believe in life after death
Bible: The Bible is the actual word of God and it is to be taken literally, word for word. A yes answer implies that the subject believes in the inerrancy of the Bible.
Devil: I definitely believe in the Devil.
Hell: I definitely believe in Hell.
Heaven: I definitely believe in Heaven.
Miracle: I definitely believe in religious miracles.
Results are shown below. Appended to the list are:
the results of a survey showing the percentage of persons who said yes to the following question:
In your opinion, how true is this? ...Human beings developed from earlier species of animals.. The results are a measure of belief in human evolution, and disbelief in creation science.
Country God Afterlife Bible Devil Hell Heaven Miracles Evolution United States 62.8 55.0 33.5 45.4 49.6 63.1 45.6 35.4 N. Ireland 61.4 53.5 32.7 43.1 47.9 63.7 44.2 51.5 Philippines 86.2 35.2 53.7 28.3 29.6 41.9 27.7 60.9 Ireland 58.7 45.9 24.9 24.8 25.9 51.8 36.9 60.1 Poland 66.3 37.8 37.4 15.4 21.4 38.6 22.7 35.4 Italy 51.4 34.8 27.0 20.4 21.7 27.9 32.9 65.2 New Zealand 29.3 35.5 9.4 21.4 18.7 32.2 23.1 66.3 Israel 43.0 21.9 26.7 12.6 22.5 24.0 26.4 56.9 Austria 29.4 24.8 12.7 11.1 10.0 20.1 27.4 N/A Norway 20.1 31.6 11.2 13.1 11.4 23.0 17.8 65.0 Great Britain 23.8 26.5 7.0 12.7 12.8 24.6 15.3 76.7 Netherlands 24.7 26.7 8.4 13.3 11.1 21.1 10.2 58.6 W. Germany 27.3 24.4 12.5 9.5 9.3 18.2 22.7 72.7 Russia 12.4 16.8 9.9 12.5 13.0 14.7 18.7 41.4 Slovenia 21.9 11.6 22.3 6.9 8.3 9.5 13.4 60.7 Hungary 30.1 10.6 19.2 4.2 5.8 9.4 8.2 62.8 E. Germany 9.2 6.1 7.5 3.6 2.6 10.2 11.8 81.6
Some observations
* All numbers are in percentages.
* since 1944, the Gallup Poll has been asking Americans whether they believe in God or a universal spirit. The answers have always been 94% or more affirmative. These numbers have been so widely reported in academic articles, and the media that they have been almost etched in stone. However, the ISSP results are under 63%. The wide gap is probably due to the different wording of the question asked. The ISSP requires a degree of certainty of belief that is not present in the Gallup Poll. This shows that many Americans who believe in God are not that certain about their conviction.
[...]
The US is still more religious than many countries, but not to the 91% level that's claimed in South Dakota. Of course it may be that 91% of the people in South Dakota are practicing Christians, but it didn't look that way when we visited the Black Hills a few years ago.
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who wishes z wasn't so cranky about MSHTML tables, but realizes it's not trivial to have a bullet-proof parser for such a thing...)