The majority of Australians believe in God!

A poll conducted for Fairfax Newspapers (The Age, SMH...) by Nielsen has found that the majority of Australians believe in God.

The survey of 1000 Australians found that 68% of people believe in God.

That is very close to the figure from the Australian census - in 2001 the figure was 68%, with 64% in 2006.

Some people are happy to declare they are atheists - the recent Nielsen poll found that 24% said they didn't believe in 'God or a universal spirit' and 7% were unsure.

The first article below is the main media report.

The second article is an analysis of the poll by journalist David Marr.

One interesting result related to the theory of evolution:
42% of people said they believed in evolution.
23% said they believed in a young earth created by God.
32% said God guided the process over a long period of time.
Among Christians, 38% believed the Genesis account of creation in six days, whilst 47% believed that God designed it over a long period of time.
Meanwhile 89% of atheists believe in darwin's theory of evolution! (From the second article.)

Australians believe in God: poll
AAP, SMH, December 19, 2009,
"A poll has revealed that most Australians believe in God or a similar universal spirit, but a majority also believe in miracles, life after death and angels, and many believe in astrology and UFOs.
The surprising findings from a Nielsen poll for Fairfax newspapers show Australia is a credulous nation, willing to mix and match religious faith with belief in other phenomena.
Although Australians are widely considered to be a secular people, nearly half of the population believe in psychic powers such as extrasensory perception, while 41 per cent believe in astrology.
The research shows that Australians are more religious than we might have thought - 68 per cent of us believe in God or a universal spirit.
But atheists and agnostics also had a strong showing in the national survey of 1,000 respondents, taken early this week.
Almost one in four Australians (24 per cent) do not believe in either God or a universal spirit, and seven per cent are not sure or say they "don't know".....

Faith: What Australians believe in
DAVID MARR, The Age, December 19, 2009.