God is very important in my life because some of His more excitable followers keep trying to blow me up.

The fecundity of a nation does not track its religiosity within Europe. I would imagine that it does worldwide though, considering the population growth in African & Islamic countries.

Hasn't religion always appealed more to the old than the young? I am not aware of any specific studies from the past, but my impression from reading works from the 19th century forward has been that in the U.S. and Europe religious belief and church involvement have traditionally increased with age, and that the elderly have always been the most religious age group of all.

In churches of various denominations, a common tendency is for young people to drift away when they grow up and leave their pasrents' influence, and then to drift back to church as they grow older.

jack, the generalization does not hold to all societies today. in societies where everyone is religious, everyone is religious, young or old. this is particularly true in africa and muslim countries.

I am skeptical that "more religious" = "more God". Perhaps what we are seeing is that the practically non-religious (those to whom religion plays little or no practical part in their lives) are now claiming to be nominally non-religious, while the numbers of practically religious are growing? This would explain the seeming contradiction in worldwide trends, and describes what I know to be going on in the Jewish world: The number of "orthodox" Jews are growing, while fewer "non-orthodox" Jews are religious.

Islamic societies may have more religiously inclined populations than other societies. But there is also massively more pressure to feign Islamic religiosity in these societies. Saudi Arabia forbids all religious belief/unbelief except Sunni Islam, and harsh apostasy laws apply in many other Islamic countries. Who knows what the figures would look like if these pressures were removed.

I have a hunch that religious belief may be waning in Iran. In this article http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8314126.stm you can read the thoughts of Grand Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri on the recent election crisis in Iran. Am I the only reader who detects in his call for reform a fear that Islam is losing adherents among the young?