Divorce rates for different faiths (Buddhism, America, atheist, agnostic)

[rojse]

Looking at the local paper today, I saw some surprising statistics regarding divorce, so I thought I would share.

It seems that the lower divorce rates are lower among atheists and agnostics than religious people. The highest rates of divorce are among conservative Protestants.

The research on the internet I found was completed by the Barna Research Group, a conservative Christian research group.

I found a few link on the web that discusses this:
Welcome to The Barna Group!
(official Barna Website)

Atheism & Divorce: Divorce Rates for Atheists are Among the Lowest in America - Why Do Conservative Christian Defenders of Marriage Get Divorced Most? (much conciser and clear, and, for the main part, mostly unbiased in reporting)

What do you all think?

[Somkid]

Buddhism is very low as well but perhaps that's because we fall into the atheist group.

[rojse]

Originally Posted by Somkid

Buddhism is very low as well but perhaps that's because we fall into the atheist group.

Although Buddhists are atheists, they are also religious, are they not?

Still, an interesting observation. Thank you.

[Somkid]

Some but not most, I wouldn't say my order is religious nor are the Thai monks Buddhism is more of a philosophy and a way of life than a religion we still have a hard time defining it but I don't like the word religious, I'm more apt to quote Chairmen Mao and say "religion is poison" to spite the fact I am a Buddhist. If I think about it I come up with ideas like love and compassion as religion and there is no supreme power that is showing these things to humanity.

[Terrywoodenpic]

I wonder what the statistics show in other countries.

Going into any sort of relationship or other activity with a failure rate between 25% and 30% seems to be a very poor outcome. and divorce is failure.

[rojse]

Originally Posted by Terrywoodenpic

I wonder what the statistics show in other countries.

Going into any sort of relationship or other activity with a failure rate between 25% and 30% seems to be a very poor outcome. and divorce is failure.

What about a job application? What is the success rate for that? Or a lawsuit - that only has a 50% success rate.

[Fluffy]

First off: Wow! A survey that actually states its methods at the end. How rare is that? A 3% difference between atheists and most Christian groups isn't very significant at the 95% confidence level since there is an error margin of 1.9%. However the 8% difference between atheists and Baptists is a bit more so.

Originally Posted by Terry

Going into any sort of relationship or other activity with a failure rate between 25% and 30% seems to be a very poor outcome. and divorce is failure.

I'm pretty certain that if we look at the "failure" rate of any sort of relationship then the percentage will be much much higher. Either way I don't think that is a reasonable way of looking at it because different activities have different acceptable failure rates. Whilst it might be your view that marriage should have a certain failure rate and even that divorce should be viewed as a failure, neither of those things are given.

[Kungfuzed]

Could it be that some religions have more pressure to get married before having sex? Perhaps they would take their time more and be less inclined to marry the wrong person if they were allowed to live together first.

[Sunstone]

There are learning curves to love, sex, and relationships. For some reason, we don't often take into account that an overall 50% first time success rate for something as complex as a marriage might be pretty good given how much we must learn to make a marriage work.