Religion Comes to Davos Forum Who created Davos, and why does it exist? Questions about God and religion were rife at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos this year - providing a philosophical break from the more temporal concerns that tend to dominate the annual gathering of business and political leaders. "Religion is more relevant now than ever," asserted Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, a leader of the Russian Jewish community. Studies around the world show conflicting trends: while Christianity and Islam are showing steady growth in developing countries, the number of people who identify with no religion is on the rise in the richer world. Goldschmidt quickly found himself in a deep debate with Arizona State University theoretical physicist Lawrence M. Krauss that reflected age-old tensions over religion, science and reason. Why believe in explanations that lack evidence, and obsess about a book written by ancients who "didn't know about the revolution of the Earth around the sun," Krauss asked. Narkis Alon, a youthful Israeli social activist on the same panel, countered that the religious instinct in essence required no particular proof. "For me religion is the connection to something higher," she said. Sister Carol Keehan, head of the Catholic Health Association, a group representing more than 600 hospitals around the United States, noted that people all over the world have a need to believe in a higher power. An analysis of more than 2,000 polls, census and other data by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that 84 percent of the world's 6.9 billion people identified with a religion as of 2010. Christians were the largest group with 2.2 billion, followed by Muslims with 1.6 billion. However, the study also found about one-in-six, or 1.1 billion people, have no religious affiliation, making them the third-largest group after Christians and Muslims. The unaffiliated mostly live in Asia, with a majority in China, where the government controls official churches. The debate at Davos reflected a widening gulf within and among nations between the deeply devout and those who identify with no faith. The conflicts can be seen in recent lawsuits in Italy over displaying crucifixes in public schools and another in the U.K. where a marriage counselor cited his religious beliefs when refusing to work with a same-sex couple. Both cases reached the European Court of Human Rights. In the United States, Americans with no religion are becoming as important a constituency to the Democratic Party as religious conservatives are to the Republican Party. The "nones," who overwhelmingly support abortion rights and gay marriage, comprise about a quarter of voters who are registered as Democrats or lean toward the party. Roman Catholic and other religious conservatives have found themselves on the losing side of culture war battles that a few decades ago they could have won. Gay marriage has been legalized in Belgium, Spain, Canada, Portugal, Argentina and other countries. Standouts remain, not least in Russia, where 20 gay rights campaigners and militant Orthodox Christian activists were arrested Friday in Moscow near the Russian Duma as it overwhelmingly backed a bill that would ban "homosexual propaganda." In Israel, there is a protracted culture war between secular and ultra-Orthodox Israelis, especially in Jerusalem.