Backroom Poll. The (major) Religious Affiliation in Backroom...

[The Wizard]

Not really, the 2005 poll: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Europe showed that only France and the Low Countries have large numbers of atheists, and even France polls less atheists than theists. The only countries that actually poll more atheists than theists were the Czech Republic and Estonia; both former Warsar Pact countries.

So....

No, atheists do not make up "a very large" proportion of the European population.

You base yourself on the Eurobarometer poll, with its extremely vague set of questions ("spirit or life force"... what?). You would get totally different results with different questions, which makes such a poll very suspect. I mean really dude, compare the Eurobarometer to the Gallup poll's results in the same article and the problem becomes clear right away.

Also, note that I said "a very large group", out of which you made "a very large proportion", which means something different. In my book, if more than a third of any country's population is areligious (which, moreover, is a term that includes a lot more than atheism, so again please don't take my words out of context), that's a very large group, considering the fact that such vast numbers of areligiosity are unprecedented in all of human history.