Britain may be seen as a Christian country but an equal number of people (46 percent) describe themselves as non-believers as Christians, many of whom also believe in fate rather than destiny, a new survey finds.

Five percent of Britons self-identify as Muslims, and there are also significant minorities of Hindus, Sikhs, Jews and Buddhists a YouGov survey revealed March 26.

"Most British people say Britain is - and should be - a Christian country, and self-identified Christians make up around half of the population.

"But it's partly a cultural term - last year we found only 55 percent of self-identified Christians believe there is a God; the year before we found only 23 percent of the total population say they are very (3 percent) or fairly (20 percent) religious," YouGov said.

The YouGov analysis profiles nearly 12,000 people who affiliate with Christianity and a control set of 39,000 British people representative of the whole population reveals some startling juxtapositions in belief.

The survey also found that self-identified Christians are more likely to believe in aliens than the devil, and more likely to believe in fate than in heaven or an eternal soul.

The YouGov analysis profiles nearly 12,000 people who affiliate with Christianity and a control set of 39,000 British people representative of the whole population reveals some startling juxtapositions in belief.                                

Asked to say which of 14 spiritual or paranormal phenomena they definitely do or do not believe in, only 41% of Christians say they definitely believe in a Creator while 18% say they do not.

Christians are more likely to believe in fate or destiny (46 percent definitely believe, 18 percent do not), not necessarily a tenet of Christianity, than either heaven (44 percent believe, 19 percent do not) or an everlasting soul (36 percent believe, 19 percent do not).