Seeker630

for Defiant Heretic:

I agree with you. I am also a former Roman Catholic. I suspect that the reason Catholics deconvert at a somewhat higher rate than Protestants (if indeed that is the case), is that it has a more rigid thought and ritual processes than plain vanilla Protestants like Methodists or Church of Christ. The Catholics simply give you more to question, as it were.

But getting back to the numbers thing; I have often wondered how I would respond to such a poll. Depends I think on exactly how the question is worded. If the question is :

What religious tradition were you raised in?-------Then I could say Catholic and not be incorrect. The question doesn't address what I'm doing now though.

I have also long been suspicious of how some of these polls and surveys are actually conducted. It's pretty easy to skew the results to say what you want them to say if it's done right. I also have wondered how I would answer a question like:

What religion are you? on a survey.

I consider myself an agnostic atheist, but I also belong to a Unitarian Universalist church. Since all three are correct, any number of people could skew the survey without even knowing it as there is no way of telling whether there is any consistency among such a group when they are all answering the same question.-------assuming of course they are checking off boxes that say "atheist, agnostic or Unitarian", as opposed to filling in a blank space freehand. Unitarians can be an amazing variety of other things----many are atheistic or agnostics, Jews, liberal Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans and other Pagans, pantheists, and others.

I think I could be confusing to a telephone interviewer.

KitKit

Major Religions of the World
Ranked by Number of Adherents (2002)

Christianity: 2 billion

Islam: 1.3 billion

Hinduism: 900 million

Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: 850 million

Buddhism: 360 million

Chinese traditional religion: 225 million

primal-indigenous: 150 million

African Traditional & Diasporic: 95 million

Sikhism: 23 million

Juche: 19 million

Spiritism: 14 million

Judaism: 14 million

Baha'i: 6 million

Jainism: 4 million

Shinto: 4 million

Cao Dai: 3 million

Tenrikyo: 2.4 million

Neo-Paganism: 1 million

Unitarian-Universalism: 800 thousand

Rastafarianism: 700 thousand

Scientology: 600 thousand

Zoroastrianism: 150 thousand

(not sure if this came from a reliable source or not, but i thought it was interesting none the less.)

Shake

Well KitKit, it's encouraging to see that according to your list, non-believers are the 4th largest group on the planet. Although it should be pointed out that agnosticism/atheism is not a religion.

Xians will stand behind that 2,000,000,000 number until you start telling them who all makes up that group. IIRC, they include JW's, Mormons, and other smaller groups that many mainstream Xians don't consider Xian. Some certain fundy groups consider only their particular flavor to be True Xians (TM).

Rational BAC

True enough Shake but-----------

I think that you will find that true about all major religions. How many divisions to Islam? To Judaism.?

The only thing important is that if you think you are Christian, then you are. If you think you are Muslim, then you are. If you think you are a Jew, then you are.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

PS---Don't know about Buddhism or Hinduism or Shintoism ---------------------as far as many different sects contained within the main religion. I suspect there are though.

Anybody know?
-----------------------------------------------------------------

PSPS-----------As we all know there are many different "sects" among atheists too. Seems to be a universal human problem to not agree totally about anything at all.

Sometimes I think the human condition as far as spirituality or non-spirituality is somewhat like the French 3rd Republic. Nobody could come to a consensus about anything.

Daleth

And if you think you're not a Jew, your mum will tell you if she is, you are and to shut up about it. Abandon all hope.

But seriously, I wish it were as simple as stated in the OP. Mathematics is a pretty useless language for discussing the behaviors of human beings.

Dal

seebs

Well, no, but it's a good way to describe those people who have "no religious beliefs". (As opposed to people who have religious beliefs, some of whom don't include any gods among those beliefs.)

Bumble Bee Tuna

2. Sunni and Shi'a.

3. Reform, Conservative, Orthodox.


Other religions are not as splintered as Christianity. This isn't to say that all Reform Jews are the same, or that some subsets don't exist (there was recently a topic about wahabbism, a subset of Islam), but these religions are surprisingly unified when compared to Xianity.

-B

Daleth

Not exactly. There's a branch called (maybe?) Progressive, and there are the Hassids (not the same as Orthodox), and there was that whacked out crowd in NY who thought their Rabbi was the messiah until he died a couple years back (what are they called?), and if we're saying a person is whatever religion they call themselves , there are the Jews for Jesus, and then there are the Ethiopian Jews.

There are probably quite a few more sects that I've never heard of. I couldn't even begin to guess how many Muslim sects there are.

Daleth

Bumble Bee Tuna

Well, I grant you that I only speak of what I learned in my Intro to World Religion: Western class fall semester last year- that's how it was taught:

Judaism: 3 branches, with the one major sect of Hasidic Jews among I believe the Conservative branch but otherwise it was a pretty small playing field.

Islam: 2 branches, period, no mention of sects whatsoever, specific point made that Muslims try to be unified and collectively vs. individually decide on their beliefs so as to have unity. The specific point was made that Muslims were hardly divided at all about anything except the Sunni/Shi'a split, and that most Muslims were Sunni anyway, and tried to downplay even that split.

Now if you've got something to show me that says these religions are more splintered than I was taught, by all means show it. But I have at least a reasonable degree of trust for what I learned in class so now I'm a bit torn.

Regardless, I think the point stands. Islam might have some sects, but the way it was taught in my class it appears that Muslims really believe they all count as Muslims, whereas fundie Christians might proclaim that Christianity is the top religion but then also believe that Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Mormons, and Jehovah's Witnesses don't count...this leaves Christianity's numbers much lower...RBAC was trying to claim that this is present in all major religions, and I don't think that's the case.

Basically I want to get on RBAC's case, because he claims to be rational about his religion but every single rational test he comes up with seems to point towards Islam more than it points towards Christianity, yet he doesn't convert to Islam. I like to get on his case about that.

-B

Rational BAC

Don't really have a problem with Islam, athough I don't plan to convert. Jews, Christians and Muslims all have the same God anyway---so what is the point?

If at the pearly gates whoever I meet says "Call me Allah" then I will call Him Allah.