> Erik Moeller wrote:
> > I'm not sure they will suit you:
> >
> > Bahism, 6.1 mio.
> > Buddhism, 323.9 mio.
> > Christianity, 1928 mio.
> > - catholics 968 mio.
> > - protestants 396 mio.
> > Hinduism, 780.5 mio.
> > Islam, 1099,6 mio.
> > Jewishness, 14.1 mio.
> > Confucianism, 5.3 mio
> > New religions (created after 1950 Hare Krishna, Transcendental
> Meditation),
> > 121.3 mio.
> > Shintoism, 2.8 mio.
> > Sikhs, 19.2 mio.
> > Natural religions, 99.2 mio.
>
> Hmm... how does this account for the population of China? Even if there
> were no other Buddhists in the world, all the natural religions were
> located in China(which I assume would be Taoism), and all Confucists were
> located in China, this would still leave over 0.7 billion Chinese having no
> religion-- has Christianity become the predominant religion in China, or is
> there a large number of athiests?(maybe Maoists are under-reporting their
> figures) Do either of these options seem reasonable? I really don't think
> so. If these figures *are* right, it seems that under 80% of the world's
> population even has a religion, supreme being or not. (if I've done my math
> right) However, I don't think not belonging to an organized religion
> implies that one does not believe in a supreme being, or vica versa. So, I
> would say the 95% figure is probably an overshot, and at the very least it
> is not grounded with solid evidence.
I wish to add further to this problem: the idea that you can have
only one religion at a time, seems to be mostly confined to those
religions that originated in the Middle East. Given that, the total
number of people following various religions, plus the total number
of areligious people, ought to be larger than the total world
population.
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