Friday, November 24, 2006

Religious "Market Share"

I like ReligiousTolerance.org. They've got a lot of non-judgmental, empirical data for anyone interested in poking around various world religions. This chart on the percentage of global population each religion can claim is pretty neat:



I'm not sure what the takeaway is from it, I just found it interesting to look at. For instance, you might be impressed that Christianity is the largest religion in the world, or you might be surprised that 67% of the world is non-Christian. You might add Christianity, Islam, and Judaism together to get an overall picture of how the Abrahamaic tradition is faring, or you might mock the Wiccans for being so small in numbers (which would be rude, but hey, you're at home in your underwear in front of your computer, what the hell are a bunch of witches going to do to y-- hey, wait, put that wand down and RIBBIT!!!).

edited to add: Wiccans are not, of course, anything like the witches portrayed in the common lingo for the last thousand years, I was just making an admittedly crude joke. I've known a couple of Wiccans and read about them a lot more, and they seem like a sincerely nice group of people.

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