WORLDWIDE, more than eight-in-ten people identify with a religious group.
A comprehensive demographic study of more than 230 countries and territories conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life estimates that there are 5.8 billion religiously affiliated adults and children around the globe, representing 84% of the 2010 world population of 6.9 billion.
The demographic study – based on analysis of more than 2,500 censuses, surveys and population registers – finds 2.2 billion Christians (32% of the world’s population), 1.6 billion Muslims (23%), 1 billion Hindus (15%), nearly 500 million Buddhists (7%) and 14 million Jews (0.2%) around the world as of 2010. In addition, more than 400 million people (6%) practice various folk or traditional religions, including African traditional religions, Chinese folk religions, Native American religions and Australian aboriginal religions. An estimated 58 million people – slightly less than 1% of the global population – belong to other religions, including the Baha’i faith, Jainism, Sikhism, Shintoism, Taoism, Tenrikyo, Wicca and Zoroastrianism, to mention just a few.1
The geographic distribution of religious groups varies considerably. Several religious groups are heavily concentrated in the Asia-Pacific region, including the vast majority of Hindus (99%), Buddhists (99%), adherents of folk or traditional religions (90%) and members of other world religions (89%).
Three-quarters of the religiously unaffiliated (76%) also live in the massive and populous Asia- Pacific region. Indeed, the number of religiously unaffiliated people in China alone (about 700 million) is more than twice the total population of the United States.
The Asia-Pacific region also is home to most of the world’s Muslims (62%). About 20% of Muslims live in the Middle East and North Africa, and nearly 16% reside in sub-Saharan Africa.
Of the major religious groups covered in this study, Christians are the most evenly dispersed. Roughly equal numbers of Christians live in Europe (26%), Latin America and the Caribbean (24%) and sub-Saharan Africa (24%).
Reblogged this on Fluid Theology and commented:
Just some current stats on what percentage of the world is still not convinced by the lack of evidence for any god.
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Would be interesting to see how these figures have changed over the last 3 years.
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Obviously it can’t be coincidental, since there’s no such thing as ‘coincidence’: (“84% of world have religious belief);but I think it’s noteworthy that almost exactly the same percentage people have an ‘average’ or below-average IQ.
This might well be the strongest evidence yet of an Intelligent Designer, mightn’t it ?
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Remembering maths, average is 50 % so at least 34% of people who believe in God are above average. That is assuming all atheists are above average …… BWAHAHAHA sorry couldn’t keep a straight face,
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You remind me of someone, Dom; it’s a worry.
(But there’s hope; / grew out of it.)
HOWEVER, thanks for confirming my comment.
In IQ rankings, ‘average’ is considered to be 100.
Wonderful thing, the English language. 😉
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Will I end up with huge eye brows then ?
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…..If you reconvert to christianity you get an introductory offer of Free Will (Fine-print: ‘though be aware that the offer itself isn’t free ~ it costs one sou l’)
….but the upside, apparently, is that you’re free to choose what size eyebrows you want. 🙂
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“Remembering maths, average is 50 %…”
No offence but either your maths or memory is out of whack.
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What were we talking about ?
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Indoctrination is such a powerful thing…….
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I was thinking that too when I was watching the science channel
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Apparently, though, it’s not exactly working here in the U.S.
Nearly 50% completely reject Darwinism. Go figure.
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Fortunately the USA is a bit of an outlier
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/evolution-vs-wealth/wealth-vs-evolution-jpeg/
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