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Extraordinary Claims => Religion General Discussion => Topic started by: Hydra009 on April 24, 2014, 02:37:57 AM

Title: Pew Poll - World Religious Diversity
Post by: Hydra009 on April 24, 2014, 02:37:57 AM
Pew Report (http://www.pewforum.org/2014/04/04/global-religious-diversity/) (complete with handy table (http://www.pewforum.org/2014/04/04/religious-diversity-index-scores-by-country/))

This is great because we get some fairly recent statistics (circa 2010) and data from a ton of countries.

Unfortunately, adherents are broken down into 8 really broad categories:  Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindu, Buddhist, and 3 pretty dubious categories:  Folk Religion (African traditional religions, Chinese folk religions, Native American religions and Australian aboriginal religions), Other (everyone else) and Unaffiliated (atheists, agnostics or nothing in particular).  Yay!  We kinda sorta have our own category!

A couple things that immediately stand out:
* Lots of Muslim countries (and quite a few Christian countries) aren't very big on religious diversity.  Lots of ~99% countries.  Yikes.  It's a pretty safe bet that they didn't get that way by accident.  The Middle East in particular really sticks out.  South America, too.
* China is waaay more diverse than I thought.  A slim majority of Unaffiliated with large minorities in Folk Religion and Buddhist.  Even quite a few Christians (it's only 5%, but it's 5% of over a billion)
* Hinduism trails off really abruptly.  Large majorities in India and Nepal, slim majority in Mauritius, and sizable minorities to practically nonexistent elsewhere.
* Judaism trails off even more abruptly.  There's Israel and then there's single-digits everywhere else.  Sure, the US has a large Jewish population, almost matching Israel in absolute numbers, but relative to the population as a whole, it's actually very small minority of the U.S. population.
* Unaffiliated.  My bros.  Mad props to Czech Republic, Estonia, Japan, and Hong Kong. (not you, North Korea.  Nobody likes you)  Europe's a little lower on that scale than I'd expect it to be, with a lot of countries below even the U.S.  Get it together!
Title: Re: Pew Poll - World Religious Diversity
Post by: pioteir on April 24, 2014, 02:47:33 AM
Poland borders with Czech republic. That's gotta count for something.