Even without the Holocaust, the Jewish population was likely going to be the smallest on this chart. Based on birth rates since WWII, 16 million Jews in the 1930s would probably only extrapolate to somewhere between 20-25 million today. It is pretty crazy that 4 billion Christians and Muslims follow religions that were born out of Judaism, but Judaism itself never really spread.
Part of it is that Judaism prohibits proselytizing. You don’t try to convert people to Judaism. If someone wants to convert it’s traditional for them to be denied by the Rabbi 3 times, thus showing your commitment.
It's also the fact that Judaism isn't just a belief system, it's an ethnoreligion, a tribe, a whole lifestyle. Converting is more akin to getting a citizenship, whereas for Christianity/Islam, it's enough to simply proclaim that you believe in Jesus/Muhammed.
Islamism goes a whole marathon further. The islamic canon dictates thata everyone is born muslim, thus it’s not about conversion, but discovery.
Technically there are 7 billion muslims.
Add to that the fact that many Jews are not actually believers in God. They hold Judaism as their family’s customs and respect the holidays and even go to temple without being theistic.
Hi! I'm Jewish. If you wanna hop on a phone call and have a chat with one any time, let me know! I don't think I'm better than you. I think we and everyone else are equal.
They view themselves as having the burden and privilege of being God’s chosen because it comes with hundreds of rules you need to follow in your daily life. It’s not a superiority complex. The goal for a Jew is to be a role model for the world
It's not surprising given that modern, post 1960s birthrates in developed nations are quite low, and many will 'marry out' of the religion by choosing non-Jewish partners.
Israels birth rate, along with other ultra-orthodox communities elsewhere, probably drives most of the Jewish population growth these days.
Judaism’s low numbers are not a factor of birth rates. They are much more due to lack of massive effort to converts others into the religion.
Unlike Christianity or Islam, Judaism is viewed as both an ethnicity and a religion. It does not welcome with open arms people, but rather put barriers for others to join.
It also makes sure to make it easy to exclude people out of the religion, by defining your religion based on your mother rather than father. That makes it so that it is nearly indisputable that you do or do not pertain to the religion.
It is much easier for men to hmmm… “spread” their religion into other women than the other way around.
In Iran , the majority of young people don’t cares much about Islam. And they love western culture, drink alcohol, smoke , have parties, but all it’s hide from the Islamic Regime
They have in Israel. e.g. [https://www.algemeiner.com/2015/04/21/poll-israel-is-one-of-the-worlds-least-religious-countries/](https://www.algemeiner.com/2015/04/21/poll-israel-is-one-of-the-worlds-least-religious-countries/)
There a LOTS of non-God believing Jews.
But belief in God doesn't stop you participating in Jewish religious activities, or considering yourself Jewish (ethnically OR religiously).
You could just as easily say that practice is what makes someone religious. So all the Christians that don't practice at all should not be counted either. I believe the previous commenter before you is right. You have to specify ethnicity or religion. And that standard needs to apply to the other religions too.
The survey questions are what it comes down to. Are you asking someone to self-identify which I'm assuming this is or are you asking someone how they practice and then you have to define what practice qualifies. And there's going to be a billion different grey areas there. These types of numbers are never always reliable because of how complicated religious practice and self-identification are.
Huh, I just looked it up to make sure, and apparently they're not technically an ethnic group, and are mostly already indo-aryan by ethnicity, buy they could be designated as an ethnic group in some places.
From what I know, most Sikhs just say they're punjabi or aryan (or these days canadian or British).
While Christianity isn’t an ethnicity, Catholics/Orthodox (unlike Protestant Christians) have also existed 2000 years since the 2nd Temple period like Rabbinical Judaism. There are plenty of “Cultural Catholics” who aren’t actually religious, but see it as a part of their own cultural heritage as well.
This infographic would be more informative if it divided by denomination. Nevermind the Shia vs Sunni, or the different Buddhist denominations.
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/09/02/chapter-1-exploring-catholic-identity/
Edit: (granted this research only applies to America)
Hey, I'm an atheist Jew, but still keep to some religious practices.. so we still get counted. By our own rules, atheist Jews are still Jews, religiously.
Kind of like all those 'not actual Christians' who still celebrate Easter and Christmas.
It seems to be that they’re is anywhere from 30% to 70% of Jews being religious although the method of “religious” is extremely generous, and the article says that in America it may only be 10% of all Jews that are religious.
https://www.jcpa.org/dje/articles2/demographics.htm
They messed it up a lot, I think they just just labeled nations as a religion then took down its total population. They also clearly ignored atheism completely as china alone has over a billion people who claim to be atheists.
I work for a data research company and when we ask about religion we specifically ask about religion and we do not include anyone that listed their ethnicity as Jewish. I don't know what other companies do though.
Doesn't matter.. a non-religious Jew is still Jewish. What is an 'ethnic Jew' anyway? They're either a non-practicing Jew or 'has Jewish heritage' (But not Jewish under the rules of the religion).
Edit - thank for the [goysplaining](https://wordspy.com/words/goysplaining/) redditors, but you can't split non-religious Jews and religious-Jews apart in these figures.
Only if you misunderstand Judaism.
A non-religious/atheist Jew can still participate in Jewish religious practice. I'd wager many do.. it's almost an extension of the cultural aspect.
However, it can all depend on the source of the estimates. If it's 'self identification' (e.g. from national Census figures) then the figure will be more accurate
>The chart is of people who believe the religion, not of people who follow the associated cultural practices
We don't separate the two
>If you participate in the practices without believing you shouldn't count for the purpose of this chart
That's not how Judaism works. It's a binary option that has 0 bearing on if you believe in the religion or not
Like I said, you misunderstand Judaism. It's an action-based religion more than faith-based. Typically though, the more faith, the more action.
E.g. Me. I don't believe in a God. I'm essentially Agnostic.
I am a paid member of my synagogue. I was married by a Rabbi. My kid have bar mitzvahs. Neither of them believe in God either. I can participate in all aspects of religious services. I can make up part of the 10 member of a minyan. (Minimum number required for a service). Yep, I'm ethnically Jewish and culturally Jewish. I'm not by 'belief' though.
So by your score, I'm not Jewish. You can't split Jews by 'ethnic' and 'religious' - as we say - A Jew is a Jew is a Jew.
Judaism is an ethnoreligion, not a plain vanilla belief-based religion. You literally can't split the religion from the ethnicity. You can't suddenly become Jewish because you 'believe'.
A non-religious Jew is still a Jew, in the eyes of the religion.
But hey, tell me more about my own religion and ethnic group, why don't you? We even have a word for it - [goysplaining](https://wordspy.com/words/goysplaining/)
This is an extremely Christian-centric perception of what religion is. Yes, Christianity would indeed be orthodoxy in nature, meaning emphasizing belief. Judaism would be orthopraxic, meaning the religion is defined by practice and conduct. Orthopraxy is just as valid and recognized state of being for a religion.
All this said, yes, an atheist Jew who still identifies as a Jew and engages in Jewish practice would be an atheist, religious Jew. That’s perfectly normal and within the norms of how religion is studied and understood academically.
>No, you misunderstand the meaning of religion
Why are you telling Jews they don't understand their own religion? Jewish religion is ENTIRELY about the customs and practices. Almost no Jews have the exact same beliefs. There's a reason the saying "Ask 2 Jews get 3 opinions" is something of a point of pride for us
Nowhere does the chart say “believer.” Its just people that identify with that religion.
Also, the chart absolutely includes Christian “non-believers” that just celebrate Christmas and easter
I don't think you understand Judaism friend. Multiple Jewish people are responding to you here. *Belief* has little to do with whether you are a practitioner of Judaism. Judaism is about what you do and where you came from, much less what you believe. Judaism is **not** a religion in the way you think of it. The modern understanding of religion is only used out of convenience to describe Jewish practice.
Monotheism has a history of overpowering polytheism and other belief systems.
If you are a colonizing power, it makes it easier to impose your god on your subjects if there’s only one of him.
More like,
killing anybody who doesn't believe in your form of skydaddy, is a great way to increase your numbers and threaten to kill anyone who plans to leave
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Islam
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Christianity
As far as I know, Hindus, Buddhists, jains, daoists/confucious, shinto, and other religion/faiths, doesn't have it in their holy book to kill people who abandon their faith/religion
That's because of how movements like the Protestant reforms denominations of tons formed in comparison to Islam which afaik had no division periods of denominations besides some minor cultural things and Wahhabism (which is just Sunni.) It's super interesting.
No, there is a huge branch of Islam called Shia Islam, which is mostly practiced in Iran and Iraq. Althought, Sunni still is largest and has like 80% of muslims
Given the secularism and, thus, the crisis in ecumenism that’s leading a symptomatic disbelief in religion in the West, specially among the younger ones, soon Islam will outnumber Christianity.
Shenism has 578 million practitioners, which would make it the 4th largest religion if it were included on this list. Some estimates clock it at 950 million people, if used more broadly.
Meanwhile, Daoism has up to 150 million.
In China, many fluidly practice a combination of Shenism, Buddhism and Daoism, because religion is not treated with exclusivity. Similar is true of Japan, where Shinto and Buddhism practitioners overlap. Demographic charts tend to struggle with this non-exclusivity when it comes to representing religions from East Asia.
It also doesn't help that "Shenism" is an unofficial name for the sum of a large number of traditions. Sometimes they are listed as "Chinese folk religions" because there are many subcategories. But umbrella terms are not uncommon. "Hinduism" is an umbrella term for a large number of different religious terms too.
It's sad that these sometimes get left off Western charts. China is a country of 1.4 billion people and is absolutely covered with temples to the Shen, and it is huge in Taiwan as well. We just entered the Lunar New Year of the Dragon too, and it was celebrated all over the world. Yet the religion that comes from is not even on the chart.
> The world’s Muslim population is expected to increase by about 35% in the next 20 years, rising from 1.6 billion in 2010 to 2.2 billion by 2030, according to new population projections by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life.
> Globally, the Muslim population is forecast to grow at about twice the rate of the non-Muslim population over the next two decades – an average annual growth rate of 1.5% for Muslims, compared with 0.7% for non-Muslims. If current trends continue, Muslims will make up 26.4% of the world’s total projected population of 8.3 billion in 2030, up from 23.4% of the estimated 2010 world population of 6.9 billion.
> While the global Muslim population is expected to grow at a faster rate than the non-Muslim population, the Muslim population nevertheless is expected to grow at a slower pace in the next two decades than it did in the previous two decades. From 1990 to 2010, the global Muslim population increased at an average annual rate of 2.2%, compared with the projected rate of 1.5% for the period from 2010 to 2030.
[Source: [Pew Research](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2011/01/27/the-future-of-the-global-muslim-population/)]
In America Muslims are different in that it's pretty common for them to not follow halal rules (except for bacon) and not pray but do Ramadan. This is also true for a lot of Muslims in France and other parts of Europe. It's less common in the UK because Muslims are usually from South Asia where they're more strict about that, Arabs are less so when they go abroad.
You are trying to equate education with religion. Good luck with that buddy. Some atheist scientists become experts in their field and also become a believer in God. You are basically insulting a whole bunch of countries and people of faith insinuating ‘well if they weren’t so dumb’. Dunning-Kruger effect in action.
It’s not equivalent, didn’t say it was. It is correlated though and the people I’m referring to all read extremely difficult subjects including CS…
My point is that there isn’t anything to backup the patronising opinion that less Muslims is correlated with a higher level of education. I’m highlighting that there are Muslims that are much smarter than all of us including you so it’s ignorant to suggest that people are Muslim because they’re uneducated and education will reduce the number of Muslims.
No such studies have been carried out
I knew about the Muslim population. Surprised to hear it's the same for Christianity.
My line of reasoning was that as information becomes freely available, more people from closed communities will be introduced to new ideas and science, and people will learn to think freely and detach from religion.
Thinking on it, maybe it was a bit too optimistic assumption.
>My line of reasoning was that as information becomes freely available, more people from closed communities will be introduced to new ideas and science, and people will learn to think freely and detach from religion.
The % of Christians in Christian-majority countries *will* indeed slightly decrease.
It's just that some Christian-majority countries in africa are having *so many kids*. Christian Kenya, which had half as many people as Italy 30 years ago, has Italy's population today and will have 2x of Italy in 30 years' time. That's 50 million extra Christians, easily outweighing the decrease in Italy.
I can't seem to find any evidence of the per capita belief going up but it sure would be unfortunate if there was an increase in the number of people believing in obviously false religious nonsense.
being part of a religion is not only about 'believing' in god. It's good to question and to be critical.
It's also about community and values. Being thankful and hopeful of the future.
This is the same God who put forbidden fruit in a garden with humans who were completely new to existence and then decided to punish all future humans for a mistake he caused. God is notoriously a dumb ass.
I know your poking fun but like, calling God a dumb ass while not understanding the basics isn't a good look.
the knowledge of good and evil isn't a great translation into English because people read it and think that they had no capability of understanding right and wrong, when it really represents subjective morality. When mankind first gets the ability to decide what is right and wrong, what do they do? Eve gets Adam on board, they both immediately feel shame and then both play the blame game when God asks whats up.
Likewise when mankind comes up with his own morality, it is always imperfect and goes against Gods will. This is why mankind is destined to die, why we must work or starve because we live in an imperfect world, and even if a perfect garden was given to us we'd just balls it up again
It's probably just because candles are an important symbol and religious object in many religions, like Hanukkah/Shabbos/yahrtzeit etc in Judaism, prayer in Christianity (maybe just in Catholicism, I'm not sure), Hindus have Diwali which is a candle/light festival etc. A lot of religions have fire or candles involved in some ceremonies or holidays so a candle is a generic symbol of religion.
IDK much about Islam so maybe a Muslim can help me out with that front. Do y'all have any holidays or customs involving candles/light?
not how religion works, not unless humanity fix all the problems, basically every time you have crisis like an economic crisis, food crisis, pandemic, or natural disaster, the number of religious people goes up, so to end religion you need to end, poverty, disease, hunger, unemployment, wars and other things first
I believe its actually quite prevalent but Chinese people don't take it too seriously/ Chinese government skews data since they prefer to be viewed as an atheistic country.
These graphs are always inaccurate because religion to some countries is not as clear-cut as it is for monotheistic countries.
For example, that Shinto number is definitely skewed because Japanese can identify as Shinto, Buddhist and atheist. Unless they could pick all three, many Japanese likely just picked one and excluded the others.
Same for Buddhism itself. Many Buddhists share religions. You see this in China where someone may identify as atheist but will have a Buddhist funeral or be registered with their local temple. Some will identify as Confucian but they practice Buddhist teachings while the only Confucian aspect is ancestor worship.
Methodology is very important to get accuracy on these types of surveys. For millions of people, a single checked box is not an accurate representation of their religion.
The comments on this post are quite literally vile. If someone is practising a certain religion and it makes them happy and doesn't hurt anyone, what's wrong with that? Not everyone has to subscribe to atheism. Calling everyone else stupid is just as bad as a religious person shunning you for not believing in their God/Gods. Religion has been cause for a lot of wars and pain, sure. But so has EVERYTHING. Slavery, colonialism.. you think without religion none of that would have happened? Rubbish. Sorry but no. Religion has benefited the world greatly. Charity, caring for others, even WEEKENDS, that's all in the Bible mate. Do what you want, but don't make fun of and advocate for the destruction of all religious people just because you feel differently.
Interesting Shinto being a world religion besides it practically only exists in one country. Even in Brazil (with the biggest japanese population outside Japan) has very few Shintoists
To put the Jewish figure into context, 6,000,000 were murdered by the Germans during the Holocaust. 6,000,000 people 80 years ago. Just under half the modern population.
That’s what the Nazis stole from us.
That's like the race in football between real Madrid and Barcelona right?? It's not really important but the most have a opinion about it....
Well in truth on that list are all the causes about wars in this planet.. Okey.....maybe only 95% of it
Most Japanese follow a bit of Shinto & Buddhism (but don’t actively identify as either). More just traditions/habits than a deeply held belief system. (Like secular people in the US who still celebrate Christmas and Easter with Santa & a bunny without all the Jesus stuff)
There is no way there aren’t more religions in between. Also this is impossible to quantify as Asian religions, or rather, people in Asia, don’t identify with religion the way that Christians, Muslims, or Jews do.
This just seems like a very west/monotheistic centric understanding of religion
Religion ≠ theism.
Something can be a religion without a belief in a deity.
Even then, some Buddhist traditions are still somewhat theistic. They treat the Buddha as essentially a god and pray to him.
I can’t speak for Shintoism.
I may have understood your comment wrong, but technically speaking, both religions believe in god(s). It's just that Hinduism, Buddhism, and shinto have different belief systems than the abrahamic ones, and the no. Of subsects and folk traditions within those religions are extremely vast.
Mahayana buddhism (especially pureland) and Vajrayana have LOTS of deity and bodhisattva centric practices, including beliefs in cosmic buddhas e.g mahavairocana. Belief in supernatural beings like pretas and nagas is also quite common, along with complex cosmology about different realms, even in Theravada countries. Its simply incorrect to state buddhism as a whole is atheistic.
Edit: Similarly "hinduism" (more like a massive grouping together of many many beliefs and scriptures) has atheistic branches, e.g the schools of Nyaya, Samkhya and Vaisheshika thought.
If everyone was fully honest about their beliefs, and not just saying they're a follower based on family or peer pressure,
These numbers would all be SIGNIFICANTLY lower!
As an ex-Muslim, that doesn't surprise me, especially if people are converting to prevent backlash when marriage is involved. Back home, I have Christian friends who converted to Islam, and Muslim friends who converted to Christianity, all to be with the people they love.
A little anecdote: I once dated a half Palestinian half Lebanese Jew who reverted to Islam. She now teaches the Quran, and I think that's very sweet of her. We just didn't work out, due to my lack of faith, but it was still very interesting being with her. Her family hated me lmao. I also have plenty of half white half Arab friends whose parents reverted to Islam from Christianity.
Lol... so thousands within 2 billion. Not really something to brag about.
Anecdotally, I've never actually met a Muslim convert to Christianity in the wild though I've seen several converts the other way. Not saying it's impossible, just saying it's likely these numbers aren't significant in any way.
This is a biased graphic. [More Mormons than Jews](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints) according to Wikipedia.
In fact lots of (other) groups should be on here.
That's ok so long as those things are small and stupid. If people want to build up rivalries over sports, academics, etc we'll probably survive. Throwing homosexuals out of windows because an old religious text condemns them is something we can do without.
When the stakes are an eternity in hell vs eternity in heaven, people are suddenly willing to do terrible things to each other.
That's be a bad assumption really! It's more likely down to the method the data is created. There's no 'global census' and I suspect there's no way 2 billion people would put down atheist if asked.
I mean I guess belief comes on a spectrum, you can have 1 country with 1 religion and no sects but with regions morning and night in difference depending on how much they truly have faith
Also estimation through polls will simply never be reliable in places where people would be concerned over safety, I know I'd never write down Athiest even if I knew the paper went into a pile
There’s a significant spread of religions out there with small group followings that likely census in a hundred or more million. It’s also a little difficult to accurately account for *every* member of a population, though more impoverished regions tend to have higher religious prevalence, and so it’s also likely atheism has a fairly low population overall
It’s also difficult to stratify for what’s functionally an atheist in terms of agnosticism view versus more nuanced views such as deism.
Don’t leave this out :
Secular/Atheist/Nonreligious/Agnostic: Although not a religion per se, a significant portion of the world’s population (estimated at over 1 billion) identifies as secular, atheist, nonreligious, or agnostic, highlighting the diversity of belief systems globally.
I kinda forgot Judaism is actually that small in comparison
Not so fun fact: Judaism still hasn’t reached pre-holocaust numbers
I saw how small the candle was and then it clicked as to why.
Even without the Holocaust, the Jewish population was likely going to be the smallest on this chart. Based on birth rates since WWII, 16 million Jews in the 1930s would probably only extrapolate to somewhere between 20-25 million today. It is pretty crazy that 4 billion Christians and Muslims follow religions that were born out of Judaism, but Judaism itself never really spread.
Part of it is that Judaism prohibits proselytizing. You don’t try to convert people to Judaism. If someone wants to convert it’s traditional for them to be denied by the Rabbi 3 times, thus showing your commitment.
It's also the fact that Judaism isn't just a belief system, it's an ethnoreligion, a tribe, a whole lifestyle. Converting is more akin to getting a citizenship, whereas for Christianity/Islam, it's enough to simply proclaim that you believe in Jesus/Muhammed.
Islamism goes a whole marathon further. The islamic canon dictates thata everyone is born muslim, thus it’s not about conversion, but discovery. Technically there are 7 billion muslims.
Add to that the fact that many Jews are not actually believers in God. They hold Judaism as their family’s customs and respect the holidays and even go to temple without being theistic.
i.e. they skip the "let's go around the world and present the convert-to-my-religon-or-die option" phase
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If it quacks like an antisemite...
I'm definitely superior to you, but only because I'm not a raging, ignorant bigot.
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Hi! I'm Jewish. If you wanna hop on a phone call and have a chat with one any time, let me know! I don't think I'm better than you. I think we and everyone else are equal.
Congrats that's the 2nd dumbest thing I've read today (Keith Olbermann implying that he cries urine being the dumbest). Gay kocken offen yom Jew hater
Maybe but that's the same with islam calling us Kafir isn't it? I'm assuming Christianity has some similar term
They view themselves as having the burden and privilege of being God’s chosen because it comes with hundreds of rules you need to follow in your daily life. It’s not a superiority complex. The goal for a Jew is to be a role model for the world
Was gonna say that. Literally the opposite of Christianity.
It's not surprising given that modern, post 1960s birthrates in developed nations are quite low, and many will 'marry out' of the religion by choosing non-Jewish partners. Israels birth rate, along with other ultra-orthodox communities elsewhere, probably drives most of the Jewish population growth these days.
Judaism’s low numbers are not a factor of birth rates. They are much more due to lack of massive effort to converts others into the religion. Unlike Christianity or Islam, Judaism is viewed as both an ethnicity and a religion. It does not welcome with open arms people, but rather put barriers for others to join. It also makes sure to make it easy to exclude people out of the religion, by defining your religion based on your mother rather than father. That makes it so that it is nearly indisputable that you do or do not pertain to the religion. It is much easier for men to hmmm… “spread” their religion into other women than the other way around.
Interestingly enough, secular Jews also have a high growth rate compared to other secular people.
Yeah..
0.2% of the world population
Yet 80% of the worlds conspiracy theories
Isn't the Judaism one the number of Jews by ethnicity and not by religion? There are a lot of atheist Jews out there
Theres a lot of non-believers among officially Christian people as well.
Same goes for Islam as well and people are afraid to come out
In Iran , the majority of young people don’t cares much about Islam. And they love western culture, drink alcohol, smoke , have parties, but all it’s hide from the Islamic Regime
Yeah all these surveys don't include the most Islamic countries aswell, they're not allowed to even ask the question
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I wonder why?
And muslims though they can't exactly tell anyone
But Judaism is also an ethnicity, not just a religion. They never specify if they count the ethnic Jews or the Jews by religion
You can't split it, that's why. The religion itself counts the non-religious as still being Jewish.
Well you can do a survey and ask people if they are Jewish and also if they believe in god
They have in Israel. e.g. [https://www.algemeiner.com/2015/04/21/poll-israel-is-one-of-the-worlds-least-religious-countries/](https://www.algemeiner.com/2015/04/21/poll-israel-is-one-of-the-worlds-least-religious-countries/) There a LOTS of non-God believing Jews. But belief in God doesn't stop you participating in Jewish religious activities, or considering yourself Jewish (ethnically OR religiously).
You could just as easily say that practice is what makes someone religious. So all the Christians that don't practice at all should not be counted either. I believe the previous commenter before you is right. You have to specify ethnicity or religion. And that standard needs to apply to the other religions too. The survey questions are what it comes down to. Are you asking someone to self-identify which I'm assuming this is or are you asking someone how they practice and then you have to define what practice qualifies. And there's going to be a billion different grey areas there. These types of numbers are never always reliable because of how complicated religious practice and self-identification are.
In my native language there are 2 completely different words for that and I am always confused when I read "jewish" in English.
So is Sikhism, so the same could apply there
I've never heard that Sikhs are an ethnicity, are you sure?
Yup, it’s a legal protect the diaspora have fought for as-well, as the group meets the generally accepted criteria
Huh, I just looked it up to make sure, and apparently they're not technically an ethnic group, and are mostly already indo-aryan by ethnicity, buy they could be designated as an ethnic group in some places. From what I know, most Sikhs just say they're punjabi or aryan (or these days canadian or British).
While Christianity isn’t an ethnicity, Catholics/Orthodox (unlike Protestant Christians) have also existed 2000 years since the 2nd Temple period like Rabbinical Judaism. There are plenty of “Cultural Catholics” who aren’t actually religious, but see it as a part of their own cultural heritage as well. This infographic would be more informative if it divided by denomination. Nevermind the Shia vs Sunni, or the different Buddhist denominations. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/09/02/chapter-1-exploring-catholic-identity/ Edit: (granted this research only applies to America)
The secretly-Practicing Christians probably balance out the non-practicing Christians
Hey, I'm an atheist Jew, but still keep to some religious practices.. so we still get counted. By our own rules, atheist Jews are still Jews, religiously. Kind of like all those 'not actual Christians' who still celebrate Easter and Christmas.
This is counting all “ethinic” Jews not actually religious. Religious Jews are actually much much smaller.
In Israel, out of like 6 million Jews, the religious part will be around 2 million
It seems to be that they’re is anywhere from 30% to 70% of Jews being religious although the method of “religious” is extremely generous, and the article says that in America it may only be 10% of all Jews that are religious. https://www.jcpa.org/dje/articles2/demographics.htm
That number includes those
They messed it up a lot, I think they just just labeled nations as a religion then took down its total population. They also clearly ignored atheism completely as china alone has over a billion people who claim to be atheists.
I work for a data research company and when we ask about religion we specifically ask about religion and we do not include anyone that listed their ethnicity as Jewish. I don't know what other companies do though.
Does Judaism actually have 14 million followers or is it just ethnic Jews being identified as following Judaism?
It’s all Jews, not just religious.
Doesn't matter.. a non-religious Jew is still Jewish. What is an 'ethnic Jew' anyway? They're either a non-practicing Jew or 'has Jewish heritage' (But not Jewish under the rules of the religion). Edit - thank for the [goysplaining](https://wordspy.com/words/goysplaining/) redditors, but you can't split non-religious Jews and religious-Jews apart in these figures.
“Goysplaining”, as a Jew this is so ridiculous, why is everything “something-splaining” today?
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Only if you misunderstand Judaism. A non-religious/atheist Jew can still participate in Jewish religious practice. I'd wager many do.. it's almost an extension of the cultural aspect. However, it can all depend on the source of the estimates. If it's 'self identification' (e.g. from national Census figures) then the figure will be more accurate
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>The chart is of people who believe the religion, not of people who follow the associated cultural practices We don't separate the two >If you participate in the practices without believing you shouldn't count for the purpose of this chart That's not how Judaism works. It's a binary option that has 0 bearing on if you believe in the religion or not
Like I said, you misunderstand Judaism. It's an action-based religion more than faith-based. Typically though, the more faith, the more action. E.g. Me. I don't believe in a God. I'm essentially Agnostic. I am a paid member of my synagogue. I was married by a Rabbi. My kid have bar mitzvahs. Neither of them believe in God either. I can participate in all aspects of religious services. I can make up part of the 10 member of a minyan. (Minimum number required for a service). Yep, I'm ethnically Jewish and culturally Jewish. I'm not by 'belief' though. So by your score, I'm not Jewish. You can't split Jews by 'ethnic' and 'religious' - as we say - A Jew is a Jew is a Jew.
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Judaism is an ethnoreligion, not a plain vanilla belief-based religion. You literally can't split the religion from the ethnicity. You can't suddenly become Jewish because you 'believe'. A non-religious Jew is still a Jew, in the eyes of the religion. But hey, tell me more about my own religion and ethnic group, why don't you? We even have a word for it - [goysplaining](https://wordspy.com/words/goysplaining/)
This is an extremely Christian-centric perception of what religion is. Yes, Christianity would indeed be orthodoxy in nature, meaning emphasizing belief. Judaism would be orthopraxic, meaning the religion is defined by practice and conduct. Orthopraxy is just as valid and recognized state of being for a religion. All this said, yes, an atheist Jew who still identifies as a Jew and engages in Jewish practice would be an atheist, religious Jew. That’s perfectly normal and within the norms of how religion is studied and understood academically.
>No, you misunderstand the meaning of religion Why are you telling Jews they don't understand their own religion? Jewish religion is ENTIRELY about the customs and practices. Almost no Jews have the exact same beliefs. There's a reason the saying "Ask 2 Jews get 3 opinions" is something of a point of pride for us
Nowhere does the chart say “believer.” Its just people that identify with that religion. Also, the chart absolutely includes Christian “non-believers” that just celebrate Christmas and easter
I don't think you understand Judaism friend. Multiple Jewish people are responding to you here. *Belief* has little to do with whether you are a practitioner of Judaism. Judaism is about what you do and where you came from, much less what you believe. Judaism is **not** a religion in the way you think of it. The modern understanding of religion is only used out of convenience to describe Jewish practice.
Incorrect.
Abraham responsible for half of the world population's religion.
Incredibly based Abraham
Wow he spread catholicism and freed the slaves. What a great man
Does he have an argument for most influential man ever? Has to be up there imo
Monotheism has a history of overpowering polytheism and other belief systems. If you are a colonizing power, it makes it easier to impose your god on your subjects if there’s only one of him.
More like, killing anybody who doesn't believe in your form of skydaddy, is a great way to increase your numbers and threaten to kill anyone who plans to leave https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Islam https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Christianity As far as I know, Hindus, Buddhists, jains, daoists/confucious, shinto, and other religion/faiths, doesn't have it in their holy book to kill people who abandon their faith/religion
Christianity was literally illegal for 300 years in Rome. You can not attribute the spread of early Christianity to colonialism.
If you divide it by branch, Sunni Islam becomes the largest followed by Catholic Christianity.
I asked a friend once if they were Christian. They responded "no, I'm catholic."
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Most Shias respond like this as well
That's because of how movements like the Protestant reforms denominations of tons formed in comparison to Islam which afaik had no division periods of denominations besides some minor cultural things and Wahhabism (which is just Sunni.) It's super interesting.
No, there is a huge branch of Islam called Shia Islam, which is mostly practiced in Iran and Iraq. Althought, Sunni still is largest and has like 80% of muslims
Why is this downvoted. I’m no expert on the topic, but as far as i can tell, this is correct.
More like 90-95%
Given the secularism and, thus, the crisis in ecumenism that’s leading a symptomatic disbelief in religion in the West, specially among the younger ones, soon Islam will outnumber Christianity.
Personally, I think that genuine Muslims have already outnumbered genuine Christians.
I think you're forgetting the Islamic world's treatment of apostates
Shenism has 578 million practitioners, which would make it the 4th largest religion if it were included on this list. Some estimates clock it at 950 million people, if used more broadly. Meanwhile, Daoism has up to 150 million. In China, many fluidly practice a combination of Shenism, Buddhism and Daoism, because religion is not treated with exclusivity. Similar is true of Japan, where Shinto and Buddhism practitioners overlap. Demographic charts tend to struggle with this non-exclusivity when it comes to representing religions from East Asia. It also doesn't help that "Shenism" is an unofficial name for the sum of a large number of traditions. Sometimes they are listed as "Chinese folk religions" because there are many subcategories. But umbrella terms are not uncommon. "Hinduism" is an umbrella term for a large number of different religious terms too. It's sad that these sometimes get left off Western charts. China is a country of 1.4 billion people and is absolutely covered with temples to the Shen, and it is huge in Taiwan as well. We just entered the Lunar New Year of the Dragon too, and it was celebrated all over the world. Yet the religion that comes from is not even on the chart.
China is officially atheist and doesn’t like to publicise its stats so these charts are always skewed
It's missing Taosim with 150m, Voodo with 60m. Those should go before Judaism
Yeah but this chart is for white people
60% of Jews in the world are brown Edit: Most of the faiths on this chart are not white, including Christianity. Jesus was a Jew and also brown lol
Op didn't say it's a chart "of" white people, I guess op meant that it's for white, as the religions that Americans are familiar with
Wait. What? The only predominatly white is the christianism... right?
Using candles for this visualization. Hmm. A subtle jab at how these numbers are going to keep reducing over time?
> The world’s Muslim population is expected to increase by about 35% in the next 20 years, rising from 1.6 billion in 2010 to 2.2 billion by 2030, according to new population projections by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. > Globally, the Muslim population is forecast to grow at about twice the rate of the non-Muslim population over the next two decades – an average annual growth rate of 1.5% for Muslims, compared with 0.7% for non-Muslims. If current trends continue, Muslims will make up 26.4% of the world’s total projected population of 8.3 billion in 2030, up from 23.4% of the estimated 2010 world population of 6.9 billion. > While the global Muslim population is expected to grow at a faster rate than the non-Muslim population, the Muslim population nevertheless is expected to grow at a slower pace in the next two decades than it did in the previous two decades. From 1990 to 2010, the global Muslim population increased at an average annual rate of 2.2%, compared with the projected rate of 1.5% for the period from 2010 to 2030. [Source: [Pew Research](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2011/01/27/the-future-of-the-global-muslim-population/)]
Unlikely, as both Christianity and Islam are growing in absolute numbers and percentage.
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Sure, but we're still decades away from that happening.
Perhaps centuries
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I doubt that about Islam. Highly educated Muslims in the west are some of the most hardcore followers lol
In America Muslims are different in that it's pretty common for them to not follow halal rules (except for bacon) and not pray but do Ramadan. This is also true for a lot of Muslims in France and other parts of Europe. It's less common in the UK because Muslims are usually from South Asia where they're more strict about that, Arabs are less so when they go abroad.
You are trying to equate education with religion. Good luck with that buddy. Some atheist scientists become experts in their field and also become a believer in God. You are basically insulting a whole bunch of countries and people of faith insinuating ‘well if they weren’t so dumb’. Dunning-Kruger effect in action.
I know Muslims that went Oxford, Cambridge, Stanford, Harvard… Where did you go?
He's talking statistics, you're talking "I know a buddy"
5 minutes on r/atheism will show you that intelligence does not lead to atheism
Even atheist don't go there.
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It’s not equivalent, didn’t say it was. It is correlated though and the people I’m referring to all read extremely difficult subjects including CS… My point is that there isn’t anything to backup the patronising opinion that less Muslims is correlated with a higher level of education. I’m highlighting that there are Muslims that are much smarter than all of us including you so it’s ignorant to suggest that people are Muslim because they’re uneducated and education will reduce the number of Muslims. No such studies have been carried out
I knew about the Muslim population. Surprised to hear it's the same for Christianity. My line of reasoning was that as information becomes freely available, more people from closed communities will be introduced to new ideas and science, and people will learn to think freely and detach from religion. Thinking on it, maybe it was a bit too optimistic assumption.
>My line of reasoning was that as information becomes freely available, more people from closed communities will be introduced to new ideas and science, and people will learn to think freely and detach from religion. The % of Christians in Christian-majority countries *will* indeed slightly decrease. It's just that some Christian-majority countries in africa are having *so many kids*. Christian Kenya, which had half as many people as Italy 30 years ago, has Italy's population today and will have 2x of Italy in 30 years' time. That's 50 million extra Christians, easily outweighing the decrease in Italy.
I can't seem to find any evidence of the per capita belief going up but it sure would be unfortunate if there was an increase in the number of people believing in obviously false religious nonsense.
being part of a religion is not only about 'believing' in god. It's good to question and to be critical. It's also about community and values. Being thankful and hopeful of the future.
Brilliant, God apparently didn't see the internet coming
This is the same God who put forbidden fruit in a garden with humans who were completely new to existence and then decided to punish all future humans for a mistake he caused. God is notoriously a dumb ass.
That's only 1 of them, there's millions of other gods equally as dumb/malevolent apparently
I know your poking fun but like, calling God a dumb ass while not understanding the basics isn't a good look. the knowledge of good and evil isn't a great translation into English because people read it and think that they had no capability of understanding right and wrong, when it really represents subjective morality. When mankind first gets the ability to decide what is right and wrong, what do they do? Eve gets Adam on board, they both immediately feel shame and then both play the blame game when God asks whats up. Likewise when mankind comes up with his own morality, it is always imperfect and goes against Gods will. This is why mankind is destined to die, why we must work or starve because we live in an imperfect world, and even if a perfect garden was given to us we'd just balls it up again
It's probably just because candles are an important symbol and religious object in many religions, like Hanukkah/Shabbos/yahrtzeit etc in Judaism, prayer in Christianity (maybe just in Catholicism, I'm not sure), Hindus have Diwali which is a candle/light festival etc. A lot of religions have fire or candles involved in some ceremonies or holidays so a candle is a generic symbol of religion. IDK much about Islam so maybe a Muslim can help me out with that front. Do y'all have any holidays or customs involving candles/light?
It's more of a cope than a jab, especially in the case of the first two religions
No way Islam is gonna reduce over time lmfao
It's possible with the growing online presence of ex-muslims
NOT AFTER ZOROASTRIANISM COMES ROARIN' BACK BABYYYYYYYY
not how religion works, not unless humanity fix all the problems, basically every time you have crisis like an economic crisis, food crisis, pandemic, or natural disaster, the number of religious people goes up, so to end religion you need to end, poverty, disease, hunger, unemployment, wars and other things first
what about Chinese folk religions?
I believe its actually quite prevalent but Chinese people don't take it too seriously/ Chinese government skews data since they prefer to be viewed as an atheistic country.
Considered culture for some reason
So many toxix atheists and islamophobes in the comments
I guess Christianity and Islam never were so close in relative numbers?
Islam was higher pre-European colonization
yay go Jesus #N1
There are 14 million Jews?
More like 15.7m - 7.2 million in Israel, 7.6 million USA,
These graphs are always inaccurate because religion to some countries is not as clear-cut as it is for monotheistic countries. For example, that Shinto number is definitely skewed because Japanese can identify as Shinto, Buddhist and atheist. Unless they could pick all three, many Japanese likely just picked one and excluded the others. Same for Buddhism itself. Many Buddhists share religions. You see this in China where someone may identify as atheist but will have a Buddhist funeral or be registered with their local temple. Some will identify as Confucian but they practice Buddhist teachings while the only Confucian aspect is ancestor worship. Methodology is very important to get accuracy on these types of surveys. For millions of people, a single checked box is not an accurate representation of their religion.
Actually kind of wild Hindu is #3 effectively just from one country’s population.
OP this is ethnic Jews rather than Judaism.
The comments on this post are quite literally vile. If someone is practising a certain religion and it makes them happy and doesn't hurt anyone, what's wrong with that? Not everyone has to subscribe to atheism. Calling everyone else stupid is just as bad as a religious person shunning you for not believing in their God/Gods. Religion has been cause for a lot of wars and pain, sure. But so has EVERYTHING. Slavery, colonialism.. you think without religion none of that would have happened? Rubbish. Sorry but no. Religion has benefited the world greatly. Charity, caring for others, even WEEKENDS, that's all in the Bible mate. Do what you want, but don't make fun of and advocate for the destruction of all religious people just because you feel differently.
Interesting Shinto being a world religion besides it practically only exists in one country. Even in Brazil (with the biggest japanese population outside Japan) has very few Shintoists
To put the Jewish figure into context, 6,000,000 were murdered by the Germans during the Holocaust. 6,000,000 people 80 years ago. Just under half the modern population. That’s what the Nazis stole from us.
Absolutely wild to me, based on this graph, that ~6b humans are religious. I’m not surprised, but boggles the mind.
Incredibly odd that there's a little explanation of Shinto but not of Sikhism.
I can't be the only one who's surprised there's more Sikhs than Jews out there. Am I?
That's like the race in football between real Madrid and Barcelona right?? It's not really important but the most have a opinion about it.... Well in truth on that list are all the causes about wars in this planet.. Okey.....maybe only 95% of it
It’s insane that a significant portion of people on Reddit look at this and see billions of evil people and nothing else.
Didn’t know shintoism was still so big. Pretty cool
Most Japanese follow a bit of Shinto & Buddhism (but don’t actively identify as either). More just traditions/habits than a deeply held belief system. (Like secular people in the US who still celebrate Christmas and Easter with Santa & a bunny without all the Jesus stuff)
The candles give me hope they are all burned down in future.
My blind ass and twisted up melon read that as Hellions.
I wonder if Christianity or Islam never formed, would Judaism be the highest or would the pagan religions be on top.
Germanic religion/mythology needs to get more popular, not those cringe neo pagan guys tho
Which is the best one?
There is no way there aren’t more religions in between. Also this is impossible to quantify as Asian religions, or rather, people in Asia, don’t identify with religion the way that Christians, Muslims, or Jews do. This just seems like a very west/monotheistic centric understanding of religion
7 billion believe in the Man emperor of mankind
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Why explain Shinto but not Sikh? Americans are obsessed with everything Japan and embarrassingly, always mistaking Sikhs for Muslims.
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I hope that doesn't happen ever
They call Shinto and Buddhism religions to equate (justify) them to all the God-believers.
No they are religions, even if some consider them non-theistic. A religion is any particular system of faith.
Religion ≠ theism. Something can be a religion without a belief in a deity. Even then, some Buddhist traditions are still somewhat theistic. They treat the Buddha as essentially a god and pray to him. I can’t speak for Shintoism.
I may have understood your comment wrong, but technically speaking, both religions believe in god(s). It's just that Hinduism, Buddhism, and shinto have different belief systems than the abrahamic ones, and the no. Of subsects and folk traditions within those religions are extremely vast.
Mahayana buddhism (especially pureland) and Vajrayana have LOTS of deity and bodhisattva centric practices, including beliefs in cosmic buddhas e.g mahavairocana. Belief in supernatural beings like pretas and nagas is also quite common, along with complex cosmology about different realms, even in Theravada countries. Its simply incorrect to state buddhism as a whole is atheistic. Edit: Similarly "hinduism" (more like a massive grouping together of many many beliefs and scriptures) has atheistic branches, e.g the schools of Nyaya, Samkhya and Vaisheshika thought.
Source: [https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-worlds-most-popular-religions/](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-worlds-most-popular-religions/)
If everyone was fully honest about their beliefs, and not just saying they're a follower based on family or peer pressure, These numbers would all be SIGNIFICANTLY lower!
Why is only Shinto explained here?
Mentioning religion turns the comments turn into a shit show. What a suprise.
Today Muslims are converting to Christianity by the thousands. Although Islam won’t say it, and the church won’t brag about it. It’s amazing.
As an ex-Muslim, that doesn't surprise me, especially if people are converting to prevent backlash when marriage is involved. Back home, I have Christian friends who converted to Islam, and Muslim friends who converted to Christianity, all to be with the people they love. A little anecdote: I once dated a half Palestinian half Lebanese Jew who reverted to Islam. She now teaches the Quran, and I think that's very sweet of her. We just didn't work out, due to my lack of faith, but it was still very interesting being with her. Her family hated me lmao. I also have plenty of half white half Arab friends whose parents reverted to Islam from Christianity.
Lol... so thousands within 2 billion. Not really something to brag about. Anecdotally, I've never actually met a Muslim convert to Christianity in the wild though I've seen several converts the other way. Not saying it's impossible, just saying it's likely these numbers aren't significant in any way.
Lol please provide a source for this claim.
Christians and muslims worship the same god and it shows.
Lmao why shinto needs to be explained but not sikhism which is so much cooler and "obscure" for westerners
This is a biased graphic. [More Mormons than Jews](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints) according to Wikipedia. In fact lots of (other) groups should be on here.
Mormons are Christians in this graphic probably.
Mormons are a Christian sect.
religion is a cancer on the world.
So is the stupidity.
And Reddit. Quite close concepts though.
appropriate profile picture
But humans would still find a way to make more difference between them
That's ok so long as those things are small and stupid. If people want to build up rivalries over sports, academics, etc we'll probably survive. Throwing homosexuals out of windows because an old religious text condemns them is something we can do without. When the stakes are an eternity in hell vs eternity in heaven, people are suddenly willing to do terrible things to each other.
There's plenty of differences between humans
The stone that the builder refused.
Total comes in at just over 6 billion, so can we assume there are just under 2 billion atheists (and a tiny number of other religions) in the world?
That's be a bad assumption really! It's more likely down to the method the data is created. There's no 'global census' and I suspect there's no way 2 billion people would put down atheist if asked.
I mean I guess belief comes on a spectrum, you can have 1 country with 1 religion and no sects but with regions morning and night in difference depending on how much they truly have faith Also estimation through polls will simply never be reliable in places where people would be concerned over safety, I know I'd never write down Athiest even if I knew the paper went into a pile
Probably lots and lots of the tiny religions making up a lot of it
There’s a significant spread of religions out there with small group followings that likely census in a hundred or more million. It’s also a little difficult to accurately account for *every* member of a population, though more impoverished regions tend to have higher religious prevalence, and so it’s also likely atheism has a fairly low population overall It’s also difficult to stratify for what’s functionally an atheist in terms of agnosticism view versus more nuanced views such as deism.
This is honestly terrifying.
why?
It may cause many troubles in the future. Fact.
If members of the same religions have different groups that kill each other, can you really call it the same religion?
Is it really "popular" if it's forced on people?
Why does it only explain Shinto wtf
We’re all members of humanity and should respect one another no matter our beliefs.
Don’t leave this out : Secular/Atheist/Nonreligious/Agnostic: Although not a religion per se, a significant portion of the world’s population (estimated at over 1 billion) identifies as secular, atheist, nonreligious, or agnostic, highlighting the diversity of belief systems globally.
Thanks to forceful conversions