Second most popular religion?

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
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I am posting in response to the Cecil’s mailbag on the most popular religion. In the article, it claims atheism to be the second most popular “religion.”

The claim, “based” on the Information Please’s Almanac (1998), says there were 1.7 billion atheists in the world at that time. While I did not have access to this actual source, I hunted down their web site and their current Almanac lists the same “top ten” religions the article does. However, atheism is not included in this list. I am assuming what was done is the numbers were added up for the top ten religions, and then subtracted from “current” (of 1998) population yielding the number. This is in error because the article I found on the almanac web site only lists the top ten religions, and not others. Thus, in the remaining 1.7 billion we must include other religious adherents plus atheists.

To make it a little more interesting, I checked the source of Information Please’s Almanac. On adherents.com, the source, I found this current (2002) listing of world religions. It states that “atheism” has about 850 million adherents. However, the web site further states that this category is not synonymous with atheism. Thus, helping me reach the conclusion that the number is fewer than 850 million.

Now, with the earlier error I mentioned aside, I find it hard to follow the research and claim that over half of all the atheists existing in 1998 have since converted to a religion. Thus, I can reasonably conclude this original statistic is in error.

Now, why is this an issue? It’s not until people like these begin quoting you as a source (lower right side of page).

Oh well, you’ve got to love research on the Internet, eh? :slight_smile: Just curious, the 1998 edition of Information Please’s Almanac, was it a hard copy of web?

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Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards, spunk, glad to have you with us.

**Eutychus[/]b may or may not respond. We don’t usually keep track of resources and details of old, old, old Staff Reports.

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the_spunk, please note that the link in question shows the top ten organized religions. Atheists are a generally disorganized bunch (with papers all over their desk and whatnot).

Of course, that doesn’t help us find Eutychus’s actual source for 1.7 billion godless heathens…

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Spunk, I’d guess (and it’s only that) that the figure could’ve included Buddhists as well. There are a lot of them, and they don’t believe in god either. In any case, the comment was intended only as a hypothetical: “Strangely enough, if you count it as religion, atheism is #2 at 1,782,809,000.”

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substatique, Thanks for your comment. I am aware it lists the organized religions. In fact, I agree with the author that these numbers can hardly be exact. However, at the same time, a 900 million difference between 1998 and 2002 is highly suspect for any religion (or lack thereof).

Marley, If he had included Buddhist in the number and he did as I suspect with the addition of the top ten number and subtraction from the population of 1998 then he would have ended up with roughly 2 billion atheists.

You are correct about his statement being hypothetical. However, it is hypothetical in relation to atheism being consider a religion and not the number of atheist. Thus, he is, indeed, making the claim that there were roughly 1.7 billion atheists in the world in 1998.

What makes this research suspect is the dramatic shift in the number of atheists. If we assume his research is sound then in a matter of only 4 years roughly half of all atheists converted to a religion then there would also be a dramatic increase in the numbers of religious adherents. Additionally, if this were the case, I think we’d hear about it from all the religious individuals.

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When Dex alerted me to this query about my report it was my intention to go back and do a follow up report. After all, the piece appeared back in 1999 and my first reaction upon seeing it again was “My God, have I been doing this that long?” But I just have too much on my plate right now. I’m working on the Disney site, trying to get Teemings together, moderating the board, as well as working on future reports on the historical veracity of the Lady Godiva story and the possible identities of the anti-christ; all of which already takes up too much of my valuable masturbating time. So you’ll understand if I have neither the time, interest, or inclination to do an update.

But just so no one thinks I was trying to fudge the figures let me just say a few words about how I did the report. There were basically two steps I followed. A : looking it up in the book and 2 : writing down the numbers. I can assue you that at no time did I do any fancy calculations or arcane mathematics to arrive at the figures I quoted. And I was careful to use the words “IF you consider atheism a religion” as well.

The difficulty seems to be that different bean counters have different ways of counting their beans. Some would only count atheists that specifically declare themselves as atheists. This would naturally decrease the number I reported but I strongly suspect it would decrease the number of Christians as well. I also believe that the case can be made for “functional” atheists where a person does not believe any given religion but does not necessarily align himself with any specific atheist group.

As far as being quoted by the website you mentioned, I’m not really that concerned. When you send your kites up in the air, you can’t always control who’s snapping pictures. Even if the kites are four years old.

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According to the current edition of the World Almanac (which in turn gets its numbers from the Encyclopedia Britannica Book of the Year), there are 2,019,052,000 Christians worldwide (1,067,053,000 Catholics; 345,855,000 Protestants and another 80,644,000 Anglicans; 216,314,000 Orthodox; and 391,856,000 “Independents”; which sub-totals don’t add up to the main total as all sub-groups are not shown, some Christians are members of more than one group, yadda yadda yadda); 1,207,148,000 Muslims (83% Sunni, 16% Shi’ite, 1% other); and 819,689,000 Hindus. There are 771,345,000 “Nonreligious” (“Persons professing no religion, nonbelievers, agnostics, freethinkers, uninterested, dereligionized secularists indifferent to all religion”) and another 150,252,000 “Atheists” (“Persons professing atheism, skepticism, disbelief, or irreligion, including antireligious [opposed to all religion]”)–there seems to be a lot of overlap between the definitions of those two categories, so I think it’s fairly justifiable to lump together the “Nonreligious” and “Atheists”, who then together come in at third place with 921,597,000 members, behind Muslims and ahead of Hindus. “Chinese folk religionists” (“Followers of traditional Chinese religion [local deities, ancestor veneration, Confucian ethics, Taoism, universism, divination, some Buddhist elements”]) and Buddhists vie for a rather distant fourth place with 387,167,000 and 361,985,000 members, respectively, but that definition for “Chinese folk religionists” (“some Buddhist elements”; plus Confucianists–6,313,000–and Taoists–2,670,000–both have separate listings even though “Confucian ethics” and “Taoism” are also both lumped in under the definition of “Chinese folk religion”) shows just how complicated trying to categorize this stuff can get, especially outside of the somewhat more doctrinaire Judeo-Christian-Islamic world.

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A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real people. :wink: