Talk:Major religious groups

Talk:Major religious groups/Archive 1

Talk:Major religious groups/Archive 2

Mormon Membership Numbers Are Incorrect

Self-published sources are not viable under Wiki standards. The 12 million world-wide membership number is claimed by the Mormons themselves (ie self-published), but has been proven bogus. The Salt Lake Tribune has released several well documented articles over the past few years showing a world-wide membership around 4 million, and declining. http://www.sltrib.com/search/ci_2886596

The 2000 census in Mexico is a good example. The Mormons claim 1.2 million members, yet the census showed only 205,000. http://www.allamericanpatriots.com/m-news+article+storyid-16344.html

Mexico is just one example, the links show the same pattern of false membership claims across at least a dozen countries. Additionaly, the Salt Lake Tribune aquired through the freedom of information act, the actual statistics provided to the State of Utah under a confidentiality agreement (why would they need one of those?) which showed dramatic differences in membership numbers within the State of Utah, by at least 10%. Recently the Mormon leadership has responded to the Salt Lake Tribune by claiming that the difference in membership was becasue all those people were moving at the time. The Salt Lake Tribune responded by showing that home sales and rental rates could not match the claim.

The Salt Lake Tribune articles show that the Mormons have a habit of falsifying there data. The membership number should be changed to a verifiable source. http://www.sltrib.com/search/ci_2886596. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.107.12.220 (talk • contribs) 18:41, 19 November 2006

All independent sociologists have verified that the numbers are accurately kept according to the disclosed standards that are used. Members are counted according to disclosed and strict criteria. Your references do not at all show what you claim.

1. [1] does not show a decreasing membership, but discusses a decreasing percentage of total population in Utah. Additionally it does not mention world-wide membership at all.
2. [2] the issues of retention and activity in mexico (in fact in all of Central and South America) are well documented and should come as no surprise. There are completely different criteria for the two counts (thus no intelligent person would ever think they would correlate). Additionally, government gathering of religious information is suspect because of possible improper use (for example the US census abandoned gathering information about religions after 1936 - and now Title 13 prohibits the government from requiring answers about religious beliefs or to membership in a religious body).US Code

The common misconception about fastest-growing has not been the case for a few years, but gathered steam from the past when it was the fastest-growing for several years in a row.

Please don't misstate the information going forward. --Trödel 04:36, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

On this site, we use adherents.com as our source. If the neutral, unbiased site lists twelve million, then we use twelve million. The Mormons have 12 million in their records too. I'm sure that if you look, you can find numbers talking about how all religions listed don't actually have this number too. We should continue with precedent of using adherents.com.

I just looked at the articles you listed and found that of the claims you make, only the one about Mexico is correct. Nowhere do you cite a source verifies "Mormons have a habit of falsifying their data;" no where do you cite a statistic supporting a claim that Mormons have been "showing a world-wide membership around 4 million, and declining." The articles simply talk about Utah--not the world

Pahoran513 19:43, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Removed word "Lamaism"

hello, I removed the word "lamaism" from the description of Vajrayana/Tibetan Buddhism, as it is an outdated and inaccurate word to use. Also, it is considered somewhat derogatory by practicing Tibetan Buddhists.

thank you,

K. Jamba — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.96.243.135 (talk • contribs) 04:23, 29 September 2006

Validity?

I think this page is WAY off. The primary source that it sites is a website (adherents.com) which uses sources such as the world christian encyclopedia, etc. You mean to tell me the worlds youngest religion (by a 100 fold) is 33% of the world and the largest of all? Impossible. Islam, Hinduism, and other religions have by far many more followers than Christianity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.81.219.191 (talk • contribs)

Keep in mind that Islam is younger than Christianity. And if you look at any source, Christianity is the largest religious group in the world. Let us speak no more of this. Pahoran513 23:03, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

saying "any" source isn't enough. if "any" source is looked out, then it should be referenced. "Let us speak no more of this." doesn't fit the wikipedia policy Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. I added the unreferenced and verify needed tags to make it more clear.

also i wanted to add Pastafarianism http://www.venganza.org/ if that's not vandalism.

Tsinoyboi 09:17, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

We already have sources referenced in the article. Pahoran513 was simply pointing out that there is approximately zero dispute between various well-recognized sources about these issues. Pastafarianism is not listed in the sources for this article, and does not appear to have a large population of adherents listed in any reliable source, so it should not be in the article. The article is not about listing every possible religion or variant - the article is about major religions, not all religions. There is another page where listing it would be more appropriate - specifically, the List of religions page, and it is in fact already listed there. It may not really be appropriate to list joke religions there either, but that is something to reach a consensus about on that Talk page, not this one. -Wookipedian 05:00, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Growth Rates

Anyone have any links / stats. on rates of growth / % of change of the world's religious population? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.148.70.70 (talk • contribs) 15:25, 20 December 2005

Religion#Trends_in_adherence--Smkolins 15:56, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Eastern Orthodox?

What's happened to the Eastern Orthodox? Were they removed from a listing alongside Oriental Orthodox and Assyrians? john k 12:52, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

They seem to have been removed without explanation by 195.229.242.83 in an edit timestamped as 15:35, 1 August 2006. Presumably they would be considered to fall into the catch-all "Oriental Orthodoxy, Assyrians, and Other Christians" subcategory. I hesitate to speculate about why the change was made. Perhaps it was just vandalism. Some of the other edits associated with that IP address appear to have been vandalism, including at least one on the same day (see the user's edit history and discussion page). —Wookipedian 05:15, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I just made an attempt at reverting that unexplained anon change of 1 August. The change affected the status of Mormons/LDS in a way that may need further consideration. —Wookipedian 05:57, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not totally convinced that the change was an improvement, but I'll leave it there and see what others think. It does seem desirable to me, considering the diversity of variations within Christianity, that we have some lower-level granularity in the categories. But I really don't know whether what is there is appropriate or not, and I suspect that it has some problems. —Wookipedian 06:09, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Confused numbers in subdivisions within Christianity

Where are the numbers coming from for the adherent count estimates within the subdivisions of Christianity? I don't think they are coming from adherents.com (I looked there and what I found was quite different than what is here). I recently lumped together Protestantism and Restorationism when I discovered that I could not determine who fit into which category. The same faiths seem to be counted in both categories in some places. Now someone has separated these again, which is fine, but where are the numbers coming from and who is in which category? Here is the current content of our article:

• See also the List of Christian denominations by number of members and List of Christian denominations pages.
• Roman Catholicism: 1.1 billion
• Protestantism: 675 million
• Restorationism (including Mormonism): 275 million
• Eastern Orthodoxy: 200 million
• Oriental Orthodoxy, Assyrians, and other Christians: 325 million

Now let's look at a couple of numbers. On the List of Christian denominations by number of members Wikipage, there are only 30 million in the Restorationism category. Where did our additional 245 million come from? We are off by a multiple greater than nine! Similarly, the List of Christian denominations by number of members lists only 500 million in Protestantism, but we seem to have another 175 million of them here. So our extra Restorationists did not come from drawing a different boundary between Restorationists and Protestants (both numbers seem to be too big by a couple of hundred million). –Wookipedian 05:13, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I was wondering the same thing the other day - I think it is more likely that it is 27.5 million and someone just didn't read carefully when they were doing the table. That also jives with the numbers on adherents.com for the groups included in restortionism. --Trödel 13:32, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

When I made that edit, I got my numbers from past editions(?) of the article. And I agree the numbers don't make sense. I was just using numbers that already had made an appearance on wikipedia; under no circumstances would I make up my own numbers. Please, correct it. My issue was with the categories, not the numbers. So please--make this article better. That's all I was trying to do. Pahoran513 22:38, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

But the reason the categories were the way they were was that we have no reliable/referenceable source for numbers to go along with the categories. The categories and the numbers are connected to each other. Rather than having numbers with no cited source, I suggest that we restructure our subcategories within Christianity according to the "Major Denominational Families of Christianity" table found here on Adherents.com, the site which is our primary reference in the corresponding section of the main article. In other words, our divisions will become Catholic, Orthodox/Eastern Orthodox, AICs, Pentacostal, etc. rather than different subcategories that we invent ourselves. We need to be able to cite a source. We cannot have numbers that just pop out of nowhere and just get adjusted upwards and downwards on the whim of every individual Wikiperson. —Wookipedian 23:18, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I like that table. It does seem a bit too jumbled for this article, but the numbers are reliable and such. Let's go ahead and change the article after a few more editors comment. Pahoran513 01:20, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Wookipedian in that we should use the categories, and numbers from the adherents.com page. Verifiability is of utmost importance, and helps defray the criticisms against Wikipedia. Thus we have a reliable source, with that page, and should go with it. If, however, we do find another source, we could, of course, change the categorization, to something that is most acceptable to the editors, but currently we are limited in what sources/categorizations we have. Regards. -- Jeff3000 06:17, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Okay, but should we use all of the list? It would seem to make the article crouded. But I know that this would make disagreements spring up like liberals around Dick Cheney. Still, my concern is there. But hey, what do I know? Let's add the list. The numbers are good and that's what we're worried about. Pahoran513 03:37, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Done. Personally, I think more detail is better. In other categories outside of Christianity, we have groups as small as a half million, so I think it is best to use the whole list for the sake of completeness and providing the most possible information. —Wookipedian 04:25, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

By the way, it is probably also obvious now by looking at the article that I also aligned the divisions of all other listed religions in this section (not just Christians) with what I found at adherents.com. —Wookipedian 20:48, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Wow! That was a lot of work. Thanks Wookipedian for improving this article so drastically. Pahoran513 23:04, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Why is there no listing for Protestantism now? I added the numbers in the Christianity group, and came up with 1.96425 billion, not 2.1 billion like the table says. Where are the other 140 million, and where are the protestants?

Mormonism vs. Islam

I've commented out the following sentence of the second paragraph:

For example, Mormons are ordinarily considered Christians, while Muslims are ordinarily not — yet both of them share a common heritage and each of them adds one major prophet and one major text to those that distinguish Christianity from other faiths; and these faiths, in turn, share a common heritage with Judaism as Abrahamic faiths.

This is a very misleading statement. First of all, it's true that LDS and Islam each add one major prophet; but whereas LDS Christians, like other Christians, take Jesus as the Son and as the most important prophet, Muslims view Jesus as a minor figure compared to Mohammed. Second of all, it's true that each adds one major text, but LDS appends the Book of Mormon to the ordinary Christian Bible, whereas Islam substitutes the Koran for the Christian Bible.

I understand the point that is trying to be made here — that it's not always easy to draw the line between two religions — but the example is a bad one, because it's very easy to see that Mormons are fundamentally Christians and that Muslims are fundamentally not. This kind of statement risks offending Mormons, who consider themselves Christians but are often rejected by other Christians; that risk would be understandable if the example served its purpose, but really it's a better example of how to lie using facts, and of how to justify an intentional miscategorization of a religion, than it is of the difficulty of categorizing religions.

Addendum: By the way, I'm neither Christian nor Muslim, so consider myself relatively unbiased in the matter. (I do have some Mormon and some Muslim friends, though. And plenty of non-Mormon Christian friends, for that matter.)

Ruakh 19:11, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Just because Mormonism is used as an example does not mean that we're picking on Mormons. And besides Mormons there are several other religions and categories of religions mentioned as examples in the paragraph. The example shows that it is not always obvious what fits into a category and what does not. I haven't noticed any Mormons or Muslims offended by the example. Obviously there are other issues involved that we are not discussing in detail - the idea is to just give an introduction to the notion that categorization can be difficult and provide some specific examples where obvious difficulties arise. Providing two easy examples like Roman Catholicism and Protestantism defeats the purpose, because most people would consider those to be rather obvious fits within the category of Christianity. The substitute wording that you changed it to is rather poor and does not illustrate the same problem of determining what is a religion versus a subcategory within a religion. Here is what you changed it to: "For example, within each of the main Abramic religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) are a number of sub-categories; given two subgroups of one of these religions, say Roman Catholicism and Protestantism (both subgroups of Christianity), some might consider them to be as far apart as Judaism and Islam, and argue that they should be considered separate religions." What is "Abramic"? I also find the phrase "as far apart as Judaism and Islam" to be a unnecessarily restrictive criterion - what we are trying to show is that it is not always easy to form categories. I think it is useful to show some example(s) that illustrate the difficulty of determining whether something fits into a category or not. Muslims hold Christ and the Christian Bible, or at least the Torah, in very high regard, so on the surface they could plausibly be considered Christian (although this is not a typical interpretation, which is why the example was chosen). Mormons have an extra prophet after Christ and have an extra text, so on the surface they could plausibly be considered to fall outside of the typical umbrella category of most Christian faiths (although that is not a typical interpretation either, which is why this example was chosen as well). The idea is to show some examples that would result in what most people would consider miscategorizations in order to show that there is some degree of judgment involved in establishing categories and showing how some people might therefore differ in their categorizations. Providing only examples where everything works out in the obvious conventional way defeats the purpose of the discussion. —Wookipedian 20:00, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

It may also be useful to point out that you did much more than comment out the one sentence that you quoted. You also extensively changed much of the rest of the paragraph. —Wookipedian 20:12, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Based in part on the above feedback, Ruakh has changed the paragraph again. I am less hostile to the new version and I am trying to step back and not be too defensive of the previous text. However, I have a problem with the following new sentence: "Conversely, Protestantism and Roman Catholicism are commonly both considered variants of Christianity, but members of each variant have often viewed the other as non-Christian, and ..." That sentence asserts a fact, namely that some substantial number of Protestants have said that Roman Catholicism is not a Christian faith and vice versa. This may be true, but I am not aware of it, and such a statement of fact should be supported with a citation to back it up. Unless one is provided, that needs to be changed. —Wookipedian 21:38, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

You're right that a citation needs to be provided eventually (lest we run afoul of WP:OR), but the general idea that many Protestants don't consider Catholics Christian is easily confirmed by googling "Catholics and Christians" (40,000 hits) and "Christians and Catholics" (34,000 hits). (The reverse is less true, though: "Protestants and Christians" gets only 100 hits, and while "Christians and Protestants" gets 24,800 hits, the first few pages of results suggest that only about half of these are implying that Protestants aren't Christians, the other half being in phrases like "{Orthodox Christians} and Protestants", "Christians, and {Protestants in particular}", etc. That said, I think the English-speaking world is more heavily Protestant, which might have something to do with it; I notice that Googling for other-language equivalents of "Christians and Protestants" and "Protestants and Christians" also pulls up hits, with a higher proportion of hits implying that Protestants aren't Christian.) Ruakh 22:14, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

The paragraph was further edited by Trödel and the statements made there seem sufficiently obvious now to not require citation. I think I'm basically OK with the current version. (However, its use of a semicolon may be a little hard for some people to follow.) —Wookipedian 05:00, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

have Islam 1,3 billion or 1,5 billion followers ?

It says 1,3 here, but in another page here it says close to 1,5 billion

[3]

and in another place here I remember reading that the figure is 1,4 billion [4] and yeat another place that it is somewhere between 1,4 and 1,5 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.167.190.29 (talk • contribs) .

This page uses adherents.com for all its sources. -- Jeff3000 00:31, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Scientology

Is Scientology an actual, recognized religion? On the surface it seems more of a cult or marketing scheme. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.4.70.65 (talk) 18:47, 18 December 2006 (UTC).

Jewish Denominations

Are there really more Conservative Jews than Reform? I can't find anything about it in the source. And I have heard that the Conservative population is getting smaller. Can someone find a reliable source for Jewish denomination information? --Max 23:24, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

The Christianity/Islam map could use a better color scheme

The map with relative concentrations of Islam/Christianity has a very confusing color scheme (at least to my eyes). The two extremes are both bright colors while the transitional colors seem to all be more reddish giving the illusion that territories on the 50/50 line are actually more Christian than majority Christian countries. Could you please change it to a more intuitive color scheme? The Dharmic/Abrahamic scheme for example is very accessible.--Karkaron 09:11, 11 February 2007 (UTC)