The World’s Third-Largest Belief Category
28.12.08 | Ariane |
Atheists, Belief, Breakdown, Google, India, Non-Religious, Population, Religion, Search, URL, Wikipedia, World
A BIT OF CHEERING NEWS
Polly Toynbee, Guardian columnist and President of the BHA, wrote a fantastic article in this week’s Guardian declaring that the Atheist Bus Campaign slogan was her Christmas message. You can read her article here:
EVEN MORE CHEERING NEWS
If you visit this Wikipedia page, it gives you a breakdown of adherents to all the world’s religions and beliefs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Worldwide_percentage_of_Adherents_by_Religion.png
Atheists comprise 2.35%, but when combined with the category “non-religious” we’re up to an impressive 14.27% – making us the world’s third-largest belief category! That’s 924,311,385 of us and counting – and we’re also the UK’s second largest belief category, with 23% either stating “no religion” or refusing to state one on the 2001 Census form.
WE’VE REACHED INDIA!
Okay, so there’s no Indian Atheist Bus Campaign. But the Economic Times, affiliated to the India Times, have run an upbeat (if inaccurate) story on us:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Athiests_on_move_God_on_backseat/articleshow/3883051.cms
… even if, like many people, they haven’t spelt “atheists” correctly. The old adage “i before e except after c” has a lot to answer for!
December 29th, 2008 at 16:51
Well that is good news! Brilliant piece by Polly.
December 30th, 2008 at 22:37
Well, I’d always assumed that most intelligent Jews were atheists anyway (after all, it’s a definition which is more racial than religious) so I’m rather sorry to see that there are so few of them.
January 8th, 2009 at 16:05
Tetsugen, a Japanese Zen Master, decided to publish the sutras, which at that time were available only in Chinese. The books were to be printed with wood blocks in an edition of seven thousand copies, a tremendous undertaking.
Tetsugen began by travelling and collecting donations for this purpose. A few sympathizers would give him a hundred pieces of gold, but most of the time he received only small coins. He thanked each donor with equal gratitude. After ten years Tetsugen had enough money to begin his task.
It happened that at that time the Uji River overflowed. Famine followed. Tetsugen took the funds he had collected for the books and spent them to save others from starvation. Then he began again his work of collecting.
Several years afterward an epidemic spread over the country. Tetsugen again gave away what he had collected.
For a third time he started his work, and after twenty years his wish was fulfilled. The printing blocks which produced the first edition of sutras can be seen today in ?baku monastery in Kyoto.
The Japanese tell their children that Tetsugen made three sets of sutras, and that the first two invisible sets surpass even the last.
January 18th, 2009 at 20:56
Leprechaun, that’s such a nice story. =)