Talk:List of religious populations/Archive 3

Problems with the "Ethnic and indigenous" section

1. It lists New Zealand as 15% of the population following indigenous/ethnic religions. This is very incorrect. The source itself says that ~15% of the population are ethnic Maori and acknowledges that many of them are christian. The official 2018 New Zealand census states that 1.34% of the population belong to "Māori Religions, Beliefs and Philosophies".

2. Indonesia is listed as 9% indigenous faiths when the cited source says "in total less than 1 percent [...]followers of traditional indigenous religions".

I don't know if any of the other data points on this list are erroneous because those are the only two that I have checked. Either way I'll remove Indonesia and new Zealand from this list for now. Tellurium128 (talk) 12:04, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Ok, I've gone through the source checking all the other data-points present on our list. The introduction to Ethnic and indigenous section says that it uses the highest estimate of definite practitioners which results in some dodgy values on wikipedia's end. The Sierra Leone article on the original report says 5-10% so ours says 10%. When the original article for the DRC says "The remainder generally practices indigenous religious beliefs." our list assumes that all religions mentioned in the original without a percentage add to ~0% and indigenous beliefs make up all the rest. The South Africa article reads "According to the 2001 census, African Traditionalists make up less than 1 percent of the population. However, of the 15 percent of the population that claimed no religious affiliation on the 2001 census, many of these persons probably adhere to unaffiliated indigenous religions". This means that our article counts atheists and irreligious people in South Africa as followers of traditional religions. The source doesn't even say "most", it says "many" and "probably".

Overall the Ethnic and indigenous section is just bad and unreliable. The whole thing about picking "the highest estimate" is weird while choosing values "based on the[...] estimate of people identified as indigenous" (which accounts for the problem with the New Zealand value mentioned earlier) is just plain stupid. If ~80% of the population of Scotland is indigenous Scottish Celtic then we do not assume that 80% of Scots practice an Ethnic/Indigenous religion. Anyway, this section needs an overhaul. The main problem is that the original source can be quite vague and some editor(s) tried to make up for that. Actually, the report makes similar vague statements about the ethnoreligionist populations of many African countries not on our list such that they could be on our list if you follow he same logic that has been followed so I don't know the reasoning behind the countries listed in this section and the ones that aren't.

By the way, back in 2013 someone noticed that that Bolivia had the same problem as New Zealand with the conflation of ethnicity and indigenous religion. Unfortunately they didn't seem to notice the other problems assuming they were present at the time.

In short, the Ethnic and indigenous section of this article is bad. Fix it when you have (a) less vague source(s). Tellurium128 (talk) 10:37, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Article inaccurate. Muddles secular Jews with religious Jews

The entire listing for Judaism is way way off. Only around 30 percent of Jews in Israel are religious. Many Jews in the diaspora are also seculars.

"Israel Among the Least Religious Countries in the World Only 30% of Israelis say they are religious, survey finds" https://www.haaretz.com/israel-china-among-least-religious-nations-1.5350737

This articles title is about "religious populations" but this article bizarrely lumps in secular Jews with religious ones. It's numbers on religious Jews aren't even consistent with other Wikipedia articles on Jews. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_atheism

I'm not going to make the edit but would advise someone that does edit this article to completely revise the numbers to accurately reflect religious Jews. At the moment the article is peddling nonsense. The best religion to have is Christianity. Because the Lord our God his son Jesus Christ died on the cross to forgive our sins. So give you life to the Lord and Repent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.190.149.241 (talk) 20:30, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Throwing in ‘The best religion to have is Christianity’ out of the blue. Er OK... Let’s please keep this discussion to the article and appropriate for the editing of an encyclopaedia. Harsimaja (talk) 00:37, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Spiritism

The article listed Spiritism as having 20 million adherents - entirely unsourced, and rather a strong claim to say the least. I removed this but leave room for discussion here. Harsimaja (talk) 00:38, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Hello, Harsimaja! It turns out 20 million was indeed an overestimation. "Spiritism" includes not only the religion founded by Allan Kardec, but also derivative synchretisms which merged it with traditional african religions, such as Umbanda in Brazil. I used this source for the updated numbers, it offers statistical estimates according to national and international sources: [1]. It counts to approximately 15 million adherents, similar also to the estimates from the 2010 ARDA data. Best regards! Bafuncius (talk) 11:50, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 30 March 2021

Pakistan (mostly Sunni 65%) 119.160.97.247 (talk) 02:00, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: No reliable source provided; also already in article under the Muslim header. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 04:22, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 11 May 2021

PLEASE I WANT TO CHANGE SOMETHING AUTHENTIC ABOUT SIKH RELIGION 122.173.1.117 (talk) 12:05, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: requests for decreases to the page protection level should be directed to the protecting admin or to Wikipedia:Requests for page protection if the protecting admin is not active or has declined the request. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 12:14, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

Double binds

By their self-identification ("you shan't believe in other gods"), Judaism and its derivates Christianity and Islam are exclusive.

Other religions are not necessarily exclusive. It is told that Japanese people typically practise Shintoist rituals for wedding, but Buddhist rituals for burrials.

Whereas in European culture pagan heritage has been integrated in Christian rituals so deeply that in public opinion it is rather considered Chritian than pagan, in some African countries pagan believes and rules coexist with Christianity as disparate religious practices performed by the same persons, perhaps by more than half of the population.

Of course, it is difficult to quantify these phenomena, but it should be tryed.--Ulamm (talk) 09:42, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

"by proportion" vs. "by population"??

the distinction "by proportion" vs. "by population" must be explained in an introductory passage, imho! why does it lead to different rankings? HilmarHansWerner (talk) 10:26, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

I've made a couple of edits re this to this article and to the Christianity by country article ([2], [3]). Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 11:49, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

yeahhhh

sooo,.....a portion hasn't been updated.. 68.126.204.92 (talk) 19:33, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. TGHL ↗ 01:07, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 18 May 2021

To add Hong Kong to the #By population section, #Sikhs, 12,000 people, #Jains, 500 families. 203.145.94.141 (talk) 15:01, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

References

 Done TGHL ↗ 01:14, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

Inconsistent math, self-aggrandizing sources, and other problems

The source for the bar box table of Adherents simply has % input without actual calculation of number/population. So we see a glaring inconsistency with Secular having fewer adherents but higher % than Hinduism. This bar box should be modified to have a basic calculation function that updates % whenever someone updates the number of adherents. Personally, I don't know how to do this.

And then you have the question of Adherent tally brought up by Harsimaja. Some cults or self-declared "new religions" or "New Age spirituality" include anyone who attended an introductory lecture or provided contact info to be an adherent. They are motivated to inflate their tally to prove prestige and truthiness in accordance with the sociological phenomenon of social proof. We are therefore faced with a serious difficulty in determining accurate tallies of religious groups that are (at least momentarily) in the public eye and therefore subject to exaggeration in numbers by devotees and/or panicky opponents.

Finally, the personal aspect of declaring one's religious affiliation and degree of religiosity (e.g., Christians in US, Jews in Israel, Muslims in Indonesia, Buddhists in Japan) can vary over time, as in the old observation that "many saints once were sinners". So the stats should be seen as a "snapshot" rather than robust info. Further there are parts of the world (e.g., Japan) where it is common to hold two or more religions simultaneously, so the effect of overlap cannot be dismissed when claiming total stats are definitive.

I don't know how to resolve these difficulties, but there should be a cautionary box above the lede that indicates how vague or specious this page's information is. Martindo (talk) 00:38, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Revert edits

What is goal of the page if edits are reverts data are all coming from pew and date back to 2011 an example Sudan is 71.3% muslim this data came back before the partition of Sudan some country like Senegal, Gambia and Mali which are all more 95% muslims are not included in the muslims section but Malaysia who’s only 60% muslims . This page need to be upgraded User 7373830 (talk) 16:01, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

User 7373830, Where are you getting your statistics? This is an encyclopedia, therefore all content needs to be cited to verifiable reliable sources. See "Citing sources" here: WP:CS and "Reliable sources" here WP:RS. If you do not know how to add a source (also called a citation or a reference, some editors call them footnotes) there are tutorials you can take to learn how to make those edits. Go to the help desk to find out more - there is a link on the main page. Please discontinue changing statistics until you can provide a source and add the stat + the reference source to each change made. We welcome your participation, but edits need to be made correctly and in compliance with the encyclopedia's guidelines and policies. Thank you. Netherzone (talk) 00:44, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 21 July 2021

1.193 be greater then 1.251? the percentages also looks incorrect in the table

Secular[a]/Nonreligious[b] 1.193 billion 15.58% Hinduism 1.251 billion 15.16%[2][3] Imraxy (talk) 11:23, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

I've fixed it. Thanks for spotting this. ‑‑Volteer1 (talk) 16:24, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Africa and Europe

European countries are very secular and stuff like "39 million christians in France" or "114 million in Rusia" is stupid, they only are "cultural christians" but never pray nor attend church Also the population of African countries is much higher Like D.R. Congo, it has 95 million christians and the article says only 63. 停止 (talk) 04:28, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 13 September 2021

If you add up the totals of percentages of world religions, the total number is 101.997% Whomever wrote this page up doesn't know how to add. I've run the numbers twice. I think the numbers for Christianity are too high, and Athiests, Hindu, Chinese Bhuddists and Judaism are all low. 174.74.124.201 (talk) 02:00, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. — LauritzT (talk) 08:04, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

 Note: The figures match the source given. Presumably it is possible for people to have multiple religions. — LauritzT (talk) 08:08, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 September 2021

177.226.96.213 (talk) 00:46, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

The Philippines have more christians than Nigeria

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. - FlightTime (open channel) 00:47, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Zoroastrianism counts discrepancy?

The actual page on Zoroastrianism states a best estimate of the number of followers as "110,000-120,000 at most", while the table on this page says 2.6 million, with no source given. I understand from note (a) that "These figures may incorporate populations of secular/nominal adherents as well as syncretist worshipers", but it seems like at the very least a source should be given for this 2.6 million figure, given that there's a difference of over an order of magnitude.

Also worth noting, the source for the 110,000-120,000 number has a pretty big disclaimer about it not being a statistically correct census. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mivanit (talk • contribs) 04:58, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

update: List of countries by Zoroastrian population seems to give a better cited and more current estimate of 145,777 for 2020. Perhaps both this page and Zoroastrianism should be updated? On a side note, is there some automated system by which these sorts of numbers are updated from a central database? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mivanit (talk • contribs) 05:04, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

References

Baha'i Faith

There are more Mormons and JWs than Baha'i, so why aren't they included? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.120.48.54 (talk) 12:33, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

They're included as Christians. NebY (talk) 12:51, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

regarding the numbers

it says there's 7.79 billion total for all religions yet there is not that many people on the planet Earth. and I know for a fact not 100% of the world believes in a religion or a God. personally for me I am on the border of my faith right now and I was curious how much of the world believes in a god it's not really a direct answer but trying to get a rough estimate looking at your page doesn't help me at all. sorry just thought I'd mention that simple Factor that there is 7.753 billion people on earth. 174.53.192.231 (talk) 09:17, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

regarding the numbers #2

I'm sorry I forgot to mention there between $400 and 500 million atheists already you have 50 million too many people on the list and on top of that between $400 and 500 million atheists that could roughly be 550 million miscount that's half a billion. just thought I'd help you out to me your publish even more accurate. good luck... 174.53.192.231 (talk) 09:28, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Muslim

Islam 2409:4042:2D9D:2EF4:9E73:5C5E:1F55:F686 (talk) 06:53, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 22 January 2022

2409:4063:2003:3750:C934:FEA1:53CF:2C88 (talk) 13:25, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Please correct the Indian map

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 13:51, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Question

Then why it is shown under the head of "What's the best religion in the world" When the list is given in accordance with the population??? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.169.135.247 (talk • contribs)

I'm guessing you're referring to asking a search engine "what's the best religion in the world" and the search results providing this article as a result? Wikipedia has no control over search results. Schazjmd (talk) 14:22, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Percentage

It doesn't add up to 100% 2A00:23C4:2E95:7700:D9B:9444:1BF0:B5F (talk) 15:09, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit - changes in percentage

A Wikipedia page states that more than a billion people(80% of the Chinese population) 'practice some kind of Chinese folk religion'. Link-https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=52c67ca84239e513b472569e35a5d1b3e46dc1a5d4411cb5b6d139f7785d6755JmltdHM9MTY1MzQwMjE3OSZpZ3VpZD0wOTM5N2JlYi05OTZkLTQxNTgtYTBmZi0xOGNiNzRhMTAxYjEmaW5zaWQ9NTQwMg&ptn=3&fclid=02d6c061-db6d-11ec-a36e-baa90834e235&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly9lbi53aWtpcGVkaWEub3JnL3dpa2kvUmVsaWdpb25faW5fQ2hpbmE&ntb=1 This percentage certainly does not make up properly for your graphs. Please correct them. Thank you for your time. At2h (talk) 14:43, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

 Not done: For an edit request, you would need to provide the adjustments to the graph(s) yourself for other editors to then insert - not ask other editors to perform the necessary calculations (presuming there is an error) themselves. That said, perhaps an invested editor in this topic area will see this on the talk page and take it upon themselves to investigate it further. —Sirdog (talk) 07:44, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Data table for number of adherents is incorrect

The data table shows 7.79 billion as the total world population in 2020, and it shows 100% as the total of all the religion percentage of adherence. Both of these "total" numbers aren't supported by the numbers given in the table. If you sum all the populations of adherents you get 8.0248 billion people (obviously above the shown total of 7.79 billion people; the sum is 234.8 million people over the actual world population in 2020). If you sum all the percentages of adherents you get 101.997%, roughly 2% above what's actually possible). Having slight discrepancies because of rounding errors is a common occurrence, however both of the numbers are off by considerably larger than average or expected tolerance for such a problem. IMO, it is off by such a significant amount that it makes me question the validity of the data for the entire table. 2600:1008:B119:5207:5460:83CD:5FAF:6B9E (talk) 23:34, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 19 November 2022

2603:90C8:100:3F66:18F7:E2CA:6BDB:EBC2 (talk) 21:46, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

This page does not contain the population of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-percentage-of-Mormons-on-earth as well it should, not only do we count we are more numerous than many listed here.

 Not done: Members of the Church of Latter-Day Saints commonly describe themselves as Christians and the survey results cited here employ that self-definition. NebY (talk) 23:18, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 30 November 2022

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/04/02/religious-projections-2010-2050/

source 1 working link Feuerswut (talk) 13:25, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

 Not done: The source you provided does not contain the same amount of information as the original first source. ARandomName123 (talk) 18:23, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Zoroastrians

There is no way there are 2.6 million Zoroastrians. Synotia (talk) 12:59, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Agree. According to the WP article, the total population as of 2012 was 122,000. I would check the source again and then make the change. •Bobsd• (talk) 18:06, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

References

Semi-protected edit request on 14 January 2023

Respected sir or madam .the jain population is wrong according to this information as in 2011 according to indian census only there are arround 5 million jains approx in india itself also in 2023 by some other country census and jains growth rate in india …the total number of jains wil be obout 7 million kindly change the given wrong information Shubh historical3124 (talk) 05:58, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Cannolis (talk) 05:47, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Mormons

There are 16 million Mormons in the world. Why aren’t they on the list here? 2600:4040:99D3:2E00:6151:460B:D780:23A5 (talk) 14:38, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Members of the Church of Latter-Day Saints commonly describe themselves as Christians and the survey results cited here employ that self-definition. NebY (talk) 14:52, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Unaffiliated

I don't understand why Thailand and Myanmar aren't colored in as Buddhist on the map, but are colored as affiliated. Thailand is about 93 percent Buddhist, and Myanmar is 88.8% according to Wikipedia's other articles. 47.151.164.199 (talk) 20:10, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 27 April 2023

change to 2 billion 2601:205:C300:C590:C0AA:D612:F5CF:E56D (talk) 05:02, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Cannolis (talk) 05:23, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

gaza strip is not a country

Gaza strip appears under a title "Countries with a considerable proportion of Muslims from Islam by country as of 2010, excluding foreign workers in brackets".

Gaza is exclave and not a country. It is both not politically correct and not geopolitically correct to call it a country.

The easy way to correct this is just to add "Countries and territories with a considerable proportion of Muslims from Islam by country as of 2010, excluding foreign workers in brackets". Corvus (talk) 08:16, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

New Zealand

New Zealand population is now 48 https://culturalatlas.sbs.com.au/new-zealand-culture/new-zealand-culture-religion# 2404:4402:1329:1800:CD94:30AC:129A:CDE7 (talk) 11:24, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Judaism Percentage

Edit request for the percentage of the world population that follows Judaism. Listed in the table is 0.2% when it should be 0.19%. I suppose it could be a rounded figure, but the row directly above lists Spiritism as having 15 million followers equalling 0.19%. Obviously it makes no sense for Judaism to have fewer followers at 14.7 million, but constitute a higher percent of the world's population at 0.2%. Either both figures should be rounded to the nearest tenth of a percent or both should be rounded to the nearest hundredth of a percent. Someone please change this. Thank you. 66.91.36.8 (talk) 21:29, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Shintō Count is wildly incorrect

The article lists Shintō followers as approximately 4 million... even the Japanese Wikipedia page for Shintō lists it as approximately 87.9 million (self reported). Barazoku ranka (talk) 23:50, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

First table

The percentages in the first table add up to more than 100% 205.236.4.254 (talk) 14:36, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

A significant portion of the population worldwide do practice more than one religion. Barazoku ranka (talk) 10:21, 15 November 2023 (UTC)