The world's major religions in one map | Hacker News Reader

The world's major religions in one map

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35 pointsemptybits26 comments

Actual place where the data visualizations came from with better zoomed-up pictures instead of blurry ones in the link: http://www.carrieosgood.com/dataviz/world-population.html

Thanks. I couldn't find a link on the posted website. Which I always hate, especially when they don't embed the high-res images.

Thanks for that link. The data on population distribution reminded me of another factoid that was popular a couple years ago, the "more people live in this circle than outside it": https://www.cntraveler.com/story/more-than-half-the-worlds-p... .

Basically, there are more people living in a circle that encompasses India and China (and hence lots of other populous parts of Asia like Indonesia) than there are in North America, South America, Europe, Africa and Australia combined.

that doesn't seem surprising tbh. given the 80/20 rule (or whatever statistical distribution governs this case).

The map is pretty Abrahamo-centric. It separates out Judaism, but clumps Sikhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Shinto into "other", all of which certainly have many more adherents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrahamic_religions

It also seems somewhat out of date, it shows New Zealand as being 60-ish% Christian, but as of the 2013 census it was 48%.

If you go to the source (see forkLding's comment) you can see the data is from 2010.

Ah, thanks :)

That's a huge drop for 3 years. I wonder what it is now? (presumably 2 censuses later).

Yeah this is actually super interesting to me. Calling it huge is an understatement. Looks like it wasn't over those 3 years though. But even from 2006 (I think the last census) there's still a 6.5% difference between 2006 and 2013 [0]. That's a pretty heavy rate of decline.

Anyone got stats on how religion growth/decline rates are affected by economics and population size? I wonder if it is similar to how first world nations pretty much all have below a 2.0 population growth rate. Does the data suggest that as we become better off there's a correlation to less religion?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_New_Zealand#Religi...

It's high, but not really so, at least when not compared to the US (which appears steadfastly religious).

For example, Australia [1] saw a 9% decline in Christian religions between 2011 and 2016, and a corresponding 7.8% increase in non-religious over the same period.

France, to randomly choose another, shows a 15.9% drop in Christian religions between 2010 and 2016, and a 7.6% jump in non-religious over the same period.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Australia#Censuses...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_France#Demographic...

Oh wow that's interesting. Thanks for the comparisons. I'm now wondering why some of these countries are having quick declines in religion and the US isn't.

The US has had a huge decline in religion. Look at New York City in 1956, and try to imagine the same thing today.

https://churchpop.com/2016/03/21/beautiful-way-nyc-commemora...

Probably because if you combine the Abrahamic trifecta you get 55.5%, whereas if you combine Sikhism, Taoism, etc, you get 11.8%. Judaism is probably only partitioned because of familiarity. Clumping the Abrahamic religions would make the map less interesting. Partitioning "other" could make the map too busy.

There's always a balance between how refined of data do you make. Part of this is dependent upon your audience (note that most people that use the internet reside in a location that has a dominant Abrahamic following).

This doesn't look like discrimination to me...

I could be wrong, but is their any country where the majority religion is classified as other? Closest is China, but athiest/agnostic seems to take it there (and probably more so if you would subdivide them). The reason for Judaism is then because of Israel.

You could also probably subdivide Hinduism and the Islamic religions. But if we're talking subdivision it would make sense to me to first subdivide the largest group; ie Christianity.

It is hard to say how to subdivide without becoming too busy. Maybe you could take countries with big populations and do a breakdown on their classifications. So specifically China and India, but maybe a few more. But that's not as visually appealing.

Taiwan and Macao appear to be majority other.

Indeed, Judaism doesn't appear to be a "major religion" at all, by numbers

Yup, which makes its outsized influence, on, well, everything, all the more astonishing. (World history, Sciences, Law, Hate Groups, etc.)

Actually, the map is Abraham-centric in a way that it emphasizes the differentiation of Asian religions too much. Most of the Asian religions are blends of Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism and a few local elements.

Looking at the pattern of cultural clashes around the world, it seems the there are three incompatible belief systems, Christianity, Islam, and CBT.

Hinduism?

>>Most of the Asian religions are blends of Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism and a few local elements.

Hinduism. I assume your miss was inadvertent.

It's my mistake to think that Hinduism originates from Buddhism. However, core beliefs of both seem to be quite compatible with each other.

I suspect a better way to have divied up at least China and Japan would have been

"Mixture of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and Chinese folk religion" - China "Mixture of Buddhism and Shintoism" - Japan

Shintoism is still pretty much a mixture of Taoism, Buddhism and some local myths. Anyway, I'm trying to merge them as much as possible instead of dividing them.

and more "importantly" (in terms of numbers) atheism/comunism vs falum gung/shen yun.

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