How Many People Here Are Religious, And How Many Not?

[A Vestigial Mote]

What my point was, as enumerated above, is that there are little groups of religious people, a smattering of Christians, a pinch of Jews, a flick of Baha'is, and then a whole dollop of atheists. Atheists make up the largest group on here.

Ah... as in largest "single" group? I see. Could very well be.

This gave me an interesting thought - if you took all denominations and sects of all religions as individual and apart from one another across the world, I wonder how many of them would still top the count of all "atheists" worldwide? Possibly not very many. Not that we're any kind of cohesive group or anything... just interesting when considering what constitutes a "minority."

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

Yeah it gets quite oppressive!!

Quiet you!

 

[Vinayaka]

I'm curious to know how many people here are religious and how many are not. I realize that only a small percentage of people who post regularly on the forums will answer, still. I would like to hear from the religious why they think the non religious post here and I would like to hear from the non religious why they do so.

Is it an interest in religion? The discussion on the science forums? Does it allow you to express frustration of living in a spiritual world? Or something else?

Depends what you mean by religious.

 

[LuisDantas]

I think that for the purpose of this thread there are only 2 possibilities. Religious or Not Religious and that is up for the individual to decide. No specific religion, necessarily. All religions or religious in nature. I personally think everyone is religious based upon a simple basic definition of adhering to a strict set of beliefs, but I leave it to the individual to decide what is religious and what is not.

That is rather vague, to the point of crippling the results' validity IMO.

 

[Earthling]

Depends what you mean by religious.

I leave that up to the individual. If you would like to expand on why you are or are not religious by your own definition that would be great.

 

[Earthling]

That is rather vague, to the point of crippling the results' validity IMO.

I don't think so, because the nature of the question really is do you think of yourself as religious in some way or do you not?

 

[sayak83]

We do this over and over again.

For some reason, we have lots of atheists and Hindus, and quite a few heretical Christians.

Most of the staff are either atheists or Hindus or vaguely spiritual.

I sort of wish there were more conventional religious people here.

This is basically a liberal atheist board.

A Hindu isn't conventional???

 

[Rival]

A Hindu isn't conventional???

See my reply to Terese.

 

[Earthling]

Ah... as in largest "single" group? I see. Could very well be.

This gave me an interesting thought - if you took all denominations and sects of all religions as individual and apart from one another across the world, I wonder how many of them would still top the count of all "atheists" worldwide? Possibly not very many. Not that we're any kind of cohesive group or anything... just interesting when considering what constitutes a "minority."

That is a very interesting statement question you posed about the division of religions and how they would compare in numbers to atheists. I would be very interested to see that figure, but I don't buy into the non cohesive atheist concept. You have just as much in common with each other as homosexuals, heterosexuals, blacks, or any other minority.

 

[YmirGF]

Yeah the religious in Religious Forums is a bit fraudulent, it promotes anti religion much more than religion, the founder of the forum is an atheist I have heard.

I think we should take him out back and kick the living **** out of him. How dare he co-opt the idea of an atheistic message board by calling it ReligiousForums, eh? Some people!

 

[sayak83]

See my reply to Terese.

Still its conventional. Many Jews and Catholic Christians will have similar variety. Only Islam and Evangelical Christianity focus so exclusively on belief over culture, ritual and spirit of a religion.

 

[LuisDantas]

Just as a reminder, RF's mission statement is readily available.

https://www.religiousforums.com/threads/rf-rules.170244/

 

[LuisDantas]

I don't think so, because the nature of the question really is do you think of yourself as religious in some way or do you not?

Your privilege... but I really don't think there is a point to that, except perhaps as a way to peek into the self-image of a small sample of forum members.

 

[Earthling]

Someone (was it Dawkins?) once said of atheists and I paraphrase, "Getting a group of atheists to agree is like trying to herd cats"

What that means is they like to debate, discuss, argue and increase their knowledge in doing so.
Hence atheists like forums where they can discuss ideas with like and different people.

I can see that going either way . . .

 

[Earthling]

A Hindu isn't conventional???

That was dealt with here. How Many People Here Are Religious, And How Many Not?

 

[sayak83]

That was dealt with here. How Many People Here Are Religious, And How Many Not?

Also dealt with here.
https://www.religiousforums.com/thr...s-and-how-many-not.210347/page-3#post-5687668

 

[Rival]

Still its conventional. Many Jews and Catholic Christians will have similar variety. Only Islam and Evangelical Christianity focus so exclusively on belief over culture, ritual and spirit of a religion.

The difference is though, that an atheist or polytheist Jew or Christian would be extremely heretical and indeed unconventional. Within Hinduism it appears an acceptable belief.

 

[Terese]

The difference is though, that an atheist or polytheist Jew or Christian would be extremely heretical and indeed unconventional. Within Hinduism it appears an acceptable belief.

The thing is Hinduism as one religion does not exist. Hinduism is actually a myriad of Hindu religions, and is an umbrella term. A Vaishnava atheist would be very strange and unconventional, as it is a strictly theistic religion. A Vaishnava is also a Hindu.

 

[Revoltingest]

Are you sure?
There are plenty of gun lobbyists, Trump supporters, pro-life, anti church state separation, Brexit fans - we've even had people defending family separation.

I think it may be the liberal atheists just have the best arguments.

You wouldn't be a "liberal atheist", would you?

 

[Rival]

The thing is Hinduism as one religion does not exist. Hinduism is actually a myriad of Hindu religions, and is an umbrella term. A Vaishnava atheist would be very strange and unconventional, as it is a strictly theistic religion. A Vaishnava is also a Hindu.

We Britons gave up trying to classify you all, lol.