Does anyone know how many religoins their are in the world?

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Pleas be respectful I know that Jews' Christians' and Muslims'. Share a religion that is very simliar but what of the other religious teachings and texts of other religions and what they have. Contributed to our world?

I have recently learned about how Hindus have contritbuted to Mathematics' and Science'.

You might want to run spell checker on your topic heading. There is no such thing as "religoins".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_re ... traditions

Tricky. What do you count as a religion? Do you count the catholics and protestants as one religion or two? Are Jehovah's Witnesses a separate religion or are they Christians? If you do count them all separately, what about methodists and baptists? What about the fringe crazies like the Westborough Baptists or Harold Camping?

It doesn't get any easier when you head away from the Big Three. Is Bhuddism a religion, given that it doesn't technically have gods? Is Jedi a religion? Or Confucianism? Where do you stand on atheism (I'd say not, though the hard atheists like Mr Dawkins can be very fervent...)? If we find some Zoroastrians, are they still valid? Do we consider devil worship a religion? New Age Spiritualism? Druidism? Paganism? Wicca (the witch kind, not the basket kind)? Given that modern druidism and wicca are not the same as the older versions, should we count them twice?

And then there's the Greek Pantheon, which are also the Roman Pantheon (with different names). One or two religions? There's the Norse gods, who are really cool but probably never actually worshipped in the manner everyone thinks. Pastafarianism is a parody religion, but if it contributes something to society as a whole does it warrant inclusion? What about Scientology?

And then there's non-religious philosophy, such as humanism, communism, fascism, feudalism, the Gaia hypothesis, panspermia, the Tao, David Icke's theory that lizards run the world and the "brains in vats" suggestion, as popularised by "The Matrix". Quantum Theory suggests a Many Worlds hypothesis. Determinism states there is no free will. Compatibilism suggests there could be. Enigma sang about man being the dream of the dolphin.

In a nutshell, a list of religions is likely to be highly subjective and incomplete.

There are many religions, but only six religoins

In my opinion, for every person there is in this world, that is another religion, since everyone has their own personal beliefs and faiths. Let's say they is 2 Catholics, they are best friends, go to church together, etc. Well, even though they are of the same religion, they will have their own unique beliefs, and will have their own view on their religion. I say that's true with everyone, even though you are of the same religion of someone, doesn't mean you have the same religious beliefs.


A little random thing, someone mentioned Jedi as a religion, I'm totally for making Jedi an official religion.

I follow the religion of Bobism.
The religion named for its official founder: me, Bob.
However most of the theology of Bobism actually came from my girlfriend Judy. But we cant name it after her because they already got a religion of that name.

Stop right there. How on earth could you possibly make such an immense prediction with confidence?

The reason a religion is a religion is because many, many people practice it exactly the same way. There is absolutely no circumstance under which this modernist, relativist, hippie definition of religion as individual self-determination where every one of us is a snowflake makes any sense whatsoever.

I take strong issue with this dissolution of our understanding of the faith problem primarily because of the danger it puts us in of not recognizing e.g. Islam as a fundamentally flawed doctrine which inexorably leads an impressive number of its adherents to carry out acts of extreme violence. No amount of individualist interpretation will ever change the fact that Mohammad himself, on fantastically solid evidence, called not only for murder, rape, and genocide, but also for overt and covert coercion, whereby an adherent is, according to scripture, supposed to lie about what they believe in order to protect the faith. Modernism seems very much to be telling us that the best course of action is to gather everybody together under a banner of wilful, uniform non-compliance with supposedly divine mandates, and no thinking person can take that seriously.

The number of religion depends on the definition of religion, which depends on the purpose for which one defines "religion".

I think we need to stop thinking in terms of religions, of different sets of beliefs opposed one to the other by certain characteristics, and instead focus on religion, the religious experience itself. Counting religions is a strange idea.

There are still quite a few left, actually.

Yes- Zorastrianism is still alive and kicking. There about 100 thousand believers each in Iran, and in India.

Yes- not sure what the OP is after- but whatever it is -counting the number of religions in the world is not the way to get at whatever insight he is after.

In the stone age each little tribe had its own little local animistic (spirit worship) and or pagan polytheistic religion. This continued until well into the bronze and Iron ages. The greeks had one system of pagan gods, the Sumerians another, and the Mayans another still. So each country and each little tribe had its own "religion".

It wasnt until 600 BC that you had the notion of "religion for export"- that is religion divorced from the nature spirits of one locale that was thought of as a creed that could be preached and spread across a continent.

The followers of Buddha in India were the earliest, and then a few centuries later a few hundred miles to the west you had competing monotheistic cults in the Roman/Helenisitic mediterranean world. Of those competing cults three won out- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Buddhism spread eastward to the Pacific. And the Abrahamic faiths spread westward to the Atlantic. Buddhism tended to blend with the native animistic faiths and philosophies of the places it spread to (like china and Japan). The Abrahamic faiths tended to stamp out local beliefs.

But even as the world religions both east and west spread they themselves fissioned into rival sects. So the number of religions both dwindled and multiplied at the same time. And both processes continue to this day.

And at the same time there are still vast stretches of the world (like subsaharan africa) were they have local pagan religions ala ancient times.

Then there is the question of "what is religion?". Buddhism is not concerned with any diety ( so it maybe a "philosophy", but is it really a "religion"). In china one can be buddhist, Taoist, and confucian, and celebrate christmas, at the same time. But westerners and Muslims traditionally considered it to be a criminal abomination to treat religion like a buffet like that. So how do you count peaches and pears?

Do you count Scientology? Hatian Voodoo? Do sects within a religion count as seperate religions? How about sects within sects?
It just doesnt work to do a census of religions.

I don't see how Haitian Voodoo could not be a religion.

i know and the awnser is infinite

Also, to add to your brilliant post, how do you count varied local practices within orthodox religion? Officially, a Catholic in Quebec is in the same "religion" as a Catholic in South America, yet their religious experiences vary so much that it is hard to describe it as one phenomenon. In South America, as I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong), it is much more of a communitarian experience. In Quebec, it is internal, individual and deeply spiritual. + some cults or rituals within orthodox Catholicism are more important in certain areas or periods, a very significant displacement of emphasis. All this is rather important to the actual experience of religious followers, but is blurred by saying that it is one single religion.

There are probably thousands of faiths if you count indigenous beliefs that can vary from place to place. I will give you a few, some religions are not very widespread like Christianity and Islam so they may not have contributed to your society in a way that is noticeable to you.

Buddhism: A philosophy and religion founded in the Indian subcontinent founded by Siddartha Gautama in the 5th Century BCE. The number of Buddhists is uncertain but there could be 1 billion. Millions of people in the West have found peace and tranquillity in Buddhism which has a focus on ethics and spiritual enlightenment through meditation.

Zoroastrianism: Founded in Iran in the 6th Century BCE, this is one of the first monotheistic faiths. The sacred book for Zoroastrian's is the Avesta. Although Zoroastrianism was shaken by the arrival of Islam, there are still Zoroastrian communities to be found in Iran, India, Pakistan and the UK. For those studying the origins of monotheism Zoroastrians are particularly interesting.

The Baha'i Faith: Unlike the last two, this is a very new religion (the world' newest, in fact) which was founded in the 19th Century in Persia, which is now Iran. Baha'is believe in 'progressive revelation' - the idea that God sends many prophets and messengers (which Baha'is call 'manifestations') to help humanity. They consider Adam, Moses, Buddha, Krishna, Jesus and Muhammad to be Prophets but believe that the Manifestation for our time is Baha'u'llah. Baha'is believe in one God and the unity of humanity. They are very involved in charity projects around the world, especially ones that focus on literacy and the education of women. The sacred writings for The Baha'i Faith include 'Kitab-i-Aqdas' which means 'The Most Holy Book'.