Chart of the Day: World’s Religion

From the Economist

RELIABLE data on the age and whereabouts of the religious and irreligious are hard to come by, which makes a new report on the topic from the Pew Research Centre welcome. Among its many findings is that Jews and Buddhists make the biggest religious minorities, in the sense of living in a country where another religion is dominant. Asia has by far the largest number of people who claim not to believe in any religion, something that is explained by China's official godlessness. Despite this, though, China has the world's seventh-largest Christian population, estimated at 68m. The report also contains data on people who call themselves religious but do not adhere to any of the Abrahamic religions, Hinduism or Buddhism. Here again Asia is dominant, largely thanks to the popularity of Shintoism in Japan.

Some observations

-Considering that many have used “religion” as an excuse in justifying imperial wars, note that the second largest religion or the Muslim share of the global population is 23.2% or about 1.61 billion out of the nearly 7 billion people.

In other words, while extremism exists—as they apply to every religion not limited to Muslims—they are a fragment of the total. Thus, war grounded on religion signifies as a fallacy of composition.

I might as well add that religious conflicts can also be triggered by political intolerance vented through various forms of political interventionism. Obviously the way to peacefully coexist is through the opposite tolerance and adapting freedom in religion

As the great Ludwig von Mises pointed out

Domestic political and religious persecutions had ceased, and international wars began to become less frequent.

-The share of agnostics, atheists or those with no religion ranks third or has grown in size to edge out Hinduism. As the article pointed out, much of the unattached are in Asia.