Religion is commonly understood as a group of beliefs or attitudes concerning an object (real or imagined), person (real or imagined), or system of thought considered to be supernatural, sacred, or divine, and the moral codes, practices, values, institutions, and rituals associated with such belief or system of thought.
Islam predominates in the Middle East. The primary religion throughout Latin America is Roman Catholicism; with Protestantism dominant in North America. Modern Europeans are less religious.
Present day adherents
The following statistics show the number of adherents in all known approaches, both religious and irreligious worldwide. Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism are the largest world religions today. Approximately 75% of humanity belongs to one of these 4 religions. Christianity is the religion with the largest number of professed religious adherents, followed by Islam. The third-largest group of approximately 1 billion people adhere to irreligious approaches which include Humanism, Atheism, Rationalism, and Agnosticism. Hinduism with 900 million adherents is the third largest religion followed by 19 smaller groups of religious adherents. These figures are necessarily approximate: note that the figures in the following table total nearly 7 billion people, yet the world population was only 6.1 billion (2005). [1].
The largest religious gathering of humans on Earth[2]. About 70 million [[Hindu
s from around the world participated in Kumbh Mela in the Hindu holy city of Prayaga, India, which is also known as Allahabad.]]# Christianity 2.1 billion# Islam 1.3 billion# Secular/Irreligious/Agnostic/Atheist 1.1 billion# Hinduism 900 million# Chinese folk religion 394 million# Buddhism 376 million, not including Chinese folk Religion (see also Buddhism by country)# Primal indigenous ("Pagan") 300 million# African traditional and diasporic 100 million# Sikhism 23 million# Juche 19 million# Spiritism 15 million# Judaism 14 million# Bahá'í Faith 7 million# Jainism 4.2 million# Shinto 4 million (see below)# Cao Dai 4 million# Zoroastrianism 2.6 million# Tenrikyo 2 million# Neo-Paganism 1 million# Unitarian Universalism 800,000# Rastafari movement 600,000# Scientology 500,000 * In its Yoga stream, Hinduism is even more widespread all over the world with 20 million practitioners in the United States alone [3]. There are more than 100 million who practise Hinduism in Yoga form worldwide. After including them, Hinduism has around 1.4 billion followers worldwide. * Christianity encompasses many different denomiations but the statistics in the source for this document consider them all together for the purposes of analysis. * Shinto is a special case due to shrine-reporting versus self-reporting. Since the 17th century, there have been laws in Japan requiring registration with Shinto shrines. Because of this, 75-90% of all Japanese are listed on shrine rolls, greatly inflating the apparent number of adherents. When asked in polls, only about 3.3% of Japanese people identify themselves as "Shinto."[4] However, many who do not consider themselves "Shintoists" still practice Shinto rituals.
In ranking religious denominations, the Roman Catholic Church is the largest single denomination within Christianity, Sunni Islam within Islam, and Vaishnavism within Hinduism. It is difficult to say whether there are more Roman Catholics or Sunnis, as the numbers are roughly equal, and exact counts are impossible, because some members though legally accepted in those denominations may have renounced their faith or have converted quickly.
Buddhist monk Geshe Konchog Wangdu reads Mahayanasutras from an old woodblock copy of the Tibetan Kanjur.
Judaism has about 15 million followers as of 2006.
Asian philosophical traditions originated in India and China and cover a large spectrum of philosophical thoughts and writings. Indian philosophy includes Hindu philosophy and Buddhist philosophy. They include elements of nonmaterial pursuits, whereas another school of thought from India, Carvaka, preached the enjoyment of material world.
