Expert: Jeffrey Eldred - 8/29/2009

Question
1. Can you tell the lists of all religions out there?
2. How do emails all experts at once?
3. How many experts are there?

Answer
1. No. I cannot list all religions of the world- no one can. The estimated number of religions currently in the world number somewhere from about 3000 to 12000. If you started counting sects and denominations that number would get much higher (there are an estimated between 8000 and 30000 denominations of Protestant Christianity for example) and still more if you counted all the variations within a single denomination (for example while it is still part of Catholic theology that contraceptives are immoral, 95% of Americans Catholics disagree). If you wanted a more manageable list, one way to do it would be to look at the twenty most popular religions or all the religions with a certain number of members. For example, according to Adherants.com:
1) Christianity (33% world, 76.5% US)
2) Islam/Sufi (21% world, 0.5% US)
3) Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist (16% world, 14.1% US)
4) Hinduism (14% world, 0.4% US)
5) Confucianism/Taoist/Chinese folk (6% world, 0.02% US)
6) Buddhism (6% world, 0.5% US)
7) Shamanism/Animism/various indigenous (6% world, 0.1% US)
8) Sikhism (0.36% world, 0.03% US)
9) Juche (0.28% world)
10) Judaism (0.22% world, 1.3% US)
11) Baha'i (0.1% world, 0.04% US)
12) Jainism (0.06% world)
13) Shinto (0.06% world)
14) Cao Dai (0.06% world)
15) Zoroastrianism (0.04% world)
16) Tenrikyo (0.03% world)
17) Neo-paganism (0.015% world 0.02% US)
18) Unitarian-Universalism (0.01% world, 0.3% US)
19) Rastafarianism (0.01% world)
20) Scientology (0.01% world, 0.02% US)
21) Humanist/Deist (0.04% US)
22) Eckankar (0.01% US)

If you are interested in world religions for some sort of research project, educational pursuit, or presentation, it makes more sense to think about religion as a mix that comes from a variety of different influences - just like culture or language. If you are on some kind of personal spiritual journey to find what religion appeals to you, than I am afraid your strategy is probably not the best way to go about things. There are just too many to treat them all as if they carried equal merit.

Religions are more similar than most believers are typically willing admit. As such you can use ideas or beliefs that you know do not work to eliminate whole sectors of religion or you can explore religions that are highly related to a religion that you think has some merit. Perhaps you can imagine what you would want from a religion and start from there. If you think that there is something to the idea that all religions are valuable, than what you want is a religion that is an interfaith religion. To my knowledge, you can do this with #4, #7, #8 #11, #17, or #18 above. To put it simply, it's a-la-carte. You pick up what you like, leave what you don't.

Of course, to an atheist all religions are some form of superstition or another. None of them have persuasive historical claims. There is no observational, experimental, or empirical evidence for any supernatural event or any prayer-effect. Even an atheist can put their brain into a state of peace by meditating - it's a biological trance (it shows up on a brain scan), not a supernatural transcendence. If you have a particular moral claim that you can describe by just talking in terms of human decency, societal norms, universal values, human life, or happiness than you have a moral claim that you do not need religion for. If you have a particular moral claim that has no justification in these terms, than you probably ought to go without it. Who needs religion?

2. I do not know if there is a way to email all experts the same question. That would be a good question for Tech Support. There is a link to Tech Support here:
http://www.allexperts.com/user.cgi?m=10&subject=Feedback

Something you have to understand is that I am not employed by AllExperts, experts just log-on to the website to answer questions of which they are familiar. I am not certain, but I believe that you cannot email all experts because you are only supposed to need a single expert to answer a question. If you are not satisfied with the answer I give you can ask a follow-up. I believe I can also direct it to the general pool for all atheism experts to answer or direct it to a specific expert in any field that I think might be helpful.

3. I do not know how many experts there are on allexperts. I wouldn't ordinarily think that this would be a good question for Tech Support, but there does not seem to be any other method of contacting AllExperts. So if you care to contact Tech Support, maybe they have an estimate of how many experts are here.