...Some Facts on Religion.

I came across an article about how world religion statistics have changed over the past 100 years or so. It was written by George Weigel who is a Catholic theologian and published on a Catholic Education website, but we're talking numbers here. No matter who it is written by or what religion the put their faith in doesn't change how many Jewish people there are in the world. In other words, the source is trusted and seems to be without bias.

It's OK this time Fox.

The most shocking statistic to me seems to be that Christian denominations went from 1,900 to 35,500 over the past century. "Distinct" religions went from 1000 to 10,500 during the same time. An example are the Ahmadi Muslim Community. They are based out of India and believed Jesus escaped from the cross and died in India when he was 120, there are 25,000 followers living in Canada. It started in 1914 when the leader of the Ahmadiyya Movement died and there were arguments over who should lead next (the other group formed was the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement). This practice isn't new as the difference between Sunni and Shiite Muslims comes down to pretty much the same thing.

Who gets the temple?

Other interesting points:
-in 1900 there were 558 million catholics and about 2 billion today. But as a percentage of world population it has decreased overall (going from 34.5% to 33.1% today).
-There were 25 million bibles printed last year in 1735 different languages (there are 208 million IKEA catolouges printed every year).
-Independant Churches, such as the assholes in the Westboro Baptist church, make up around 400 million Christians.  

Priase be to Dagstorp

And that is what I learned today.