From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@mercury.colossus.net)
Date: Tue Apr 21 1998 - 14:58:01 MDT
>>I recently watched "Contact" (I'm probably the last to do so
>>on this list)
Guess again...
>> In the movie it is claimed that 95% of the worlds population
>> believe in a "Supreme Being" and therefore anyone who doesn't
>> believe in God shouldn't represent Earth. Now, forgive me if
>> I'm wrong, but isn't Hinduism the most 'popular' religion?
>> Even if it's not, my point is that many religions have more
>> than one god, so I would presume that 95% of the worlds
>> population don't believe in a "Supreme Being" or "God" (which
>> I take to mean one Supreme Being, after all how many Supreme
>> Beings can you have?)
Hinduism probably counts as one "Supreme Being" even though it's
clearly a different one from that of the Abrahamic religions;
we'll put Zoroastrians in that camp, too, and some Pagans as well.
But certainly Buddhists are more than 5% of the Earth's population,
along with many of the former Soviets, who, while they are no
longer "officially" all atheists, probably haven't all changed
overnight, either. Add a smattering of secular humanists,
principled atheists, agnostics, Taoists, and others, and I'd
guess a number more like 10-15%.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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