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People with no religious affiliation make up the third-largest global group
in a new study of the size of the world's faiths, placing after Christians and Muslims and just before Hindus.

The study, based on extensive data for the year 2010,
also showed Islam and Hinduism are the faiths mostly likely to expand
in the future while Jews have the weakest growth prospects.

It showed Christianity is the most evenly spread religion, present in all regions of the world,
while Hinduism is the least global with 94 percent of its population in one country, India.

Overall, 84 percent of the world's inhabitants, which it estimated at 6.9 billion, identify with a religion,
according to the study entitled "The Global Religious Landscape"
issued by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life on Tuesday.

The "unaffiliated" category covers all those who profess no religion,
from atheists and agnostics to people with spiritual beliefs but no link to any established faith.

"Many of the religiously unaffiliated do hold religious or spiritual beliefs," the study stressed.

"Belief in God or a higher power is shared by 7 percent of unaffiliated Chinese adults,

30 percent of unaffiliated French adults and 68 percent of unaffiliated U.S. adults," it said.

http://www.charismanews.com/world/34979 ... ns-muslims

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The Global Religious Landscape
A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Major Religious Groups as of 2010

Worldwide, more than eight-in-ten people identify with a religious group.
A comprehensive demographic study of more than 230 countries and territories conducted
by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life estimates that there are 5.8 billion

religiously affiliated adults and children around the globe, representing 84% of the 2010 world population of 6.9 billion.

http://www.pewforum.org/global-religiou ... -exec.aspx

I usually don't take polls seriously.
They can be too easily manipulated to deliver what certain powerelite groups WANT the world to think.
Now people can say : "Oh it's quite normal to not have any religion, so I don't feel guilty NOT having one" -
see?
I think these things are skewed in various ways.

Nonetheless, of course one can get a faint picture of the current scene perhaps.

PS I hate hearing the term "a higher power" - that comes from Alcoholics Anonymous or something along that line,
I think.

I only heard it for the first time when my sister was in Overeaters Anonymous decades ago.

Since then I have never heard anyone I know use that term [at least, that I can remember]
It's SO STUPID !

It's like "the universe" - the OTHER big cop=out for those gray souls who sit between good and evil,
can't make up their minds to acknowledge God. {let alone : the Devil's existence ]

Yes, "higher power" sounds like I am getting a sermon from Obi Wan Kenobi.

Funny -

the more you think about it, the more RIDICULOUS and even demonic the
empty phrase really IS.

Can you imagine bidding people "A higher power bless you" instead of God bless you -

Or "thanks to higher power, everything went my way" instead of "Thanks to God, all turned out well"

etc etc

I suspect the sort of people who gravitate to such a vague concept are stunted teenagers in their mentality and
emotional/spiritual growth.

It is true that many people simply do not know how to think critically anymore.

Icxypion wrote:

It is true that many people simply do not know how to think critically anymore.

Critical thinking as taught in US schools is not "critical" nor "thinking" but modernistic politically correct indoctrination.

Yes, indeed. Has anyone read the book, Why Johnny Can't Read?