So the University of Texas computer programmer decided to take matters into his own hands. More precisely, he took them into his own Web site. Working in his spare time from his home computer, Hunter has built perhaps the most comprehensive database of religious statistics anywhere. It includes 3,100 religions.
Numbers are often hard to come by in the world of religion.
Ellie Pierce, manager of Harvard University's Pluralism Project, said fully half the questions that come to her group are from reporters or academics in search of hard data. Often they go away unhappy. And people can't agree on a definition of religion, much less a definition of an adherent. Hunter deals with those issues by ignoring them. His site includes a huge spread of data, with numbers of followers listed by place and religion, from the Aaronic Order to Zurvanism.