File talk:Worldwide percentage of Adherents by Religion.png

message: reference? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.66.26.117 (talk • contribs)  08:15, 8 July 2007
:It appears to me that the remarks on the image page sufficiently answer that question. –Wookipedian 05:31, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: "Atheist" is a very fluid term, which doesn't really have a fixed meaning, and that meaning changes depending on who says it. Some define an atheist as not believing in God(s), in which case all agnostics are also atheists. Others define "atheist" as believing no God(s) exist(s), a category that would include Scientologists and several branches of New Age philosophy as well as biological determinists or antitheists. Buddhists and practitioners of Chinese folk religions do not need to believe in gods, so how much of China could be defined as strictly atheist is an open question I think. The percentage of atheists in the world would vary wildly depending on what criteria are used to define the concept. Serendipodous 22:17, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

text: Not really. Atheism is exactly what it says - a+thesis. Atheism isn't in any way a religion, and obviously the number of atheists in the world is much, much greater than 2.35%. Atheism should be removed from a list like this - atheism is not "just a small subset of nontheists". As said before, there are many religious atheists. Ran4 (talk) 10:27, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

message: What is Chinese Universism?  I can't find anything about it on Wikipedia, and since it is apparently the fourth largest religion in the world, I would think that it would be considered 'notable'. Gorman (talk) 01:52, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chinese Universism? 

message: LOL --69.181.183.86 (talk) 05:17, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: As there's only 8 million, I think that lands them pretty heftily in "other". Gorman (talk) 08:13, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

text: They are possibly a part of the "Neoreligionists"  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.247.41.100 (talk) 20:04, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Hey, where's the "8 million Scientologists"?

message: i find the small number of atheists and unreligious people a shockingly small amount, it makes me sad to think there are so many stupid and ignorant people living in the disillusionment that there is a god.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.6.10.75 (talk) 21:32, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you Mr Dawkins. Your input is appreciated and completely fucking irrelevant to the image or the article whence it came. Well done. Gorman (talk) 08:20, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: How sad

message: Why are atheists and non-religious two different groups? How do those two groups not contain exactly the same membership? Are the creators of this map somehow considering atheism a religion? How is that even possible? Really weird!--SirDugforth (talk) 01:41, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Atheists are a subset of non-religious, those who declare specifically to not believe in gods. Some people simply don't believe in any particular religion but they still have their own "custom" beliefs in supernatural matters, while not doubting the existence of gods, or, more commonly, a single god more or less like in a watered-down Christianity without whatever the person does't completely buy. Atheists in the other hand doubt the existence of gods, or believe that none exists. That's not necessarely, probably not even commonly, a "devout belief" anyway, not anymore than the disbelief or belief in nonexistence/invalidity of, say, astrology, faeries or Zeus is to those that doubt these things. Agnostics are not "hugely different" from atheists, in fact, there's a huge overlap. Agnosticism is the "belief" that there's no way to know for sure one way or the other about an issue, or more specifically, about the existence and caprices of gods. You can perfectly admit that it's ultimately impossible to settle the issue in a scientific manner, but still not see any legitimate reason to believe in gods, or, conversely, you can admit it and still believe in some god or gods merely by faith. The is perhaps a good part of what the "non-religious" as well, but some may think they can be sure of their "custom" beliefs, and are therefore not agnostics. --Extremophile (talk) 04:57, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  How is atheism and non-religious not the same? 

message: Are the raw numbers for the chart available? Or only the percentage Rune X2 (talk) 14:31, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Raw numbers