• Cold_Brew_Enema@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    The thing I love about religion is that there are thousands of them, yet yours is the correct one? Those are pretty low odds.

    • TehBamski@lemmy.worldOP
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      9 months ago

      Yeah… “thousands of them” is overexaggerated. That being said, there have been a lot of faiths, myths, and mysticism throughout human history..

      Here’s an interesting timeline of belief systems.

      I grew up Mormon and had a hard time believing that we were the “true church,” “taught the true teachings.,” etc., when I learned about how many different current and old religions and beliefs people had throughout human history. Cracks started to form in my faith foundation then. The following thoughts throw me for a loop back then. Exibit A. Exibit B. Exibit C.

      • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        There are over 40,000 sects of christianity last I knew. I’m going to say thousands isn’t an overexageration. I won’t consider religions the same if they have different beliefs.

        • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Part of it is probably what determines what counts as “a religion.” My mind went to indigenous groups in the Americas, Australia, and Africa - thousands seems appropriate there!

          Historically, religions as practiced on the ground were very syncretistic - like in the late medieval Muslim world, a Christian might carry a verse from the Koran as a charm or Muslim might visit a rabbi. Not to say that there wasn’t religious persecution and attempts by religious authorities to make sure that everyone was following the rules, but the species of religious fundamentalism we see today is a product of the 19th century and widespread literacy.

          Even within a modern Protestant church of a specific denomination, there’s probably a mix of people who are universalists, into spiritualism, etc.

          I don’t really think religions can be considered discrete in a way that one could report “there are X religions in the world.”

      • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        That timeline leaves off The Babis, The Baha’is, The Mormons, and tons of fracturing among Christians and Muslims, that I am aware of.

        It also ignores Shintoism, Daoism, and the other far eastern belief systems.

        Also I am intentionally not counting Scientology, because that was a bet.

        • TehBamski@lemmy.worldOP
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          9 months ago

          I wasn’t able to find Babi, but did find Bahai and Mormon in the tree. I don’t have the time right now to try to find the others, but I’m going to guess that they’re in there or didn’t make the cut when making the tree.

      • Chocrates@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Do you happen to know where a higher resolution version of this image is?

        I am not very knowledgeable about religion but that chart buckets European Animism as one “Religion” while I think it was not organized and refers to the disparate beliefs of folks in the area at the time, so one could argue that there were lots of version I think.

        Regardless really fascinating info.

    • Exocrinous
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      9 months ago

      You can cheat the system by believing in every religion

      • badaboomxx@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Dude more than half of the population on thr planet are asians… and last time I saw, the Chinese main religion is not christianity

          • badaboomxx@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            I which part I said otherwise? Asia is a region, that includes countries like Japan, China, Taiwan, the Koreas, etc… but I never said it was limited to China. My point was that the population of China is almost half of the world, if not pass that already, that is why I said that the christianity is not the biggest religion out there like the other user claimed.

            Basically to make it easier, China, part of Asia, is almost half of the population, they are not in the mayority christians, so by that I am saying that christianity is not the biggest religion in the world, also, contemplating that there are christians, catholics and protestants, among other derivations of it, that makes your claim claim even more wrong.

          • badaboomxx@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            I never said anything about the middle east. I said Asia, so by definition, all the regions that are inside of Asia, included but not limited to China.

            And still, Muslims are not even the mayority in ASIA

      • fastandcurious@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Tbh everyone probably worships the same god, people really stopped following religion or have never followed it, atleast the majority, it’s just used as an excuse to get away with whatever you want to do and stop people from questioning it.