Belief Systems - Whisperings
Main menu:
Belief Systems
Greatest Story Never Told
Demographics of World Wide Belief Systems:
The Best Kept Secrets of the Past 20 Years:
Demographics of World Wide Belief Systems:
Most people find the results on the demographics of believers, which are validated by several world-wide surveys, absolutely stunning. It takes a lot of time for these surveys to be conducted, compiled and published. So of necessity the numbers I quote are a few years old. In broad terms they are based on a world population of 7 billion people. It finds over 5.8 billion who profess a belief in a Divine Creator: This includes all faiths and creeds including indigenous religions: Several reputably surveys, all referenced in appendix below, from different sources over a number of years, concur on mid-eighties percent: 84% or over 5.8 billion people. (2019 world population is 7.7 billion people. Recent census validate percentages remain broadly the same).
Of the over 5.8 billion people who profess belief in a Divine Creator, 3.8 billion, or well over half the people in the world belong to the Abrahamic religions. Christians, Muslims and Jews who all believe in the Old Testament account of Creation. (Not necessarily a literal interpretation)
Those who profess to be card carrying atheists are just over 2% which equates to about one hundred and fifty million people:
Therefore the balance, approximately 1 billion, are Agnostics - broadly meaning people who say they do not know whether there is a Divine Creator and they don’t really care. However it’s been my experience with this group, that when they hit the bumps on life’s road, which are inevitable, most are comfortable for their mother to say a prayer for them.
This well validated world-wide demographic, of the percentage of believers in a divine creator:
* 84% or well over 8 out of every 10 people
* 55% or 3.8 billon people believe in the creator God of the Bible.
Not necessarily a literal interpretation, i.e. a day could be two billion years. The early days of Genesis occur before God created the sun, moon and stars, therefore time as we know it, measured by rotation of the earth and sunlight, did not exist.
Seems to be one of the world’s best kept secrets, one must surely ask why?
PEW Research
Can 84% of World Population / 5.8 Billion People Be Wrong?
Appendix on Survey Details: A Whole Wide World of God
How does God fare outside of Ireland in an era when secularism is growing on a global scale? The impact of the modern world on religion worldwide may be vastly overstated. God isn’t going anywhere if you look at the results of some of the most recent global research.
The Pew Research Centre in America, a nonpartisan fact tank, compiled a study on the global religious landscape in 2012. According to their figures, more than eight–in-ten people in the world identify with a religious group.
They gleaned information about billions of people from around the world using 2,500 censuses to reach their results. Their research revealed that there are 5.8 billion in the world who are religiously affiliated. That number represents 84% of the 2010 world population of almost 7 billion people. These figures are largely replicated in most other surveys.
Adherents.com, which collates religious demographics worldwide, concurs that 84% of the world population have religious beliefs.
The Association of Religious Data Archives estimated in 2010 that 88% of the world population have religious beliefs. So, it appears that 5.8 billion out of 7 billion identify as having religious affiliation.
Can that many people be wrong? According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2% of the world’s population self-identify as atheists.
Another 2004 survey by the CIA in the World Fact book estimates about 2.4% are atheists. Atheist numbers are also expected to grow smaller according to PEW because of the low birth rate recorded in the demographic. Yet, the numbers of religious people are expected to expand from 5.8 billion to 8.1 billion by 2050.
So, is God relevant anymore?
All the evidence suggests that the vast majority of human beings, everywhere in the world, at all times, are believers in some version of religion. Human beings need to believe that they are a part of something bigger. Many inherently know that the material world will never satisfy them and they crave something more.
As long as they continue to do so, God remains very relevant and central to the lives of a lot of people everywhere on the globe.