Talk:Religion/Catalogs

Suggestion to increase ease of navigation.

May I suggest upgrading the names of each religion to a 4th level header so that they apear in the index which can be scanned by eye quickly to find the item you want to follow. Also, some more links throughout the article such as linking the name of the god/deity, founder's name and geographic locations where relevant. Derek Harkness 00:07, 25 April 2007 (CDT)

I very much like this idea of catalogs. It is extremely useful and user-friendly idea. ---Stephen Ewen 01:02, 25 April 2007 (CDT)

Number of Buddhists

The figure for number of Buddhists (100 to 150 million) seems quite low. There are almost 150 million people in Thailand, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia alone, and these countries are almost exclusively Buddhist as far as public religion. Granted, estimates of the number of Buddhists in the world can tend to be exaggerated by the large number of people in East Asia (particularly in China and Japan) who are vaguely associated with Buddhism; however, this article seems to err in the opposite direction.—Nat Krause 02:34, 25 April 2007 (CDT)

possible religions

I have doubts about some that are not religions by themselves

• meditation
• astrology

and I propose to add to the miscellaneous:

• Atheism (in the dogmatic sense)

and I really thing confucianism should be moved out of the dubious cases--it is in the literal sense a pattern of worship. DavidGoodman 04:05, 25 April 2007 (CDT)

Confucianism is practiced as a religion. Though Confucius would have utterly hated the idea himself, that doesn't stop it being a religion. Derek Harkness 06:02, 25 April 2007 (CDT)

Traditional worldviews / traditional behavior - I am taking this as animism, the set of such religions which ought not be categorized as borderline. ---Stephen Ewen 18:24, 26 April 2007 (CDT)

Agreed. Only problem is that animism doesn't originate anywhere in particular, since it is practiced all over the world. --Joe Quick (Talk) 18:28, 26 April 2007 (CDT)

"Traditional" also sometimes refers to syncretic religions. Maybe just include the more prominent syncretic belief systems and forms of animism separately? --Joe Quick (Talk) 18:31, 26 April 2007 (CDT)

Mock religions

There are a few mock religions out there. Their purpose is to satirize religions. For example, people who say they believe (they really don't) in the Flying Spaghetti Monster call themselves Pastafarian. Should we add a subcategory of mock religions in the borderlines category? I see there's already Discordianism in there, but to me it seems that there *are* people who take it somewhat seriously so I don't think it's a mock religion anymore, not entirely. Yuval Langer 08:54, 25 April 2007 (CDT)

For a hilarious belly-laugh, read the mock-religion Spammism. :-) ---Stephen Ewen 17:11, 25 April 2007 (CDT)

Church of Scientology

As yet, there is no article for the Church of Scientology. It has no beliefs in the common sense that religions have a belief and it has no objects of worship. It disseminates an applied religious philosophy Scientology's definitionand was first introduced in the United states in 1952 (see Scientology), and so, does not fit into any of the catagories present in the article. Does anyone have a suggestion ? Terry E. Olsen 12:02, 30 April 2007 (CDT)