Belief system

Belief systems
Religion and philosophy are often integral to a culture.

Religion
Also see: List of religions

Religion is commonly understood as a group of beliefs or attitudes concerning an object (real or imagined), person (real or imagined), or system of thought considered to be supernatural, sacred, or divine, and the moral codes, practices, values, institutions, and rituals associated with such belief or system of thought.

Islam predominates in the Middle East. The primary religion throughout Latin America is Roman Catholicism; with Protestantism dominant in North America. Modern Europeans are less religious.

Present day adherents
The following statistics show the number of adherents in all known approaches, both religious and irreligious worldwide. Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism are the largest world religions today. Approximately 75% of humanity belongs to one of these 4 religions. Christianity is the religion with the largest number of professed religious adherents, followed by Islam. The third-largest group of approximately 1 billion people adhere to irreligious approaches which include Humanism, Atheism, Rationalism, and Agnosticism. Hinduism with 900 million adherents is the third largest religion followed by 19 smaller groups of religious adherents. These figures are necessarily approximate: note that the figures in the following table total nearly 7 billion people, yet the world population was only 6.1 billion (2005). .
 * 1) Christianity 2.1 billion
 * 2) Islam 1.3 billion
 * 3) Secular/Irreligious/Agnostic/Atheist 1.1 billion
 * 4) Hinduism 900 million
 * 5) Chinese folk religion 394 million
 * 6) Buddhism 376 million, not including Chinese folk Religion (see also Buddhism by country)
 * 7) Primal indigenous ("Pagan") 300 million
 * 8) African traditional and diasporic 100 million
 * 9) Sikhism 23 million
 * 10) Juche 19 million
 * 11) Spiritism 15 million
 * 12) Judaism 14 million
 * 13) Bahá'í Faith 7 million
 * 14) Jainism 4.2 million
 * 15) Shinto 4 million (see below)
 * 16) Cao Dai 4 million
 * 17) Zoroastrianism 2.6 million
 * 18) Tenrikyo 2 million
 * 19) Neo-Paganism 1 million
 * 20) Unitarian Universalism 800,000
 * 21) Rastafari movement 600,000
 * 22) Scientology 500,000


 * In its Yoga stream, Hinduism is even more widespread all over the world with 20 million practitioners in the United States alone . There are more than 100 million who practise Hinduism in Yoga form worldwide. After including them, Hinduism has around 1.4 billion followers worldwide.


 * Christianity encompasses many different denomiations but the statistics in the source for this document consider them all together for the purposes of analysis.


 * Shinto is a special case due to shrine-reporting versus self-reporting. Since the 17th century, there have been laws in Japan requiring registration with Shinto shrines. Because of this, 75-90% of all Japanese are listed on shrine rolls, greatly inflating the apparent number of adherents. When asked in polls, only about 3.3% of Japanese people identify themselves as "Shinto." However, many who do not consider themselves "Shintoists" still practice Shinto rituals.

In ranking religious denominations, the Roman Catholic Church is the largest single denomination within Christianity, Sunni Islam within Islam, and Vaishnavism within Hinduism. It is difficult to say whether there are more Roman Catholics or Sunnis, as the numbers are roughly equal, and exact counts are impossible, because some members though legally accepted in those denominations may have renounced their faith or have converted quickly.

Abrahamic religions
The Middle East is the birthplace and spiritual center of the Abrahamic religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all monotheistic.

Judaism has about 15 million followers as of 2006.

It is one of, if not the first, recorded monotheistic faiths and one of the oldest religious traditions still practiced today. The values and history of the Jewish people are a major part of the foundation of other Abrahamic religions such as Christianity, Islam, as well as Samaritanism and the Bahá'í Faith.

Christianity was the dominant feature in shaping European culture for at least the last 1700 years. Modern philosophical thought has very much been influenced by Christian philosphers such as St. Thomas Aquinas and Erasmus. European colonization and missionaries have spread it.

As the Islam originated in 6th century Arabia, the early forms of Muslim culture were predominantly Arab. However, with the rapid expansion of the Islamic empires, Muslims came into contact with, and assimilated much from, the Persian, Turkish, Mongol, Indian, Malay and Indonesian cultures. Also see Muslim culture.

Religion in Africa
Africans profess a wide variety of religious beliefs, with Christianity and Islam being the most widespread. Approximately 46.3% of all Africans are Christians and another 40.5% are Muslims. Roughly 11.8 percent of Africans primarily follow indigenous African religions. A small number of Africans are Hindu, or have beliefs from the Judaic tradition, such as the Beta Israel and Lemba tribes. (figures calculated from )

The indigenous African religions tend to revolve around animism and ancestor worship. A common thread in traditional belief systems was the division of the spiritual world into "helpful" and "harmful". Helpful spirits are usually deemed to include ancestor spirits that help their descendants, and powerful spirits that protect entire communities from natural disaster or attacks from enemies; whereas harmful spirits include the souls of murdered victims who were buried without the proper funeral rites, and spirits used by hostile spirit mediums to cause illness among their enemies. While the effect of these early forms of worship continues to have a profound influence, belief systems have evolved as they interact with other religions.

”American Dream”
The American Dream, a faith, held by many in the United States, that, through hard work, courage, and self-determination, regardless of social class, a person can gain a better life. This belief is rooted in the belief that the country is a "city upon a hill, a light unto the nations," which were values held by many early European settlers and maintained by subsequent generations.

Australian aboriginal
The indigenous peoples of Australia can be classified into hundreds of language groups and clans. For this reason it is incorrect to classify any attribute as universal to them as a whole. However, almost all the belief systems found seem to be what can be considered a polytheistic, animistic religion. Many similarities between the groups may be seen:
 * The Australian Aboriginal culture is based on nature in every aspect. Most of their mythological heroes are animals common in Australia, the most prominent being the Rainbow Serpent.
 * Another similarity is the so-called "Dreamtime". It is often thought of as the time in which the world was created, but correctly describes the process of the world being called into being.
 * Walkabout is a word which has been coined to describe the pilgrimages that Aboriginal people must make to their "sacred places to conduct ceremonies. Walkabout is the enactment of great journeys, or sections of them, that the 'ancestral beings' took long ago in the "Dreamtime".

Philosophy
Asian philosophical traditions originated in India and China and cover a large spectrum of philosophical thoughts and writings. Indian philosophy includes Hindu philosophy and Buddhist philosophy. They include elements of nonmaterial pursuits, whereas another school of thought from India, Carvaka, preached the enjoyment of material world.

Taoism was founded by Chinese philosopher Lao Zi, who lived 605-520 B.C. Buddhism was founded by Siddhartha Gautama, who lived 563-483 B.C.

During the 20th century, in the two most populous countries of Asia, two dramatically different political philosophies took shape. Gandhi gave a new meaning to Ahimsa, and redefined the concepts of nonviolence and nonresistance. During the same period, Mao Zedong’s communist philosophy was crystallized.

Religions
Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism originated in India, a country of South Asia. In East Asia, particularly in China and Japan, Confucianism, Taoism, Zen Buddhism and Shinto took shape. Other religions of Asia include Bahá'í Faith, Shamanism practiced in Siberia and Animism, practiced in the eastern parts of the Indian subcontinent.

Today 30% of Muslims live in the South Asian region of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. The world's largest single Muslim community (within the bounds of one nation) is in Indonesia. There are also significant Muslim populations in the Philippines, China, Central Asia, Iran, and Russia.

In the Philippines and East Timor, Roman Catholicism is the predominant religion; it was introduced by the Spaniards and the Portuguese, respectively. In Armenia, Eastern Orthodoxy is the predominant religion. Various Christian sects have adherents in portions of the Middle East.

A large majority of people in the world who practice a religious faith practice one founded in Asia.

Religions founded in Asia and with a majority of their contemporary adherents in Asia include:


 * Bahá'í Faith: slightly more than half of all adherents are in Asia
 * Bön: Tibet
 * Buddhism: Cambodia, China, Japan, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, parts of northern, eastern, and western India, and parts of central and eastern Russia (Siberia).
 * Mahayana Buddhism: China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam.
 * Theravada Buddhism: Cambodia, parts of China, Laos, mainly northern parts of Malaysia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, as well as parts of Vietnam.
 * Vajrayana Buddhism: Parts of China, Mongolia, parts of northern and eastern India, parts of central, eastern Russia and Siberia.
 * Hinduism: India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Malaysia, Singapore, Bali.
 * Islam: Central, South, and Southwest Asia, Maritime Southeast Asia
 * Shia Islam: largely to specific Iran, Azerbaijan, parts of Iraq, Bahrain, parts of Afghanistan, parts of India, parts of Pakistan.
 * Sunni Islam: dominant in the rest of the regions mentioned above.
 * Jainism: India
 * Qadiani: Pakistan, Bangladesh, India.
 * Shinto: Japan
 * Sikhism: India, Malaysia, Hong Kong.
 * Daoism: China, Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, and Taiwan
 * Zoroastrianism: Iran, India, Pakistan.
 * Shamanism: Siberia
 * Animism: Eastern India, Philippines, Japan, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Indonesia
 * Yezidi : Iraq, Iran, Syria, Turkey.
 * Zikri: Pakistan, Iran.

Religions founded in Asia that have the majority of their contemporary adherents in other regions include:


 * Christianity (Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Armenia, Georgia, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, East Timor, Pakistan, India and the Philippines)
 * Judaism (slightly fewer than half of its adherents reside in Asia; Israel, Iran, India, Syria.)

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