22% of the world's population is Muslim, making Islam the second largest religion. Christianity is still in the lead, with 33% of the world's population (according to ReligiousTolerance.org). Wikipedia says it's "difficult to quantify the number of atheists in the world," but offers the results of a 2005 survey conducted by the Encyclopædia Britannica which says that "the non-religious made up about 11.9% of the world's population, and atheists about 2.3%" (source). This of course doesn't include atheistic religions like certain variants of Buddhism.
While this number seems small - and doesn't include those atheists who have yet to "come out of the closet" - I think we can look at these statistics another way...
78% of the world's population doesn't believe in Allah, or the Qur'an, or in Muhammad as god's prophet. 67% of the world's population doesn't believe in Yahweh, the Bible, or in Jesus Christ as god's only begotten son. Non-believers are in the majority. Atheists are simply non-believers who believe in one less god than everyone else.
I don't mention this to be facetious, but to make a point: religious apologists like to point out that "over 90% of the world believes in some sort of god," as though that actually means something. For one thing, that doesn't prove anything. This is a logical fallacy called Argumentum ad Populum. There was a time when everyone believed the earth was flat, or that this pale blue dot is the center of the universe. Such beliefs have since been demonstrated to be false. Truth isn't decided by majority vote.
Secondly, the "religion versus atheism" dichotomy is simply wrong. Yes, "over 90%" believe in something that makes them not atheists, but it's more accurate to say that these people all believe in many different somethings that are wildly different from each other, and history has shown that folks in this "90%" don't always get along with each other. More to the point, the differences in the somethings in which they believe are often the source of the conflicts.
And those differences - along with the conflicts that arise because of those differences - happen frequently within any one given religion. Just look at the Sunnis and Shiites in Islam, or the Catholics and Protestants in Christianity: see how often they lock horns with each other. And it's not uncommon to see them trying to kill each other. Just look at the Middle East - or Ireland. And let's not forget about the Gunpowder Plot, or the burning of Giordano Bruno at the stake. This "90%" is anything but a unified group standing in agreement.
All I'm saying is, there are many different beliefs out there. There's also a lot of non-belief out there; in fact, there's more non-belief in any one religion than there is belief. This isn't a debate between a world that's "under god" and a small band of rebels. Many of the same apologists who try to use the "90%" statistic as an argument for their god are also the ones who say the majority of people in that "90%" are going to hell for believing in the wrong god.
I once attempted to use this 90% statistic as evidence of god's "general revelation" (as the theologians say) to all humanity, claiming that it points to the fact that god has "set eternity in the hearts of men" (Ecclesiastes 3:11). I'm almost embarrassed to admit that. I viewed the world through the filter of my Christian bias when I was an apologist for the faith, and thus I saw this "90%" as evidence that humanity is at least aware of the existence of god, even though they differ on the particulars of orthodoxy and orthopraxy.
Still, I had this nagging doubt in the back of my mind that never really went away: how could the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving god be so ambiguous? God created the universe, right? So... why can't he at least send us a clear message? And if god is in fact sending us this message, why do most people in Pakistan hear the message one way (i.e., Islam), yet people in the United States hear god's message another way (i.e., Christianity)? Maybe the Hindus are correct and god presents himself (or herself, or itself) in a billion different ways, so pick a version of the divine you like. If it doesn't fit, return it for in-store credit.
Or maybe religion is in fact a creation of man, and since man created it and there's no real evidence to support any of it, the "message of god" will inevitably differ from one group to the next. Consequently, people will always disagree - they will always doubt - that the other competing religions are true.
See? We're in the majority. We doubt the truth claims of religions just like everyone else in the world. If you're an adherent of a particular religion and you happen to be reading this, ask yourself why you doubt all those other religions. Ask yourself why you are atheistic toward all other religions but your own. Then can you be honest and open with yourself to ask why you're not atheistic about your religion?
Why is it so easy for you to doubt and dismiss every other religion that's ever existed in the history of humanity but your own?
Dead-Logic.com
[I was inspired to write this in part by recent blog entries by John Loftus: Ten Reasons Why Atheism Can't Win and Atheism is Winning Despite the Fact That it Shouldn’t Be.]
We're in the Majority...
We're in the Majority...
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