Talk:Claims to be the fastest growing religion

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Contents

[edit] Arbitrary section header

This page replaces "Fastest Growing Religion" see Talk:Fastest growing religion for reasons. Mike Young 11:29, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jedi

The Jedi_census_phenomenon should at least be referred to in this article. --Dweller 12:23, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Is it a religion at all? And to establish a rate of growth, you need both a baseline and a subsequent survey (e.g. at least two consecutive censuses in the same area). AnonMoos 14:18, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "While there is no doubt.."

This line has nothing to do with the subject. I deleted it. The page now starts with "There are..." Needless to say, that's more appropriate since this *is* the subject.--SlightlyInsane 21:30, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] reconciled with Religion Trends in adherence

I understand the point of these two isn't the same (claims to be fastest growing vs overall trends among fast and slow growing) but there seem to be some glaring differences that at least should be addressed somehow.

There is a section here that notes "The World Christian Encyclopaedia estimates that there were 2,883,011 converts to Christianity each year between 1990 and 2000." which is noted on the Trends section as 1.36%, and slower than the rate of population growth of the planet, but this statement occurs right after claiming 2.3% here, among the highest in the world for the prior 20ish years claiming higher growth than the population growth of the planet. I understand these are not the same periods of time but these seem too mixed together and contradictory - did something happen in Christianity or the world in general to drop it from among the fastest growing religions to one of the slowest %-wise? Not that I'm aware of.

The Trends second mentions Zoroastrianism and the Bahá'í faith in or near the lead, and not Falun Gong (which is presented with logic more than statistics in the Claims article), or Wicca at all, while Claims is exactly reversed. I see that Wicca is missing from the World Christian Enc source which might help explain that difference but it's just left sitting there one mentioning high and other not mentioning it at all. Trends mentions Buddhism as well down the line while Claims mentions in it just for Australia.

Islam - one of the few common entries between the two article/sections is cited with number counts rather than % except by an openly unsourced claim, but then a "reason" is mentioned that Muslims can't apostasize. "Reasons" for religious growth or not isn't evenly worked out across the Claims article...

It's just hair raising. At least pick some sources and review consistently what each one says and segregate world-wide counts/%'s and regional ones. Then perhaps cautiously claims from the sources could be compared for simple things (like not counting Wicca from the WC Enc) or the like, being carefull about Original Research.

The only good sections are the "Different definitions" and "difficulty" sections.--Smkolins 13:06, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Someone please provide a reliable source for that claim, All it says is that According to Christian Encycloedia, but where's the reliable source for this claim. It points to an anti-islamic site as the source, I dont think thats a wise and reliable source which can be taken into account. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 74.111.238.236 (talk) 18:32, 19 February 2007 (UTC).
I'm not aware there are any more "reliable" sources than those mentioned in the various webpages. Moreover these sources are used in a wide variety of articles online about such things (including adherents.com.) However if what you want is the reference, just follow the links in the original articles.--Smkolins 20:41, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

The whole point of this article is that their are various and contradictory Claims, and it depends what you mean by "Fastest growing religion". This is not an article about what is the fastest growing religion, but about the fact that we cannot really know what it is, and the fact that many of the claims contradict one another, especially any having anything to do with conversion.

That being said, I am still happy to remove some of the more wacky claims.Mike Young 19:58, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

If that's the point of the article - to express confusion - then it is succeeding - but I'd also guess that at least by implication it would violate the spirit or rules of wikipedia. I would prefer it attempted to clarify, rather than confuse. It should certainly be possible to add some structure towards that purpose - local claims with mega-churches and temples, regional claims within a country, regional claims across countries or sub-continentally, continental or hemispherical (N, S, Americas, East Asian....) and total world. Some mathematical statement should be available somewhere about dealing with numerical increase in large populations vs percentage increase in smaller populations.... Then there's the angle that there is no centralized neutral reporting agency, and that religions have specific rules by which they count adherents and that by itself can cause some drift in claims - conversion vs births causing growth.... Then there are issues of denominations or divided religions - where one slice considers the others another religion.... Then there are different answers over different periods of time. What I'm suggesting is that there are different questions actually being asked or assumed and that different answers and conditions can be understood to relate to the questions. A perspective of a degree of confusion can still be achieved because it certainly exists - but this article throws up it's hands at such an early point in the process it fails to hold even the available intellectual water that anyone who follows the topic would find a respectable presentation of the topic.--Smkolins 12:22, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Any increase in world population will increase number of Christians

As Christianity is the largest religion in the world, any increase in the world 
population will give Christianity a greater absolute number of new members.

I deleted this logically flawed claim. --ThorstenNY 20:14, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

How about
As Christianity is the largest religion in the world, an evenly distributed increase 
in the world population will give Christianity a greater absolute number of new members.

Mike Young 20:05, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

The entire concept of Fastest growing religion is a flaud claim. It is Argumentum ad populum, a logical fallacy.--Sefringle 01:46, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

No, it isn't. It is Argumentum ad populum to say that the Fastest Growing religion must be the true one, but this does not mean that one does not exist (for a given definition), even if we don't know what it is. Many of the urban legends surrounding this claim implicitly make the Argumentum ad populum assumption. Mike Young 19:01, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] World Christian encyclopaedia

The World Christian Encyclopaedia seems to contain all sorts of data, but I believe most of it to be extrapolations and "guestimates" from other data and so I cannot consider it to be reliable, especially with regard to conversions. Although it may be useful for many things, I do not think it is accurate enough to be quoted as authoritative on this subject. Mike Young 12:39, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't argue it is probably flawed but can you suggest other specific sources?--Smkolins 20:59, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
No I can't. I think it tries to do the best it can, it is good on things like overall % christian, but it fills up the gaps with guesses and extrapolations rather than hard data. Rate of growth is a guess or extrapolation, especially for conversions, so this leads to some strange conclusions, like that Zoroastrianism is the fastest growing religion. Mike Young 21:18, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
So then we should be reporting the best available evidence, including criticism as documentable in scholarly review. Otherwise it's not what wikipedia is about or the article shouldn't exist.--Smkolins 17:08, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Scientology...

...claims somewhere to be the world's fastest growing religion. I will check this out and provide multiple reputable cited sources at some point. Smee 03:11, 22 May 2007 (UTC).

...yes, so does every religion. It is possible to find claims for any religion. The claim needs to have some scientific back up. I believe scientology is in decline. Please don't add a claim from a unsubstantiated source Mike Young 20:17, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Zoroastrianism

A section of the wikipedia article on Zoroastrianism states that it is the fastest growing religion in the world. [1] This should perhaps be addressed in this article and that one, though i'm not sure how best to do that.MennoMan 16:31, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Most of the article on Zorostrianism says that it is rapidly declining. ONLY the World Christian encyclopedia claims this growth. I have modified the Zoroastrianism page to take this into account. [2] Mike Young 22:40, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Carnegie endowment

The page from the Carnegie endowment again quotes figures from the World Christian Database. This is the same source as the World Christian Encyclopaedia. Its quotes do not deserve the accolade of being in the first paragraph, as this gives the implication that this represents some kind of scholarly consensus, which does not exist. I have transferred the data to the Islam section, as that was the religion with the highest growth. Mike Young 13:38, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Featured article

OK, guys: I think it's about time to feature this article on the front page of Wikipedia.--I told you 12:23, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

There is a specific process which must be followed before an article becomes a featured article. First it must become a Good Article, then it must go through a Peer review then it can be nominated for a featured article, so I am going to remove your nomination for this reason. SefringleTalk 17:44, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
Don't want to unnecessarily diminish your enthusiasm, but this is not the kind of article which will easily become a featured article, since its subject matter involves juggling conflicting dubious claims, insufficient data, and various imponderables... AnonMoos 01:39, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm not asking you. I'm telling you. I've already asked for a peer review. In a very short time, I will be nominating it for featured-article status, which it will attain in a similarly-short period of time. This bull-shit about it being too POV is just that: bull-shit.--I told you 12:48, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] CNN Quote

I have removed this CNN quote

“ It is widely reported that Islam is the "second-largest religion in the world after Christianity" with Islam being the "fastest-growing religion".[3] ”

The reason is that the article just says it and does not quote sources. As the header paragraph says, the list on this page trys to link to some reliable source of data to support the claim (such as the ARIS study, or census data). For the purposes of this article we need a link to some science that says why a particular religion is the fastest growing, not just that somebody says it. If the CNN article had linked to a study then we could have quoted that study, but claims like this are ten a penny. They need some figures to back them up. Mike Young (talk) 13:22, 21 February 2008 (UTC)