Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Buddhism in China (photos)


Grand Buddha, Sichuan (Szechwan) province, China (Flickr/Jean Huang Photography)

Jean Huang has captured brilliant images of China. An amazing pool of Buddhist photos from India and Kathmandu is now available. See also WN Abram's India gallery and Siebe's Thailand collection.

There are 19 major religions in the world today. These 19 religions are further subdivided into approximately 270 subgroups. There are about 34,000 subgroups listed under Christianity, which when lumped together has two billion followers. Catholicism is the largest group. The two billion figure includes Roman Catholicism, Protestantism with many subdivisions, and Eastern Orthodox Christians from Russian and Greek Orthodox churches, as well as Free Church members. The world's major religions are nominally:
  • Catholicism (lumped with Christianity)
  • Buddhism (with more than one billion uncounted Buddhists in communist China)
  • Islam (over one billion followers), Hinduism (over 800 million, almost all in India)
  • Indigenous traditions (shamanism, Shinto)
  • New faiths (Baha'i, Nichiren) and cults

Worldwide there are fewer than 15 million Jews. They are disproportionately represented so as to make Judaism seem like a world religion. In fact, it is so small as to be insignificant. But like Jainism, which strongly associates with Hinduism, it makes a disproportionate impact. Information on the geographic distribution of religions and their major traditions is widely available on the Web. Source

The oldest organized religion was Sumerian translated here in cartoon form with real scripture.

Agnosticism - Atheism - Baha'ism - Buddhism - Candomble - Cao Dai - Catholicism - Christianity - Confucianism - Cults - Deism - Gnosticism - Hinduism - Humanism - Islam - Jainism - Jehovah's Witness - Judaism - Mormon - Pagan - Pantheism - Quakers - Rastafari - Religious Texts - Santeria - Scientology - Shamanism - Sikhism - Spiritualism - Taoism - Universal Life Church - Universalism - Zoroastrianism

No comments: