I can’t remember where I heard this from but Atheism is a religion like Off is a TV channel.
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What does the one in Antarctica look like?
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Baha’i is an interesting religion, worth at least reading the Wikipedia article. However, I was shocked to see it second in South Carolina! I never thought it would be second anywhere (though it’s cool that it is). Anyone know why?
As for the temple in Chicago… it’s amazing. Worth a visit regardless of your religious predilections (would have posted a link to it if telecinese hadn’t).
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I had no idea we had so many Jewish people in MO.
And isn’t that true for most religions? There’s a large gulf between the catholic tradition and say… the Mennonites and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
But whats this? an American Ninja reference, you sir, win the Internet today!
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Yes, good call, I as a humble observer, certainly would NOT want to step in and resolve any inconsistencies between religions.
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Methodology: “Each participating religious body supplies the number of churches, full members, adherents, and attendees for each county.” So you’re unlikely to see much atheism listed. The best you might get would be explicitly atheist churches, which do exist but probably aren’t recognized by these folks.
The data has been published since the 50s and is typically represented as factual (as for example the Washington Post has done) so it seems there is considerable incentive to supply fantasy numbers.
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It seems you’re saying these ‘American’ Buddhists are all homegrown Buddhists who have taken Buddhism and modified it to the American salad bar equivalent, when I would imagine that most of these Buddhists are immigrants or children of immigrants. Though that’s just a guess. I’m sure you’re right about the homegrown American Buddhists, though.
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Have you BEEN to California? 
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Tech industry in the Phoenix area, I guess. (Apparently I live in the “most Hindu” city in America because of Silicon Valley.) We’re still talking less than one percent of the population even just in the Phoenix area, though.
Edit: what’s up with the auto-image addition with some links?
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Living in California, all the Buddhist temples I’m aware of are run by, and mostly attended by, Asian immigrants…
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Most statistics I’ve seen don’t separate the non-religious into atheist, agnostic, or other groups. They just list them as “none” or “non-religious”.
It’d be interesting to see a similar mapping with “atheism/agnostic” included as a comparison.
I checked the numbers for Canada. Christians are the majority in every province and territory. Non-religious is the 2nd-highest in every province and territory. Usually by a huge margin. Here’s the next highest religion after Christians and non-religious in each province and territory:
Alberta: Islam
British Columbia: Sikhism
Manitoba: Judaism
New Brunswick: Islam
Newfoundland: Islam
Northwest Territories: Other (I’m assuming native religions)
Nova Scotia: Islam
Nunavut: Eastern Religions
Ontario: Islam
Prince Edward Island: Islam
Quebec: Islam
Saskatchewan: Other
Yukon: Other
I took my numbers from here.
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I was being jocose, although if I weren’t I’d be sure to defer to your experience as a local. 
Perhaps the joke would have been better with “San Fran” instead of merely California? It’s an awfully big state, after all, and there are huge swaths of it full of actually sane people, or so I’m told.
Actually, looking back the best joke would have been “Hollywood” instead of California, because then that ties into the original joke I originally responded to with my bit about American Buddhists!
Missed a golden opportunity! Mottainai!
I would love to see figures on people who actually actively follow these religions. I know a lot of people who are C&E Christians (Christmas and Easter) and many who are WF’ers (Weddings Funerals). I try not to do this with people often (it upsets the psuedo believers more than the true ones) but if you start asking if they believe the basic tenets of the religion they get all flustered. For example, my wife.
I’ll have to google for # of Christians who attend service 3+ times a month. It’s not a perfect metric but gives a better idea of what’s really out there.
Or maybe I’m just in a group of people who got tired of it all after and said to heck with it. Let’s just be nice people…
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The conceit of Civilization is that some things become obsolete.
The Bahá’í Faith was founded by Bahá’u’lláh in 19th-century Persia. Bahá’u’lláh was exiled for his teachings, from Persia to the Ottoman Empire, and died while officially still a prisoner.
(from wikipedia)
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You’re a horrible person… for heaven’s sake even Waco, TX has a Baha’i center.
All are welcome.
and no, you’re not horrible. Although Waco does have a Baha’i center I doubt seriously if 98% of the community even recognizes it for what it is.
I am familiar with it but only due to an ex-girlfriend in the mid-90s, a Gnosis magazine article from the same era, and the big ol’ building in San Francisco.
Zoroaster at least got some television time on Highlander The Series.
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Speaking as a Georgia native, this pleases me. From everything I’ve seen and heard throughout my life, Muslims are less likely to try to convert me to their religion than Christians are.
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Great question! Turns out, they say one on every continent, but they lie. (I got that quote from the same page I found the photo.)
New Delhi, India
Apia, Samoa
Panama City, Panama
Frankfurt, Germany
Kampala, Uganda
Sydney, Australia
Wilmette, Illinois
Ashkabad, Turkestan
- (built in 1908, nearly 50 years before the next one, which was Wilmette)
And I agree with @sckinjctn: if you have the chance, visit one. The only one I know is my local one (shown in the photo), and it is breathtakingly simple and airy and peaceful.
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Geek culture is becoming more prevalent, but there still aren’t enough real mega-dorks in any state for Pastafarianism to gain that much mindshare, I think.
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American Christianity is an odd beast, wrapped up in a lot of Dark Age craziness, and drawing from a hodge-podge of sources, oftentimes from both a quite harsh purportedly “literal” reading of the (King James English tranlsation of the) Bible and from a vapid, self-helpy sort of wishy-washy moral therapeutic deism.
Technically they are still “Christians,” but depending on who you talk to you’ll get wildly different understandings of things that may or may not have anything to do with actual, traditional forms of Christianity.
For every knowledgeable practitioner with a strong grasp of the religion as a whole and their own place in it, you’ll find a dozen fruitcakes who have about as grounded and authentic an understanding of Christianity as American Ninja has of ninjutsu.
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