Talk:Religion/Catalogs

Suggestion to increase ease of navigation.

May I suggest upgrading the names of each religion to a 4th level header so that they apear in the index which can be scanned by eye quickly to find the item you want to follow. Also, some more links throughout the article such as linking the name of the god/deity, founder's name and geographic locations where relevant. Derek Harkness 00:07, 25 April 2007 (CDT)

I very much like this idea of catalogs. It is extremely useful and user-friendly idea. ---Stephen Ewen 01:02, 25 April 2007 (CDT)

Number of Buddhists

The figure for number of Buddhists (100 to 150 million) seems quite low. There are almost 150 million people in Thailand, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia alone, and these countries are almost exclusively Buddhist as far as public religion. Granted, estimates of the number of Buddhists in the world can tend to be exaggerated by the large number of people in East Asia (particularly in China and Japan) who are vaguely associated with Buddhism; however, this article seems to err in the opposite direction.—Nat Krause 02:34, 25 April 2007 (CDT)

possible religions

I have doubts about some that are not religions by themselves

• meditation
• astrology

and I propose to add to the miscellaneous:

• Atheism (in the dogmatic sense)

and I really thing confucianism should be moved out of the dubious cases--it is in the literal sense a pattern of worship. DavidGoodman 04:05, 25 April 2007 (CDT)

Confucianism is practiced as a religion. Though Confucius would have utterly hated the idea himself, that doesn't stop it being a religion. Derek Harkness 06:02, 25 April 2007 (CDT)

Traditional worldviews / traditional behavior - I am taking this as animism, the set of such religions which ought not be categorized as borderline. ---Stephen Ewen 18:24, 26 April 2007 (CDT)

Agreed. Only problem is that animism doesn't originate anywhere in particular, since it is practiced all over the world. --Joe Quick (Talk) 18:28, 26 April 2007 (CDT)

"Traditional" also sometimes refers to syncretic religions. Maybe just include the more prominent syncretic belief systems and forms of animism separately? --Joe Quick (Talk) 18:31, 26 April 2007 (CDT)

Mock religions

There are a few mock religions out there. Their purpose is to satirize religions. For example, people who say they believe (they really don't) in the Flying Spaghetti Monster call themselves Pastafarian. Should we add a subcategory of mock religions in the borderlines category? I see there's already Discordianism in there, but to me it seems that there *are* people who take it somewhat seriously so I don't think it's a mock religion anymore, not entirely. Yuval Langer 08:54, 25 April 2007 (CDT)

For a hilarious belly-laugh, read the mock-religion Spammism. :-) ---Stephen Ewen 17:11, 25 April 2007 (CDT)

Church of Scientology

As yet, there is no article for the Church of Scientology. It has no beliefs in the common sense that religions have a belief and it has no objects of worship. It disseminates an applied religious philosophy Scientology's definitionand was first introduced in the United states in 1952 (see Scientology), and so, does not fit into any of the catagories present in the article. Does anyone have a suggestion ? Terry E. Olsen 12:02, 30 April 2007 (CDT)

Brahma Kumaris article for consideration

Hi, I have created a new proposed article in my userspace here.

I am a member of the organisation with some PR roles which have developed ever since I raised the alarm bells about a somewhat negative Wikipedia article. For this reason I am inviting others to review the article in the way proposed by Stephen Ewen in this thread [1] with a view to creating the article if it is deemed good enough as a starting point. The reason for not just creating the article is, as the thread linked to suggests, perceived conflict of interest.

The article is completely new and contains no content from Wikipedia except the picture which I took myself. I have uploaded it here with the same Gnu license.

Despite a perceived conflict of interest in this subject I would like to state that I am fully in support of a neutral, balanced, well referenced article. Warts & all. I can't promise that it is all these things now, although I have tried with some help from others to make it so. What I cam promise is that I am happy to just let go and encourage input from other authors and editors.

P.S. Apologies for cross-posting between here and the forum. I just re-read Stephen's suggestion and realised I should have posted here in the first place.

Thanks & regards Simon Blandford 11:34, 28 May 2007 (CDT)

I have not received any feedback for or against so in the interests of progress I intend to create the article one week from now unless there are any objections. Hope that's OK.

Thanks & regards Simon Blandford 07:56, 9 July 2007 (CDT)

OK Done. Will attempt summary for this page to follow. Regards Simon Blandford 05:46, 17 July 2007 (CDT)

Ásatrú

I tried out citizendium for the first time and i have added the religion Asatru to the catalogue. We could still catalogue religions with articles that already exist like; Deism, Scientology, Neo-Druidism and Creationism as well as several other Christian and Jewish sects that have there origin in Europe; Catholicism, Hasidic Judaism and Presbyterian. Micha van den Berg 06:31, 4 November 2007 (CST)

What can be said about this piece of writing underneath freemasonry. It looks more like a comment then an actual piece of topical information.

• If one insists that the Masons are a religion, despite their protests to the contrary, what are we to make of the Boy Scouts, who boast many of the same features? Scouting has rituals (e.g., the flag ceremony), texts (the Boy Scout Handbook), a founder (Lord Baden-Powell), institutions with rank, and in some countries, required beliefs (such as God).

I will respond by saying that it is not masonry that is a religion, but the mystical doctrines that form a part of it; and influenced it's teachings. Deism spoke of an universal god, alchemy begun the development of Masonic ritual symbolism and Hermeticism sought to find godly divinity within.

Taking that into account i suggest we need to catolog several European mystical movements under the names of Neoplatonism, Hermeticism and Theosophy. Micha van den Berg 09:16, 4 November 2007 (CST)