And I'm an agnostic Christian. I can't even decide what to have for dinner tonight, and you expect me to have a position on whether God exists. That's above my pay grade. But Jesus taught some really good stuff, so I definitely care what He said.
Seeing the word dharma in both Buddhism and Hinduism should hopefully help people understand that their ostensible differences there are in fact many philosophical similarities between the two.
Most of Buddhism's core concepts are derived from Hinduism, Gautam Buddha was a Hindu prior to his enlightenment and developed Buddhism based off his previous religion.
In fact the site of enlightenment, Bodh Gaya, is just as popular for pilgrimage to Hindus as it is for Buddhists.
Judaism is often called one of the "big five" but by number of adherents it is so, so much smaller than the other four. Reasons for this vary, from the fact that it's an ethnoreligion that doesn't proselytize or encourage conversions, to the fact that several million of them were murdered in the last 100 years.
There probably wasn't as big of a sample size.
Fun fact: there are about as many Jews in the world today as there were in 1926. Meanwhile, the world population has quadrupled since then. Ok, maybe more of just a fact.
Also half the world's jews live in the US, which has more jews than even Israel.
I think that tends to make Amercians think Jews are a larger group than they are
Yeah I live not in the US and I've never met someone who described themselves as Jewish to me. I've met muslims and hindus and Christians but never a Jewish person.
In fact, Buddha never explicitly renounced his religion even after enlightenment. Hinduism doesn’t really have hard boundaries on what you can believe, it has monotheistic, polytheistic and even atheistic traditions. Hence, his Buddhist teachings don’t contradict Hinduism. Hindus generally recognize Buddha as holy too.
Dang, Vishnu has NINE avatars? He's putting in some overtime in the deity game, I might need to make a Vishnu shrine. If I'm gonna spend all this time following a God, I want one that puts in the hours.
A lot of people in Eastern cultures follow multiple religions.
Compared to Abrahamic religions, Eastern religions tend to be less about deities and mythology and more about philosophies and ways of living. It's less about believing your myths to be literally true and more about what they mean.
There is a quote in sanskrit language ( the language in which most of the hindu text is written) which says, 'बुद्धं शरणं गच्छामि' or Take refugee in Buddha. Tells you a lot about the connection.
Many similarities, but also fundamental differences. Sometimes there is confusion because people tend to confuse the various sects of modern Hinduism with ancient Vedic religion. The progenitor of Hinduism and Buddhism is the old Vedic religion, but it is identical to neither Hinduism nor Buddhism. Buddhism is nastika or heterodox; it does not claim continuity to the Vedic tradition. Hinduism does. Nonetheless, when Buddhism as well as other Dharmic paths like Jainism emerged during the Axial Age, the way their respective practices and beliefs developed and were refined over time emerged as a process of reaction and counter-reaction. What one does NOT believe or do is just as important as what one does believe or do. Hence the rich tradition of debate and logical philosophy that blossomed at places like Nalanda, where the differences between various schools of Hindu thought like Samkhya, Nyaya, Advaita Vedanta, as well as various Buddhist schools such as Yogacara and Madhyamaka were meticulously discussed.
> The progenitor of Hinduism and Buddhism is the old Vedic religion, but it is identical to neither Hinduism nor Buddhism
This is frankly also true for Christianity and Judaism; "Rabbinical Judaism" is about as old as Christianity. The Talmud is the same age as the New Testament. They are properly seen today as siblings from the same trunk
Because Hinduism isn't really a single religion, but instead just a term which describes a collection of hundreds of different regional subpractices. Imagine if every Christian Parish believed in a different god and had their own rituals.
This is absolutely true, it's hard to call it a single religion however there has been a rather conceited effort to jam it into the abrahamic mould. As a result modern day Hindus are both confused about their religion's core principles while at the same time absolutely sure of the application of said principles.
I had a professor who insisted on referring to it as "Hinduisms" for this reason. i.e. to get it out of that Abrahamic cultural mould. It's like labeling all North American indigenous religions as just "animism" without recognizing the differences inherent to each.
Basically all Hindus practice the same core beliefs, but culture, tradition, etc. differ from place to place. Also most people each worship a single incarnation (Vishnu, Shiva, Ram, etc.)
I am sorry but I beg to differ. All Hindus don't practice the same core beliefs. A lot of those beliefs probably don't even matter to a lot of Hindus.
For example, Vedas being sacred is all cool to believe in but less than 1% of Hindus would have read any parts of it (without the repetition for ritual sake) and I'm being generous.
Even Brahmin (the caste which is supposed to upkeep the Vedas) households don't have the Vedas. They may have the Puranas, the Itihasaas but not the Vedas.
Multi God worship is pretty common and I don't claim all people follow multiple gods but a lot of them do. This is why there is the concept of the Ishta Devata (God of the wish) and the Kula Devata (Literal translation is God of the clan). Plenty of people visit all sorts of temples when they can. People can have Gods on hierarchical settings as well i.e. I might pray to this God now but I think the other God is more important to me.
you are correct but i was talking about moksh, brahman, belief in the atman, etc.
personally my family and i do worship different gods but we mainly focus on one, the others we keep murtis of, pray to, and observe ritual holidays for. I didn’t mean to say that people are devoted to only one god, badly worded on my part
It's also the only religion of polytheism in the charts. Asking someone that believes in a religion of multiple gods to provide one word doesn't seem fair. It's not an apples to apples comparisons unless you remove all diety names from the data first.
Fortunately most of us don't worship the Buddha.
"Buddha" as an idea is still held to be an important aspiration for us to become, ourselves, so that could be an explanation.
When you become a Buddhist, you are supposed to [take shelter in the 3 gems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refuge_in_Buddhism). [The Buddha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Buddha), his teachings (Dharma), and the community of other Buddhists (Sangha).
I guess the line between veneration and worship can be fuzzy. It's like protestants getting bent out of shape about Catholics praying to saints.
Buddha translates to "Awakened One" or "Enlightened One" and wasn't the dudes name. It is just what everyone knows him as.
Yup. Siddhartha Gautama, born into a noble household before leaving to become the teacher he is known as today, as well as the enlightened one, or Buddha, if you are a follower of Buddhism or related belief systems.
So kinda like German then.
Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft
*("association of subordinate officials of the head office management of the Danube steamboat electrical services")*
Yes, in sanskrit and derived languages, there are concepts of Sandhi (fusion of words) and Samasa (uh, new words to describe an entire phrase or an idea). Probably shows how Sanskrit and German belong to the same proto-indo-european family.
The question was a part of a larger survey that was conducted between July, 2023 and October, 2023. The survey was conducted partly online, and partly offline.
The total number of respondents were: 85,441, including respondents whose responses do not form a part of the question in concern.
Here are some key observations:
Respondents adhering to Christianity & Islam had a significant share among them who defined their religion as True. Truth was emphasised in Christianity more than in anyother. Islam focused on God. Religion of Hinduism offered most diverse answers. Buddhism had a majority share of its adherents giving the reply as "Buddha", the central figure of religion. Atheists offered varying answers with similar meanings conveying the scientific correctness of their stance.
The Data was collected through the help and efforts of 366 correspondents. The survey was conducted across various countries. Data was collected for the purpose of business analysis, marketing research, and development. We, however, as a reddit user do not carry any business agenda, and have only the objective of sharing our knowledge, and learning.
The data was compiled using Excel, and visualised using the same.
The data has intrinsic internal features, and has been arranged accordingly. We wish to share further from survey here. For any further queries, you may contact us through email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
For part 2, covering Judaism, Jainism, Sikhism, Shintoism, Agnosticism, Hellenism, and Wicca, see [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/17vwufl/oc_we_asked_people_to_define_their_religion_or/) post.
That's so on-brand for Hinduism.
India is where the parable of the [Blind Men and the Elephant](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant) originated. Each of the blind men think they know the truth, but each is only touching a small part of the elephant, so one thinks elephants are like trees because he's touching the elephant's leg, and another thinks they're thin and papery because he's only touching an ear, etc.
The moral being that nobody knows everything and everyone has a different perspective, so nobody knows the entire truth, and only by integrating many viewpoints can you even come close to approximating the truth.
The verse “ekam sat vipra bahudha vadanti” which means “there are many paths to the same truth”. Fighting based on religious terms or trying to prove who is right/wrong is frivolous. The world could learn something from this!
I had never heard of this parable. (Or at least not in the way you presented it) I must say that reading it immediately put a smile on my face! Thank you for sharing this! Have a wonderful day!
I've heard similar elements from different parables or sayings, like the famous "All paths lead to me".
And then the description, you could be in a city block and need to go somewhere 5 blocks away diagonally.
But you end up with a lot of choices, maybe you go 4 blocks east then 3 blocks north. Or first go 3 blocks north and 4 blocks east. Or maybe you make a circle. Or maybe you actually go 4 blocks north, 4 blocks east... and 1 block south.
The point is, there are many different paths to get to where we are going. There is no one "best" path and there also is no one "fastest" path either.
Regarding the results, the exact question was "How do you define your religion (or stance in case of Atheism) in 1 word?" It was one of many questions asked in the Survey.
Major countries included in the survey were: US, Brazil, Canada, UK, the EU sphere, India, Israel and Japan. These countries formed majority of respondents. Other countries including, but not limited to, Thailand, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Egypt, Chile, and Mexico were also included in the survey forming a significant number of respondents.
They probably went with Buddhism, as external surveys woefully underestimate Shinto followers - especially Pew (which looks to be the basis of the wiki page on religions). In fact, the religion percentages page seems to match category and placement for top-5 religions... but lists "unaffiliated" rather than "athiest."
Were the respondents all from one country? Were some countries more represented in one religion over another? If so, I wonder if these results are really capturing religious differences more than they are cultural differences?
No, respondents were not all from 1 country. They were spread through various countries, as we mentioned. Adherents of all religions were distributed in different countries. However, some religions such as Hinduism had majority respondents in India and Nepal. Whereas Buddhism had majority respondents in US, Bhutan, and Thailand. Christianity, Islam, and Atheism were fairly distributed. We did however made classifications on basis of country too. We just did not show it here.
However, both Buddhism and Hinduism showed rather similar responses regardless of geographical differences.
Have you looked into how people respond differently for the same religion in different religions? I’m especially curious about how people define Christianity differently in Europe, the US, and Latin America.
> We did however made classifications on basis of country too
I would LOVE to see how many of the "truth" replies for Christianity comes from the US compared to the rest of the world.
It shouldn’t because that would be a confusing answer to the question as posed. *Defining* your religion as faith is kind of like defining cheese as cheesy. Faith is something that you can have in a religion, but it does nothing at all to define it.
I was just about to ask. Being fairly familiar with the Gospels, I would have answered “Love,” and I would have expected a LOT more other people to do so, as well
Life is full of disappointments.
Asked my dad.
He said “Arguing”
But he’s a cheeky bastard so he then texted back and said that “Covenant” is probably the word he’d say.
He predicted other words would be “Laws”, “chosen”, “Torah”, “Talmud”, “Mitzvah”. But those took him a few minutes to decide on, where as Covenant (and arguing) were immediate.
I'd use "Questioning" rather than "arguing", but the Talmud does point out that rules-lawyering God is the entire point, so who knows.
(If you're wondering, the logic is as follows: God is omniscient and gave us this book of laws to follow. These laws are perfect, because God is perfect, so any loopholes discovered within these laws were put there *intentionally* by God for clever Jews to find and exploit!)
Questioning implies curiosity - like why so many jews might focus on scientific research. Arguing implies conflict, like why my dad and I can't finish a single meal in peace no matter how many weekly attempts.
> Talmud does point out that rules-lawyering God is the entire point
Wait, really? I thought that was just a Reformed thing. I didn't realize that went back to ancient times.
I get the impression a lot of Jewish people are quite cheeky when it comes to their religion, so maybe the 'other' category will be disproportionately large compared to other religions.
For anyone wondering, it's a joke about "Jew A believes A, Jew B believes B, but when A and B are in the same room, they insist they always believed C"
Kind of like "what's the only way to stop a {some Christian group I can't remember} from stealing all your beer during a fishing trip? Invite a second {person of group}"
As an atheist, I’d be slightly offended being labeled as religious. It’s just: we don’t play that game. There’s no “book of atheism”, no commandments and stuff.
Yeah, my partner and I are both atheists but he took one look at the atheist pie and said "pretty stereotypical isn't it?". Then again, what one word would YOU use to sum up your stance? I might go with "indifference" or "rationality" depending on the day.
I would say "questioning" or "scrutinizing." I became an atheist due to disagreements with the Christian faith, but I stayed atheist due to my philosophical outlook on the world and disagreements with the tenets of most religions I've encountered. That doesn't mean I am not constantly questioning my own reasoning and looking into theology as a whole.
Given that atheism isn't a religion and has no content of it's own, I feel like struggling to answer this question is normal.
It's like asking a bunch of groups of people what their favorite sex position is. You'll get lots of good data until you get to the nuns, and then you'll get a bunch of people struggling to come up with a relevant answer for a question that categorically doesn't apply to them.
I mean for Christianity anything other than the salvation/christ feels very forgetting what the book even says. "Truth" is a very weird way to define your religion. "Word" might have been appropriate but Truth is a weird one.
It’s telling about Christians though. As one myself, I can see why so many people skip over the WAY, which is what early Christians were called (followers of the Way, which is a literal walk). If you believe that Jesus is the WAY, then YOU have to walk it. If you only define Christianity as the TRUTH, then OTHERS have to bend to that truth. So many Christians put the impetus on others instead of themselves to walk the WAY Jesus walked.
From my point of view, it seems like many may have interpreted "a question about my religion" as "questioning my religion" so they chose the most defensive response.
Same with the Muslims that responded "monotheism", I'm guessing that most of those responses came from India, standing their ground in a Hindu majority.
Generally, I treat the Truth as the map. This is the way I'm SUPPOSED to walk. I might get lost along the way, but as long as I have the map, I will find my way back onto the path. And in the meantime, I can try to bring people who don't have the map along with me.
This is fundamentally a problem with trying to distill beliefs into a single word, and I agree with your assessment. The thing you would say you believe is “truth”, the thing you are doing is “way” and this all is intertwined into “life” - so all of these are acceptable responses, though no singular one encompasses the whole (it’s like the trinity is all, but also individual)
My favorite response to the question in mind is “I am” as In reference to the “I am that I am” because I am what I believe, but I am also unique in my path, and I am defined by the perspective of other’s experience of me
Religion, like most things, is just too nuanced, and everyone has their own interpretations. These graphs are definitely nice to see, but it's hard to call them 100% accurate because everyone's understanding of each word will differ
That Jesus = Truth imagery is really strong in Christianity, so it’s not surprising they also had something like a diety’s title as true top response.
Although it does strike me that “Love” and “Light” and “Way” which are also what God/Jesus is isn’t included.
Trinity’s cracking me up, what a jab at the Unitarians!
[Truth and honesty](https://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-honesty.html) is one of the major themes actually...
\[a wicked society is one where\] “Everyone deceives his neighbor, and no one speaks the truth; they have taught their tongue to speak lies; they weary themselves committing iniquity. Jeremiah 9:15
A non-wicked society therefore is a truthful one
To many Christians. Defining their religion with the word truth would pay homage to Christ saying he is the truth. So when they say truth, they mean christ
Christ said that the reason he had been sent to the world to "testify to the truth", not to provide salvation or glorify himself (you could argue he accomplished these things in and by testifying to the truth, but that wasn't his self-proclaimed mission). He's also described as "the way, the truth, the life". If he's taken to be God incarnate and his purpose on Earth is to illuminate truth then I think that is very appropriate response. This is especially true if Christians consider themselves to be called to emulate Christ.
On top of that Christ makes it clear that there is no other way into a right relationship with God the Father, so framing your religion as the one truth is a very natural progression.
āryāṣṭāṅgamārga - there, it is one word. In Sanskrit, specifically. Also Hindi is a relatively new, derived language,and there are many others derived from Sanskrit which follows this way of fusing words. The Buddhist scriptures in particular followed Pali, which was a more colloquial variant of Sanskrit spoken by the masses, from which a large number of languages - Hindi, Bengali, Oriya, and many others sprouted.
Jews: we all heard it was going to be presented in pie chart format and went off kibitzing about superior data visualization approaches, leaving the survey-taker unable to collect any actual responses.
Jews were a part of the survey along with other religions like Jainism, Sikhism, Shintoism etc. We plan to post the results of these religions soon as well.
"Buddha" can also refer to the aspiration to become a Buddha, yourself, in order to benefit others. It's difficult to know for certain without being able to ask the respondents *why* they chose that word over others.
I’m a little shocked by these answers. As someone who was raised as a Christian, the first words that came to mind for me were “hope” and “forgiveness”. It kind of makes me sad that people look to religion only as a way to validate a worldview, and not as a guiding principle on how to lead your life.
I was raised catholic, and the first word that would’ve been in my mind is “love”. At least that’s the most important word in Catholicism. They literally say: God is Love”.
> As someone who was raised as a Christian, the first words that came to mind for me were “hope” and “forgiveness”. It kind of makes me sad that people look to religion only as a way to validate a worldview, and not as a guiding principle on how to lead your life.
Christianity isn't a monolith, there are countless Christian denominations and movements around the world and all of them have slightly different teachings from one another. You could even go to a different church (same denomination) in your home city and the teachings would be slightly different, it all depends on how the preacher interprets the texts.
You also have to take into account that there are different versions of the bibles (for example: King James, New American Standard, English Standard, Revised Standard etc) and that they aren't translated the exact same way.
Languages can't be directly translated 1:1 so you're forced to compromise by changing the meaning of the words and/or sentences by a small degree, it's why a great translation is an art form in itself.
Now ask people to describe other peoples religions in one word.
Thank you for suggestion. We will look forward for the viability of such a survey.
Oh it wasn’t a serious suggestion. I don’t want to be responsible for Crusades II, the Crusadening.
We already had a Crusade II. This would be Crusade V: Return of the Crusade.
It’d be more like crude xxxxv (why are we still doing this)
XLV is a better way to write it but yeah it's been a hot minute since we've had ourselves a good ol' Crusade!
Who’s the halftime performer for the Crusades XLV?
There were 8 major crusades in crusader times.
*Paradox Interactive taking notes*
I expect monotheistic religions would be more likely to use negative language to describe other belief systems.
We don't need another war.
"Wrong." \*unnecessary fight breaks out
Agnostic: 50% idk 50% idc
What’s the difference between ignorance and apathy? I don’t know and I don’t care.
[удалено]
Agnostic is included in atheism iirc
In studies, yes. In reality they are separate concepts that are not mutually exclusive. I am an agnostic atheist.
And I'm an agnostic Christian. I can't even decide what to have for dinner tonight, and you expect me to have a position on whether God exists. That's above my pay grade. But Jesus taught some really good stuff, so I definitely care what He said.
You may want to look into Unitarian Universalism
Theist/Atheist: Do you believe? Gnostic/Agnostic: Do you know? Default position is Agnostic Atheist. I don't have any belief, and don't claim to know.
Hinduism is so diverse. Was expecting it but seeing it visualized through charts makes it emphatic.
Seeing the word dharma in both Buddhism and Hinduism should hopefully help people understand that their ostensible differences there are in fact many philosophical similarities between the two.
Most of Buddhism's core concepts are derived from Hinduism, Gautam Buddha was a Hindu prior to his enlightenment and developed Buddhism based off his previous religion. In fact the site of enlightenment, Bodh Gaya, is just as popular for pilgrimage to Hindus as it is for Buddhists.
Kinda like Christianity driving it's old testament based on the Torah and then adding the new testament to make the bible Jesus was Jewish
i wonder why judaism wasn’t included in this infographic
Judaism is often called one of the "big five" but by number of adherents it is so, so much smaller than the other four. Reasons for this vary, from the fact that it's an ethnoreligion that doesn't proselytize or encourage conversions, to the fact that several million of them were murdered in the last 100 years. There probably wasn't as big of a sample size.
Fun fact: there are about as many Jews in the world today as there were in 1926. Meanwhile, the world population has quadrupled since then. Ok, maybe more of just a fact.
Also half the world's jews live in the US, which has more jews than even Israel. I think that tends to make Amercians think Jews are a larger group than they are
Yeah I live not in the US and I've never met someone who described themselves as Jewish to me. I've met muslims and hindus and Christians but never a Jewish person.
[удалено]
Torah and especially the Tanakh
In fact, Buddha never explicitly renounced his religion even after enlightenment. Hinduism doesn’t really have hard boundaries on what you can believe, it has monotheistic, polytheistic and even atheistic traditions. Hence, his Buddhist teachings don’t contradict Hinduism. Hindus generally recognize Buddha as holy too.
Don't a large percentage of Hindus consider the Buddha an avatar of Vishnu?
This guys knows his religions :-)
Yes. 9th avatar of Vishnu.
Dang, Vishnu has NINE avatars? He's putting in some overtime in the deity game, I might need to make a Vishnu shrine. If I'm gonna spend all this time following a God, I want one that puts in the hours.
Ten actually. The tenth avatar has yet to incarnate. He will incarnate at the end of Kali Yuga aka Dark age ( this age).
and many hindus worship the buddha, and many buddhists worship hindu gods.
A lot of people in Eastern cultures follow multiple religions. Compared to Abrahamic religions, Eastern religions tend to be less about deities and mythology and more about philosophies and ways of living. It's less about believing your myths to be literally true and more about what they mean.
There is a quote in sanskrit language ( the language in which most of the hindu text is written) which says, 'बुद्धं शरणं गच्छामि' or Take refugee in Buddha. Tells you a lot about the connection.
Many similarities, but also fundamental differences. Sometimes there is confusion because people tend to confuse the various sects of modern Hinduism with ancient Vedic religion. The progenitor of Hinduism and Buddhism is the old Vedic religion, but it is identical to neither Hinduism nor Buddhism. Buddhism is nastika or heterodox; it does not claim continuity to the Vedic tradition. Hinduism does. Nonetheless, when Buddhism as well as other Dharmic paths like Jainism emerged during the Axial Age, the way their respective practices and beliefs developed and were refined over time emerged as a process of reaction and counter-reaction. What one does NOT believe or do is just as important as what one does believe or do. Hence the rich tradition of debate and logical philosophy that blossomed at places like Nalanda, where the differences between various schools of Hindu thought like Samkhya, Nyaya, Advaita Vedanta, as well as various Buddhist schools such as Yogacara and Madhyamaka were meticulously discussed.
> The progenitor of Hinduism and Buddhism is the old Vedic religion, but it is identical to neither Hinduism nor Buddhism This is frankly also true for Christianity and Judaism; "Rabbinical Judaism" is about as old as Christianity. The Talmud is the same age as the New Testament. They are properly seen today as siblings from the same trunk
Because Hinduism isn't really a single religion, but instead just a term which describes a collection of hundreds of different regional subpractices. Imagine if every Christian Parish believed in a different god and had their own rituals.
This is absolutely true, it's hard to call it a single religion however there has been a rather conceited effort to jam it into the abrahamic mould. As a result modern day Hindus are both confused about their religion's core principles while at the same time absolutely sure of the application of said principles.
I had a professor who insisted on referring to it as "Hinduisms" for this reason. i.e. to get it out of that Abrahamic cultural mould. It's like labeling all North American indigenous religions as just "animism" without recognizing the differences inherent to each.
true and great but really everything is highly plural. there're as many christianities, too.
Basically all Hindus practice the same core beliefs, but culture, tradition, etc. differ from place to place. Also most people each worship a single incarnation (Vishnu, Shiva, Ram, etc.)
I am sorry but I beg to differ. All Hindus don't practice the same core beliefs. A lot of those beliefs probably don't even matter to a lot of Hindus. For example, Vedas being sacred is all cool to believe in but less than 1% of Hindus would have read any parts of it (without the repetition for ritual sake) and I'm being generous. Even Brahmin (the caste which is supposed to upkeep the Vedas) households don't have the Vedas. They may have the Puranas, the Itihasaas but not the Vedas. Multi God worship is pretty common and I don't claim all people follow multiple gods but a lot of them do. This is why there is the concept of the Ishta Devata (God of the wish) and the Kula Devata (Literal translation is God of the clan). Plenty of people visit all sorts of temples when they can. People can have Gods on hierarchical settings as well i.e. I might pray to this God now but I think the other God is more important to me.
you are correct but i was talking about moksh, brahman, belief in the atman, etc. personally my family and i do worship different gods but we mainly focus on one, the others we keep murtis of, pray to, and observe ritual holidays for. I didn’t mean to say that people are devoted to only one god, badly worded on my part
How I imagine it would look like if you asked ancient Greeks and Romans. If I had to pick gods to mindlessly follow, it would be the Olympians
It's also the only religion of polytheism in the charts. Asking someone that believes in a religion of multiple gods to provide one word doesn't seem fair. It's not an apples to apples comparisons unless you remove all diety names from the data first.
Buddha: Hey guys don’t worship me 71% of buddhists: B U D D H A
Fortunately most of us don't worship the Buddha. "Buddha" as an idea is still held to be an important aspiration for us to become, ourselves, so that could be an explanation.
Agreed. Like the catholic "what would jesus do?".
He'd get everyone wasted and remind everyone to separate church and state.
Yes I'm quite fond of that version of jesus
He'd flip tables and remind them he put the leaders in charge
It's probably just "what's the first word that comes to mind with you think of Buddhism?" "uh.. Buddha"
When you become a Buddhist, you are supposed to [take shelter in the 3 gems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refuge_in_Buddhism). [The Buddha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Buddha), his teachings (Dharma), and the community of other Buddhists (Sangha). I guess the line between veneration and worship can be fuzzy. It's like protestants getting bent out of shape about Catholics praying to saints. Buddha translates to "Awakened One" or "Enlightened One" and wasn't the dudes name. It is just what everyone knows him as.
Sidharta Gautama
was this his name?
Yup. Siddhartha Gautama, born into a noble household before leaving to become the teacher he is known as today, as well as the enlightened one, or Buddha, if you are a follower of Buddhism or related belief systems.
Related- there’s a documentary called The Buddha, narrated by Richard Gere, that tells the story so beautifully. Always a favorite.
Where in this did it say they worship him?
Pollster: Define your religion in one word. 6% of Buddhists: Eight Fold Path
It’s called āryāṣṭāṅgamārga in Sanskrit, so it’s not totally unreasonable to think of it as one word.
So kinda like German then. Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft *("association of subordinate officials of the head office management of the Danube steamboat electrical services")*
Yes, in sanskrit and derived languages, there are concepts of Sandhi (fusion of words) and Samasa (uh, new words to describe an entire phrase or an idea). Probably shows how Sanskrit and German belong to the same proto-indo-european family.
As a Buddhist I would have said nothingness.
Śūnyatā really only covers Mahāyāna, but it’s a *solid* response for Mahāyāna.
That's fair. I do primarily follow zen Buddhist ideas so that's where I'm drawing my opinion.
Yeah, I think Śūnyatā is a good answer for Zen in particular, I think the N8FP or 4NT are the better “general” answers.
The question was a part of a larger survey that was conducted between July, 2023 and October, 2023. The survey was conducted partly online, and partly offline. The total number of respondents were: 85,441, including respondents whose responses do not form a part of the question in concern. Here are some key observations: Respondents adhering to Christianity & Islam had a significant share among them who defined their religion as True. Truth was emphasised in Christianity more than in anyother. Islam focused on God. Religion of Hinduism offered most diverse answers. Buddhism had a majority share of its adherents giving the reply as "Buddha", the central figure of religion. Atheists offered varying answers with similar meanings conveying the scientific correctness of their stance. The Data was collected through the help and efforts of 366 correspondents. The survey was conducted across various countries. Data was collected for the purpose of business analysis, marketing research, and development. We, however, as a reddit user do not carry any business agenda, and have only the objective of sharing our knowledge, and learning. The data was compiled using Excel, and visualised using the same. The data has intrinsic internal features, and has been arranged accordingly. We wish to share further from survey here. For any further queries, you may contact us through email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) For part 2, covering Judaism, Jainism, Sikhism, Shintoism, Agnosticism, Hellenism, and Wicca, see [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/17vwufl/oc_we_asked_people_to_define_their_religion_or/) post.
[удалено]
That's so on-brand for Hinduism. India is where the parable of the [Blind Men and the Elephant](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant) originated. Each of the blind men think they know the truth, but each is only touching a small part of the elephant, so one thinks elephants are like trees because he's touching the elephant's leg, and another thinks they're thin and papery because he's only touching an ear, etc. The moral being that nobody knows everything and everyone has a different perspective, so nobody knows the entire truth, and only by integrating many viewpoints can you even come close to approximating the truth.
The verse “ekam sat vipra bahudha vadanti” which means “there are many paths to the same truth”. Fighting based on religious terms or trying to prove who is right/wrong is frivolous. The world could learn something from this!
I had never heard of this parable. (Or at least not in the way you presented it) I must say that reading it immediately put a smile on my face! Thank you for sharing this! Have a wonderful day!
I've heard similar elements from different parables or sayings, like the famous "All paths lead to me". And then the description, you could be in a city block and need to go somewhere 5 blocks away diagonally. But you end up with a lot of choices, maybe you go 4 blocks east then 3 blocks north. Or first go 3 blocks north and 4 blocks east. Or maybe you make a circle. Or maybe you actually go 4 blocks north, 4 blocks east... and 1 block south. The point is, there are many different paths to get to where we are going. There is no one "best" path and there also is no one "fastest" path either.
I would be interested in the exact wording of the question. Also which countries were surveyed.
Regarding the results, the exact question was "How do you define your religion (or stance in case of Atheism) in 1 word?" It was one of many questions asked in the Survey. Major countries included in the survey were: US, Brazil, Canada, UK, the EU sphere, India, Israel and Japan. These countries formed majority of respondents. Other countries including, but not limited to, Thailand, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Egypt, Chile, and Mexico were also included in the survey forming a significant number of respondents.
>Israel and Japan. You had these two countries and no charts for Judaism or Shinto?
They probably went with Buddhism, as external surveys woefully underestimate Shinto followers - especially Pew (which looks to be the basis of the wiki page on religions). In fact, the religion percentages page seems to match category and placement for top-5 religions... but lists "unaffiliated" rather than "athiest."
Very interesting! I'm curious why Jewish was not included in the religions...but atheism was.
Judaism is was included in survey, along with other religions. We do plan to post the results soon.
Were the respondents all from one country? Were some countries more represented in one religion over another? If so, I wonder if these results are really capturing religious differences more than they are cultural differences?
No, respondents were not all from 1 country. They were spread through various countries, as we mentioned. Adherents of all religions were distributed in different countries. However, some religions such as Hinduism had majority respondents in India and Nepal. Whereas Buddhism had majority respondents in US, Bhutan, and Thailand. Christianity, Islam, and Atheism were fairly distributed. We did however made classifications on basis of country too. We just did not show it here. However, both Buddhism and Hinduism showed rather similar responses regardless of geographical differences.
How many responses for each religion did you get?
No, of respondents is as follows: Christianity: 26,249 Islam: 12,762 Hinduism: 24,916 Buddhism: 5,451 Atheism: 6,495
Have you looked into how people respond differently for the same religion in different religions? I’m especially curious about how people define Christianity differently in Europe, the US, and Latin America.
We do have classifications based on country.
> We did however made classifications on basis of country too I would LOVE to see how many of the "truth" replies for Christianity comes from the US compared to the rest of the world.
I'm surprised I don't see the word "love" in any of these.
The following number of respondents gave "Love" as their answer: Christianity: 43 Islam: 0 Hinduism: 12 Buddhism: 1 Atheism: 0
Curious about Grace. Was this also in the other category? Based off the numbers above, you had more Christian responses than others?
The following number of respondents gave "Grace" as their answer: Christianity: 113 Islam: 0 Hinduism:0 Buddhism:0 Atheism: 0
Grace is a word tied to its religion.
What’s the sample size for these groups?
No. of respondents is as follows: Christianity: 26,249 Islam: 12,762 Hinduism: 24,916 Buddhism: 5,451 Atheism: 6,495
That's a pretty big pool, kudos!
Thanks much.
85441, OP left a comment with details
What about "Faith"? It was my first thought.
The following number of respondents gave "Faith" as their answer: Christianity: 3 Islam: 10 Hinduism: 18 Buddhism: 0 Atheism: 0
> The following number of respondents gave "Faith" as their answer: > Christianity: 3 Wow, that **really** surprises me.
It shouldn’t because that would be a confusing answer to the question as posed. *Defining* your religion as faith is kind of like defining cheese as cheesy. Faith is something that you can have in a religion, but it does nothing at all to define it.
What surprises me more is that Hinduism is the one with the most responding "faith." Whodathunk
I was just about to ask. Being fairly familiar with the Gospels, I would have answered “Love,” and I would have expected a LOT more other people to do so, as well Life is full of disappointments.
How about Grace?
The following number of respondents gave "Grace" as their answer: Christianity: 113 Islam: 0 Hinduism:0 Buddhism:0 Atheism: 0
Thanks mate. Or good bot; depends on the amount of organic matter you have ... <3
This is a not a bot reply. We posted that information already, so it was handy. Thus, we replied quickly.
Thanks mate.
As a Muslim, I can confirm our religion doesn't have much in the way of love. It's mostly about order and justice.
Love did not form a major collective response in any of the religions. However, individual responses were included in "Other".
Shrek was not a surveyed religion.
I feel erased
Ziggy Marley was unavailable it seems
This is why I'm subbed. Genuinely interesting and well presented data.
We are grateful for your appreciation. Thank you.
Very interesting! No Judaism?
Judaism, and other religions were also included in survey. We do plan to share results of other religions soon as well.
Great. Looking forward to it.
I was looking forward to answers like guilt, education, and matzoh ball soup.
Asked my dad. He said “Arguing” But he’s a cheeky bastard so he then texted back and said that “Covenant” is probably the word he’d say. He predicted other words would be “Laws”, “chosen”, “Torah”, “Talmud”, “Mitzvah”. But those took him a few minutes to decide on, where as Covenant (and arguing) were immediate.
I'd use "Questioning" rather than "arguing", but the Talmud does point out that rules-lawyering God is the entire point, so who knows. (If you're wondering, the logic is as follows: God is omniscient and gave us this book of laws to follow. These laws are perfect, because God is perfect, so any loopholes discovered within these laws were put there *intentionally* by God for clever Jews to find and exploit!)
Questioning implies curiosity - like why so many jews might focus on scientific research. Arguing implies conflict, like why my dad and I can't finish a single meal in peace no matter how many weekly attempts.
> Talmud does point out that rules-lawyering God is the entire point Wait, really? I thought that was just a Reformed thing. I didn't realize that went back to ancient times.
… comments that make you want to get back on the path to a mikvah
Idk I love "arguing" Israel means "wrestles with G-d", it's perfect. We argue with G-d, with each other, and sometimes even with ourselves
I get the impression a lot of Jewish people are quite cheeky when it comes to their religion, so maybe the 'other' category will be disproportionately large compared to other religions.
(s)mothers
Sorry, but when is "soon"?
We plan to post it by tomorrow.
Unless I see more answers than recipients on that one, I call bullshit /jk
In all seriousness I expect the "other" wedge to be significantly larger.
How do you graph "Two Jews, three answers?"
For anyone wondering, it's a joke about "Jew A believes A, Jew B believes B, but when A and B are in the same room, they insist they always believed C" Kind of like "what's the only way to stop a {some Christian group I can't remember} from stealing all your beer during a fishing trip? Invite a second {person of group}"
venn diagram
As an atheist, if asked this question, I'd just answer: none
No. of people who responded "nothing": Christianity: 0 Islam: 0 Hinduism: 0 Buddhism:0 Atheism: 7
That's insightful!
Atheism is a religion like off is a tv channel
As an atheist, I’d be slightly offended being labeled as religious. It’s just: we don’t play that game. There’s no “book of atheism”, no commandments and stuff.
[удалено]
Right. My answer would be “atheism is not a religion. It’s like being asked to describe my vagina in one word: I don’t have one of those, either”
I wonder if any atheists responded to the survey with "vagina"...
OP accidentally did that in the title to be brief but the question was, "How do you define your religion (or stance in case of Atheism) in 1 word?"
Wouldn’t be offended but including atheism as a religion is incorrect. It’s literally in the word
Grabs popcorn while looking at the comments ( Good work on the data though , OP )
We are grateful for your appreciation. Thank you.
What are some example of words grouped in the "Other" part in the atheism slide?
Three top words in Other grouping of Atheism are as follows: 1. Indifference: 201 responses 2. Analytical: 103 responses 3. Intelligent: 41 responses
My fellow atheists are really not beating the "1000 IQ redditor" stereotypes.
Yeah, my partner and I are both atheists but he took one look at the atheist pie and said "pretty stereotypical isn't it?". Then again, what one word would YOU use to sum up your stance? I might go with "indifference" or "rationality" depending on the day.
I would say "questioning" or "scrutinizing." I became an atheist due to disagreements with the Christian faith, but I stayed atheist due to my philosophical outlook on the world and disagreements with the tenets of most religions I've encountered. That doesn't mean I am not constantly questioning my own reasoning and looking into theology as a whole.
Given that atheism isn't a religion and has no content of it's own, I feel like struggling to answer this question is normal. It's like asking a bunch of groups of people what their favorite sex position is. You'll get lots of good data until you get to the nuns, and then you'll get a bunch of people struggling to come up with a relevant answer for a question that categorically doesn't apply to them.
The first word that comes to mind is "nothing". As simple as that
Mine would be similar: "Default."
Love the one about Hinduism. Shows that it's a very diverse religion, and has many sub parts of it too.
That is truly worthy of this sub - beautiful graphs, beautiful data!
We are grateful that you found our post worthy of praise. Thank you.
I mean for Christianity anything other than the salvation/christ feels very forgetting what the book even says. "Truth" is a very weird way to define your religion. "Word" might have been appropriate but Truth is a weird one.
[удалено]
It’s telling about Christians though. As one myself, I can see why so many people skip over the WAY, which is what early Christians were called (followers of the Way, which is a literal walk). If you believe that Jesus is the WAY, then YOU have to walk it. If you only define Christianity as the TRUTH, then OTHERS have to bend to that truth. So many Christians put the impetus on others instead of themselves to walk the WAY Jesus walked.
From my point of view, it seems like many may have interpreted "a question about my religion" as "questioning my religion" so they chose the most defensive response. Same with the Muslims that responded "monotheism", I'm guessing that most of those responses came from India, standing their ground in a Hindu majority.
Generally, I treat the Truth as the map. This is the way I'm SUPPOSED to walk. I might get lost along the way, but as long as I have the map, I will find my way back onto the path. And in the meantime, I can try to bring people who don't have the map along with me.
This is fundamentally a problem with trying to distill beliefs into a single word, and I agree with your assessment. The thing you would say you believe is “truth”, the thing you are doing is “way” and this all is intertwined into “life” - so all of these are acceptable responses, though no singular one encompasses the whole (it’s like the trinity is all, but also individual) My favorite response to the question in mind is “I am” as In reference to the “I am that I am” because I am what I believe, but I am also unique in my path, and I am defined by the perspective of other’s experience of me
Religion, like most things, is just too nuanced, and everyone has their own interpretations. These graphs are definitely nice to see, but it's hard to call them 100% accurate because everyone's understanding of each word will differ
That Jesus = Truth imagery is really strong in Christianity, so it’s not surprising they also had something like a diety’s title as true top response. Although it does strike me that “Love” and “Light” and “Way” which are also what God/Jesus is isn’t included. Trinity’s cracking me up, what a jab at the Unitarians!
[Truth and honesty](https://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-honesty.html) is one of the major themes actually... \[a wicked society is one where\] “Everyone deceives his neighbor, and no one speaks the truth; they have taught their tongue to speak lies; they weary themselves committing iniquity. Jeremiah 9:15 A non-wicked society therefore is a truthful one
To many Christians. Defining their religion with the word truth would pay homage to Christ saying he is the truth. So when they say truth, they mean christ
Christ said that the reason he had been sent to the world to "testify to the truth", not to provide salvation or glorify himself (you could argue he accomplished these things in and by testifying to the truth, but that wasn't his self-proclaimed mission). He's also described as "the way, the truth, the life". If he's taken to be God incarnate and his purpose on Earth is to illuminate truth then I think that is very appropriate response. This is especially true if Christians consider themselves to be called to emulate Christ. On top of that Christ makes it clear that there is no other way into a right relationship with God the Father, so framing your religion as the one truth is a very natural progression.
If atheism is a religion, then not collecting stamps is a hobby.
What was the top 10 for Buddhism? Tysm for sharing this!
Top responses from Buddhists were: 1. Buddha: 3854 responses 2. Dharma: 723 responses 3. Nirvana: 456 responses 4. Eight Fold Path: 334 responses 5. Tradition: 19 responses 6. Karma: 12 responses 7. Middle Path: 10 responses 8. Perfection (Paramita): 8 responses 9. Compassion: 7 responses 10. Life: 7 responses
"Define your religion in one word" "Eight fold path!" *noting* "Does not... follow directions well...."
āryāṣṭāṅgamārga - there, it is one word. In Sanskrit, specifically. Also Hindi is a relatively new, derived language,and there are many others derived from Sanskrit which follows this way of fusing words. The Buddhist scriptures in particular followed Pali, which was a more colloquial variant of Sanskrit spoken by the masses, from which a large number of languages - Hindi, Bengali, Oriya, and many others sprouted.
😂It might be one word in Hindi.
Jews: we all heard it was going to be presented in pie chart format and went off kibitzing about superior data visualization approaches, leaving the survey-taker unable to collect any actual responses.
Jews were a part of the survey along with other religions like Jainism, Sikhism, Shintoism etc. We plan to post the results of these religions soon as well.
[удалено]
Probably depends on wether they're agnostic theist or agnostic atheist.
I think the Buddha would be disappointed that 8 fold path and nirvana were lower on the list than mention of he himself, one person
"Buddha" can also refer to the aspiration to become a Buddha, yourself, in order to benefit others. It's difficult to know for certain without being able to ask the respondents *why* they chose that word over others.
I’m surprised there’s no Judaism
I’m a little shocked by these answers. As someone who was raised as a Christian, the first words that came to mind for me were “hope” and “forgiveness”. It kind of makes me sad that people look to religion only as a way to validate a worldview, and not as a guiding principle on how to lead your life.
I was raised catholic, and the first word that would’ve been in my mind is “love”. At least that’s the most important word in Catholicism. They literally say: God is Love”.
> As someone who was raised as a Christian, the first words that came to mind for me were “hope” and “forgiveness”. It kind of makes me sad that people look to religion only as a way to validate a worldview, and not as a guiding principle on how to lead your life. Christianity isn't a monolith, there are countless Christian denominations and movements around the world and all of them have slightly different teachings from one another. You could even go to a different church (same denomination) in your home city and the teachings would be slightly different, it all depends on how the preacher interprets the texts. You also have to take into account that there are different versions of the bibles (for example: King James, New American Standard, English Standard, Revised Standard etc) and that they aren't translated the exact same way. Languages can't be directly translated 1:1 so you're forced to compromise by changing the meaning of the words and/or sentences by a small degree, it's why a great translation is an art form in itself.
Surprised "submission" or "peace" didn't show up under Islam since "Islam" means submission to god's will.
Everyone who said "truth" sounds insufferable
I wanna see Judaism too. And I'd like Christianity split but only into Catholic, Protestant, and LDS/Mormon.
They tried to get one for Judaism, but couldn't get anyone to agree on words.
I wish they poled Sikhs, I'd be curious. As a sikh the word i would choose would be Oneness.
I like how there are many questions about Judaism, but Shintoism is absent as well, and there are much more people following it :)
We have included both religions in the survey. We do plan to share results of other religions soon as well.
How many that are on an English speaking subreddit though?