Wednesday, April 9, 2008

The Thursday Quiz XXXII

The Thursday Quiz!

The Thursday Quiz is an "Is It or Isn't It" game. From the list of twelve items, your job is to determine whether each IS or ISN'T a true example of the week's category.

Remember always Your Fundamental Beliefs:

No research, Googling, Wikiing, or use of reference books. The Thursday
Quiz is a POP quiz. Violators will have to make it on their own.
This Week's Category will give you something to believe in!

Religion by the Numbers

True, or just so much Claptrap5000?

1. A little more than half the people in the world adhere to one of the three "Abrahamic" religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam).

2. Only about 7% of the world's population practices Judaism.

3. There are way more Moslems in the world than there are Christians.

4. There are way more Hindus in the world than there are Buddhists.

5. Shinto and Buddhism have roughly the same number of adherents.

6. There are a lot more Roman Catholic Christians in the world than there are Eastern Orthodox Christians.

7. There are a lot more Sunni Moslems in the world than there are Shi'ite Moslems.

8. Despite the demise of the ancient Persian Empire, there are still actual Zoroastrians in the world.

9. Behind all the hype, there are really only two or three thousand actual religious Rastafarians.

10. There are roughly as many people in the world practicing Scientology as there are practicing Judaism.

11. Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Lutherans constitute four roughly equal populations in the United States.

12. The Northwestern U.S. states of Washington, Oregon, and Alaska are among the highest in both religious diversity and in the number of people who claim no religious affiliation.



Submit your answers in the comments.

19 comments:

fingerstothebone said...

Hmmm.

1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3. Yes.
4. Yes.
5. No.
6. No.
7. Yes.
8. Yes.
9. Yes.
10. No.
11. Yes.
12. Yes.

Give me the bad news...

Anonymous said...

1 / T
2 / F
3 / F
4 / T
5 / T
6 / T
7 / (I normally refer these questions to John McCain, but I'll guess) F
8 / T
9 / F (what hype?)
10 / F (No practice. Experts one and all)
11 / F
12 / T

Cartophiliac said...

1. true
2. true
3. false
4. true
5. false
6. true
7. true
8. true
9. true
10. false
11. false
12. true

The Calico Cat said...

OY
1 - true
2 - false (sounds a bit high...)
3 - true
4 - true
5 - true
6 - false
7 - false
8 - true
9 - true
10 - false
11 - false
12 - true

d said...

1. it certainly seems like it should be a lot more than that—those people are everywhere. but i'll say yes.
2. yes
3. yes
4. 'way more'? i'm gonna say no.
5. no
6. yes
7. no
8. yes
9. yes
10. no
11. no
12. sure

Elizabeth said...

All that bible-thumpin' has gone to your head.

1. True.
2. True.
3. Hm. Just read something about this statistic but I think it was more Moslems than Catholics, so I'll say False. Like the idols you worship.
4. True, I think.
5. True? Especially because many people are both, depending on the occasion.
6. False, but mostly because I disapprove of this Pope.
7. Shoot. Which one is McCain always mixing up ... I think False, and it's the Shi'ia that have the larger numbers.
8. Yes! One of the world's more sensible religions, in my opinion.
9. True. And they are rapidly being overtaken by the Pastafarians. May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage soon.
10. True, probably. Does Judaism demand one jumps on a couch, too?
11. False?
12. False, I think, but only because you included the "religious diversity" part. I can attest to the "no religious affiliation" part though.

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here in search of the elusive exclamation point!

Karin said...

1. yes, (i'm considering all the muslims in india and indonesia)
2. sure
3. yes, (see #1)
4. i don't know. um...no. (China)
5. no
6. no
7. yes
8. yes
9. yes
10.sure
11.no, (remember that map you showed us a little while back where the entire southern states were baptist?)
12.yes, i'd like to think so

Rhetorical Twist said...

I'll give this a go, especially since I have been a LTM5K quiz delinquent as of late.

1. True
2. True
3. True
4. Hmm. True.
5. False
6. True
7. True. I think.
8. Sure. True.
9. I'll go with true
10. False. I hope it's false.
11. Sounds right. True.
12. False?

Dan Nolan said...

1. is
2. is
3. is
4. isn't
5. isn't
6. isn't
7. is
8. is
9. isn't
10. isn't
11. isn't
12. is
13. is a thought in my head that I may have gotten all of these wrong.

Rebel said...

It's against my religion to answer these questions!

I will now rejoin my 126 sister-wives and 519 co-children and hubby in our mansion in the wilderness.

Anonymous said...

1 no. That just seems too many.
2 no. That seems too many too, if I'm right about #1. If I'm wrong about #1, I'm probably 0 for 2 at this point.
3 no
4 no
5 no
6 yes
7 yes
8 yes
9 yes
10 no I hope not
11 no having been in the South, I have the impression the Baptists are winning
12 yes Amen!

DrSchnell said...

1. True
2. False (MUCH smaller than this)
3. False
4. False
5. False (most Shintoists also practice some Buddhism on the side, plus all those other Buddhists out there.)
6. Yes (Thanks to Latin America)
7. Yes (by about 8 times)
8. Yes
9. No, I think there's a bunch more than that, even once you take all those out who are only in it for the pot.
10. Hmmmm.. . . I'll say False here, though it's just so weird it might be true. But my official answer is False.
11. False - Baptists much bigger
12. True. Godless heathens, all of you.

Christine M. said...

Sorry I so late to the game, but...

1. true
2. claptrap
3. claptrap
4. true
5. claptrap
6. true
7. true
8. true
9. true
10. claptrap
11. claptrap
12. true

mhwitt said...

I like this one. About equal parts educated guesses and utter guesses.

Is: 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12
Ain't: 3, 4, 5, 10, 11

Number four is tough since you don't always see the majority of Chinese identified as Buddhist. And on number six I'm not sure how to count all them Russians.

Can't help but think that 7% might be too high for number 2. Still putting it in "is" though.

Did you know that Freddy Mercury was a Zoroastrian? Not that he's still "in the world."

mhwitt said...

Damn. Should have done a bit of arithmetic and figured out that 7% of the world population would be over 400 million folks.

Reckon I got the Rasta-question wrong too, unless we debate about what it means to be an "actual religious" Rastafarian.

Anonymous said...

1. Yes
2. No
3. No
4. No
5. No
6. Yes
7. Yes
8. Yes
9. No
10.Yes
11. Yes
12. Yes

Michael5000 said...

Right, then. Let's talk answers. And in so doing, let's keep in mind that statistics about religious adherence are way problematic; but, you'll notice that I avoided ambiguities in the questions. I used very standard, vanilla sources.

1. True; about 53.5% of the world's population professes an Abrahamic faith.

2. False. I worded this in a somewhat tricksy but basically fair way; but nowhere near 7% of the world's population practices Judaism. It's closer to 1/4 of 1%.

3. False; Christians outnumber Moslems about 4 to 3.

4. True; there are more than twice as many Hindus as Buddhists. If there can even be said to be such a thing as "Hinduism," or for that matter "Buddhism." Don't get me started. But anyway, India's a big country.

5. False; Shinto is pretty tiny, with maybe 1/15 of Buddhism's head count.

6. True. Catholicism trumps Orthodoxy by more than 4 to 1.

7. True. Sunnis outnumber Shi'ites by around 7 or 8 to 1.

8. True. There are only one or two hundred thousand Zoroastrians around, but it is interestingly among the fastest-growing religions in the world.

9. False. There's more than half a million practicing Rastafarians.

10. No Way. You've got, at a very rough estimate, 15 million people practicing Judaism. Even the Scientologists themselves only claim 8 million practitioners; a very generous but responsible estimate is that there are maybe around 500,000 Scientologists.

11. False; Baptists are 5 or 6 times as numerous in the U.S. as are the other three.

12. True.

Michael5000 said...


A tightly-fought contest this week.

drschnell went 11 for 12 to take home this week's Gold Star; it's his second, his 9th Gold overall.

Christie Mannix also had 11/12, a few hours later, and she claims the Silver Star. It's her first award in Thursday Quiz play, and possibly in L&TM5K action overall, unless she is the same person as "cpm," who has a couple Exclamation Points. Please clarify. Incidently, she appears to have a new blog with awesome folk art imagery.

Karmasartre beat Cartophiliac to the punch, so they have the Blue and Green Stars respectively for their 10/12 scores. For each of them it is their second of that color and their fifth overall, which makes a five-way scrum for 8th place on the all-times Stars list.

Well done everyone, and thanks for playing the Thursday Quiz!

Cartophiliac said...

Christine Mannix, also know here as Ms. Cartophiliac.