Measuring religion

[zorkan]

Sounds ambitious but is it possible to measure religion by some sort of unit?

By saints and sinners?
By blood and martyrs?
By stupidity?
By schisms?

By wealth?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_religious_organizations

I read somewhere that the Catholic church is worth $1 trillion.
They don't want you to know that so they hide it.
Mormons do very well.
Muslims can also have more than one wife.
So how about wives?

[Asmodean]

Measure religion as a whole, or adherence of an individual? The latter could be "trivially" measured in hours. The former - in adherents, so in a manner, also in hours.

[Tank]

Time spent per person per faith. Hmmm Some religions require more time spent per person per week than others and this is also influenced by gender and age. So each religion needs a calibration of hours per person per day by day under ideal circumstances. One could then potentially decide if an individual or group of individuals match the 'ideal'.

[Asmodean]

Yep. Pretty much that. We could call the unit god-hours, as in, hours spent on gods.

[Tank]

God hours? Hmmm Spiritual Hours i something T then you're get SHIT hours.

[Asmodean]

Can't name a unit -al-hours. It's <thing> per <thing> or <thing> with reference to <thing.>

Shit-hours may work for worship-per-man-hour.

[zorkan]

This is what used to confuse me.
Christians once a week, usually on Sunday to go to the god zone.
Muslims 5 times a day, anywhere they can find.
Special work breaks for Muslims to pray.
No such thing for Christians.

When I ask a Muslim if they worship the same god as Christians, The answer is likely to be no.
Other way around applies too.
A measure of stupidity?

Both will find a way to reject the source of their faith is grounded in Judaism.

[billy rubin]

in my experience, a muslim will tell you all the abrahamic religions worship the same god. the muslims will tell you that jesus was an intermediate prophet and muhammed recieved the final revelation, and that tbe jews also believe in an incomplete faith. muslims refer to themselvez, christians, and jews as "people of the Book." sometimes the parsees are included too.

jews reject jesus as the messiah, but acknowledge that they and christians share the same god.

christians are all over the map. american evangelicals sometimes even reject catholicism as a christian faith.

[zorkan]

I assume that Catholics are not Christians because (as a very bad former one myself) I never heard any mention of the myths and fables in the OT read out in church.

Only readings are likely to be from the prophet Isaiah.
This guy forecast the coming of "Jesus".
Only 2 snags here. He wrote this 800 years earlier and mentioned Immanuel and not Jesus.

Catholics are obsessed with the word love.
You will hear it a hundred times in a full service.
You shouldn't be surprised at all the scandal.

So how many times the word love is used might be a measure.

By my understanding love the neighbour was borrowed from the Hindu scriptures.

[zorkan]

The number of atheists compared to the number of theists is another measure.

My favourite atheist was the Reverend Robert Taylor.
The story goes that one day he started to preach atheism from pulpit.
He was known to Darwin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_(Radical)

[Asmodean]

That sounds more like statistics within a given society than a measurement of religion to be honest. For example, what does the relationship between the number of Christian fundamentalists and Atheists in the United Kingdom say about the religiousness of the former?

[zorkan]

According to this only 49% of Britons now believe in god.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion_in_the_United_Kingdom#:~:text=Humanists%20UK%20is%20the%20most,said%20they%20believed%20in%20God.

Even if I'm one of the 51% who don't believe, I guess I'm still a cultural Christian, by accident of birth.
I like the music of Bach.
I like visiting medieval churches and cathedrals.
 

[Asmodean]

Doesn't make you "Cultural Christian" as much as "Cultural Western European/in-this-case-specifically-Germanic," in my opinion.

There is overlap there, to be sure, and a lot of it, but one would think that a cultural Christian would have a thing or two to say about Christ before Bach and architecture. 

[zorkan]

Dawkins also describes himself as a cultural Christian.
You know who I mean. He plagiarises Darwin, Wallace, Hamilton.
Maybe he needs to relax a bit more. He put his stroke down to stress.

[Asmodean]

I would not describe Richard Dawkins as "culturally Christian." In my view, the good professor is, if anything, very English.

Still, there may be valid reasons for him to describe himself thusly, in which case I would agree with his reasons even if standing by my overall conclusion.

I think of it this way; many a culture have been influenced by the Roman Empire. That does not make them "Culturally Roman." Replace "Roman empire" with your religion of choice.

Of course, there are people who can claim to be "Culturally Roman," but your average Hungarian may not be one of them - just saying.

Do you have an example of Dawkins plagiarizing? (Presenting the work of others as his own, as opposed to basing his own work on prior work done by others)