From the perspective of world history, religion is an organization that has the greatest impact on human beings, and religion can affect people's thoughts and behaviors, and even the way they think, so often a religion will form a characteristic civilization. Therefore, we can see that many times, many of the achievements of civilization in the world can actually be called religious civilizations. The most typical Western civilization can be called Christian civilization, the Two Rivers civilization can be called Islamic civilization, and the Indian civilization can be called Hindu civilization. Judging the influence of religion, many times, can actually be attributed to the number of believers in the religion. Islam has 2 billion adherents, Christianity has 1.5 billion, Hinduism has 1.1 billion, but what about Buddhism? You might not think of it.
From the perspective of the development of world religions, Islam has developed the fastest, and its emergence is the latest, but now it has the largest number of believers. Islam is widely distributed in the Middle East, the Gulf region, North Africa, as well as Southeast Asia, South Asia, and even the Balkans, Central Asia, the Caucasus, etc. There are more than 40 countries in which the believers are believed, and the number of believers in the whole is as high as 2 billion.
And now Islam continues to penetrate the West and Europe, The Muslimization of Europe is inevitable, from the current point of view, most of the future world will be Islam, Europe is an Islamic region, it is simply incredible. Followed by Christianity, Christianity is divided into Catholicism, Protestantism, and Orthodox Christianity, believers are distributed in Europe, North America, South America, and even Africa, as well as Asia, South Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines and other countries, the distribution is also very wide.
Basically, the European powers and their colonies believed in Christianity in large numbers. According to statistics, the total number of Christians in the world exceeds 1.5 billion, which is by far second only to Islam, which is also the basis of its influence. But it is worth noting that as the population of the West continues to decline, religious ideas decline, the entire Christian population is also declining. In the future, the Christian population may further decline to less than 1 billion.
And the third is Hinduism. Although Hinduism is not a world religion, Hinduism is widely distributed in South Asia, mainly india, Nepal and other countries, and it is also distributed in many overseas areas with the migration of Indians. Now the total number of Hindu believers is more than 1.1 billion, and there are 1 billion in India alone, which is also the basis for India's wide influence by the caste system.
But from the perspective of demographic structure, India's population is growing rapidly, and Hinduism encourages fertility, so Hindus will continue to grow in the future. Islam has 2 billion adherents, Christianity has 1.5 billion, Hinduism has 1.1 billion, but what about Buddhism? As you might not expect, there are less than 500 million.
Many people think that Chinese mainland Buddhism alone has 1.4 billion. In fact, since the second world war, our country has been very indifferent to religious beliefs. Now the people who are really called Buddhists, in the country, less than 200 million people, which is still many. Most Chinese people do not believe in religion, or believe in other religions, which is why Westerners say that we are not religious. And with the addition of Southeast Asian Buddhists in Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and overseas, the total is less than 5 billion.
To make matters worse, the lax administration of Buddhism has led to an increasing number of non-believers and a declining population, so the number of Buddhists is still declining. Therefore, I am afraid that the smallest number of people in the future will still be Buddhism, and even some experts are worried that Buddhism will slowly decrease or even die out.
Welcome to pay attention to [Reveal the Truth of History], update you with fresh historical information every day, and don't go out to see the world!
Reference: Modern and Contemporary World History.