Reincarnation research is a branch of parapsychology concerning reincarnation, specifically the study of "cases of the reincarnation type", that is, cases in which a young child "spontaneously makes remarks about a previous life they would have led before their birth", about a person with whom the child identifies himself. Some parapsychologists such as Ian Stevenson and Jim B. Tucker advocate developing protocols to guide, sort, compare, and evaluate cases studies.
Other people who have undertaken research on reincarnation include Satwant Pasricha, Antonia Mills, Godwin Samararatne, Erlendur Haraldsson and H. H. Jürgen Keil. Pasricha is the head of the Department of Clinical Psychology at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in India. In 2008, she wrote the book Can the Mind Survive Beyond Death?: Reincarnation Research. Mills is an anthropologist and professor of First Nation Studies at University of Northern British Columbia, specializing in First Nations peoples' reincarnation beliefs and cases. In 1994, she co-edited (with Richard Slobodin) Amerindian Rebirth: Reincarnation Belief Among North American Indians and Inuit. Haraldsson is Professor Emeritus of psychology at the Faculty of social science at the University of Iceland.
Mills, Haraldsson and Keil conducted independent replication studies of Stevenson's reincarnation research from 1987 to 1994
According to Stevenson, childhood memories ostensibly related to reincarnation normally occur between the ages of three and seven years then fade shortly afterwards. He compared the memories with reports of people known to the deceased, attempting to do so before any contact between the child and the deceased's family had occurred.
Stevenson found that the vast majority of cases investigated involved people who had met some sort of violent or untimely death. Many of the birthmarks are not just small discolourations. They are "often unusual in shape or size and are often puckered or raised rather than simply being flat. Some can be quite dramatic and unusual in appearance." Stevenson believed that the existence of birthmarks and deformities on children, when they occurred at the location of fatal wounds in the deceased, provided the best evidence for reincarnation, and he subsequently wrote Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects. The objective of these studies was to determine the role certain psychological characteristics the children might have as possible explanations for their past-life memories, such as, fantasy, suggestibility, social isolation, dissociation and attention seeking. In a study of 23 children pairs in Sri Lanka, those claiming memories of a previous life had greater verbal skills and better memory than their peers, performed much better in school, and were more socially active, but were not more suggestible. The objective is to evaluate the later effect of the children's experience as young adults, how it impacts their attitude toward efforts at Hindu—Muslim reconciliation, their integration in their communities, and whether they score higher on dissociative and psychic experience scales than those who have no such memories. These cases of a shift in religion are very rare. Reincarnation is accepted as a reality by Hindus, yet most of the reported cases entail someone who died violently and came back quickly. Muslims do not formally accept reincarnation as a possibility, yet they report about as many cases of children remembering a life in the "other" religion as do the Hindus.
Independent replication
In further research, Antonia Mills, an anthropologist specializing in First Nations studies, published studies of reincarnation cases among First Nations peoples, including cases involving birthmarks. In a summary of her work, Mills concluded that the numerous cases of the reincarnation type require an explanation for which reincarnation appears to be the most compelling. However, it is impossible to eliminate other possible sources of the child's knowledge. Cryptomnesia or amnesia as the source of the information may be present in some cases but are unlikely to account for most of them. Other paranormal means of communication such as extrasensory perception (ESP) may account for some elements of some cases, but the evidence for telepathic or other types of ESP indicate that they alone could not account for the level of knowledge and the personal characteristics shown in these cases. Mills suggested three criteria be used as guidelines to evaluate whether reported cases of reincarnation are indicative of more than cultural construction and wishful thinking: While Stevenson wrote extensively on his reincarnation studies, his work earned limited circulation outside academia. At the outset, Shroder sees his role not only as observer, but also as skeptic. But as his journey with Stevenson progresses, Shroder finds it increasingly difficult to reject the possibility of past lives.
Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives is a 2005 book written by psychiatrist Jim B. Tucker, which presents an overview of more than 40 years of reincarnation research at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Life Before Life has been translated into ten languages and the foreword to the book is written by Ian Stevenson. Psychiatrist Jim Tucker took over Stevenson's work on his retirement in 2002.
Paul Edwards, a philosopher and skeptic, has analyzed many of accounts of reincarnation, and called them anecdotal, while also suggesting that claims of evidence for reincarnation originate from selective thinking and from the false memories that often result from one's own belief system and basic fears, and thus cannot be counted as empirical evidence.
Research protocols
In 2000, Jim Tucker demonstrated the way in which the University of Virginia has used the ‘strength-of-case scale’ (SOCS) to sort and classify about 800 cases. The SOCS uses four criteria to evaluate a reincarnation case:
(1) whether it involves birthmarks/defects that correspond to the
supposed previous life;
(2) the strength of the statements made about the previous life;
(3) the relevant behaviours exhibited, as they relate to the previous life; and
(4) an evaluation of a possible connection between the child
reporting a previous life and the supposed previous life. then assessing what the score would have been had Ajendra’s father not suspected that his son's statements represented a case of reincarnation and had not asked him questions. Ajendra made 12 statements spontaneously without questioning and a further 15 statements in response to his father's questions. The Ajendra case would have had a SOCS score of 0 and would not have been "solved", had the father not asked questions. As a result of the father's questions, the case was solved and most of Ajendra's statements were verified with a total SOCS score of 31, ranking high on the SOCS scale. This result shows how important parental questioning can be in eliciting the information necessary for solving a case. The case demonstrated the importance of having a written record of the child’s statements before the case is solved, to prevent possible cultural elaboration. In this case, after-the-fact embroidery was checked and was found less accurate, as it has been found in other cases, than the child’s initial statements.
Jonathan Edelmann and William Bernet say that the SOCS is an important tool for studying reincarnation. But an ideal research protocol would have the sort of evidence and employ the research methods able to “give substantive weight to a reincarnation hypothesis, even for those who have physicalism as a metaphysical bias and are therefore highly sceptical of reincarnation case studies”.
Antonia Mills and Steven Lynn noted a number of methodological issues in reincarnation research:
* The need for independent replication of Stevenson and his associates' work. A number of replications have been carried out by independent researchers, for example Mills, Haraldsson and Keil, who augmented Stevenson's work with methods such as (1) video-recording children who visit the village and home of a previous personality for the first time, and (2) assessing the psychological characteristics of children who appear to remember and act on the basis of experiences from a previous life.
* Interviewer effects. An interviewer's communications may cause young children to incorporate misinformation into their accounts and repeat it as actual experience. Thus, researchers' and others' expectations, communications and suggestions may shape a child's past-life report. It would therefore be worthwhile to study the role of investigator effects in studies of children's past-life memory reports.
* Difficulties with probability assessments. It is difficult to assess whether a child's statements regarding a past life exceed chance probability. Each case is unique and needs its own assessment of probabilities. For example, how does one verify the correctness of a detailed statement (e.g., how many people had two water buffaloes in the village decades earlier) or how much weight does one give to incorrect or invalid statements (e.g., statements that are self-contradictory)? Stevenson assessed the chance probability to be very low of having one or more birthmarks on the same regions of the body as the injuries to the previous personality, for example with bullet entry and exit wounds and the corresponding birthmarks. However, the assessment of birthmarks is very complex and collaboration with geneticists would be useful. Also, when a case is "solved" on the basis of corresponding bodily markings, the accuracy of the child's statements needs to be evaluated, noting whether socializers imparted knowledge to the child consistent with the reincarnation interpretation.
Criticism
Antonia Mills and Steven Lynn He concluded that "reincarnation is the best — even though not the only — explanation for the stronger cases we have investigated". Jim Tucker recognizes that this may seem to be an "astounding statement," that "memories, emotions and physical injuries can sometimes carry over from one life to the next". In a book review criticizing one of Stevensons' books, the reviewer raised the concern that many of Stevenson's examples were gathered in cultures with pre-existing belief in reincarnation. In order to address this type of concern, Stevenson wrote European Cases of the Reincarnation Type (2003) which presented 40 cases he examined in Europe. Stevenson's obituary in the New York Times stated: "Spurned by most academic scientists, Dr. Stevenson was to his supporters a misunderstood genius, bravely pushing the boundaries of science. To his detractors, he was earnest, dogged but ultimately misguided, led astray by gullibility, wishful thinking and a tendency to see science where others saw superstition".
Deducing from this research the conclusion that reincarnation is a proven fact has been listed as an example of pseudoscience.
Other people who have undertaken research on reincarnation include Satwant Pasricha, Antonia Mills, Godwin Samararatne, Erlendur Haraldsson and H. H. Jürgen Keil. Pasricha is the head of the Department of Clinical Psychology at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in India. In 2008, she wrote the book Can the Mind Survive Beyond Death?: Reincarnation Research. Mills is an anthropologist and professor of First Nation Studies at University of Northern British Columbia, specializing in First Nations peoples' reincarnation beliefs and cases. In 1994, she co-edited (with Richard Slobodin) Amerindian Rebirth: Reincarnation Belief Among North American Indians and Inuit. Haraldsson is Professor Emeritus of psychology at the Faculty of social science at the University of Iceland.
Mills, Haraldsson and Keil conducted independent replication studies of Stevenson's reincarnation research from 1987 to 1994
According to Stevenson, childhood memories ostensibly related to reincarnation normally occur between the ages of three and seven years then fade shortly afterwards. He compared the memories with reports of people known to the deceased, attempting to do so before any contact between the child and the deceased's family had occurred.
Stevenson found that the vast majority of cases investigated involved people who had met some sort of violent or untimely death. Many of the birthmarks are not just small discolourations. They are "often unusual in shape or size and are often puckered or raised rather than simply being flat. Some can be quite dramatic and unusual in appearance." Stevenson believed that the existence of birthmarks and deformities on children, when they occurred at the location of fatal wounds in the deceased, provided the best evidence for reincarnation, and he subsequently wrote Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects. The objective of these studies was to determine the role certain psychological characteristics the children might have as possible explanations for their past-life memories, such as, fantasy, suggestibility, social isolation, dissociation and attention seeking. In a study of 23 children pairs in Sri Lanka, those claiming memories of a previous life had greater verbal skills and better memory than their peers, performed much better in school, and were more socially active, but were not more suggestible. The objective is to evaluate the later effect of the children's experience as young adults, how it impacts their attitude toward efforts at Hindu—Muslim reconciliation, their integration in their communities, and whether they score higher on dissociative and psychic experience scales than those who have no such memories. These cases of a shift in religion are very rare. Reincarnation is accepted as a reality by Hindus, yet most of the reported cases entail someone who died violently and came back quickly. Muslims do not formally accept reincarnation as a possibility, yet they report about as many cases of children remembering a life in the "other" religion as do the Hindus.
Independent replication
In further research, Antonia Mills, an anthropologist specializing in First Nations studies, published studies of reincarnation cases among First Nations peoples, including cases involving birthmarks. In a summary of her work, Mills concluded that the numerous cases of the reincarnation type require an explanation for which reincarnation appears to be the most compelling. However, it is impossible to eliminate other possible sources of the child's knowledge. Cryptomnesia or amnesia as the source of the information may be present in some cases but are unlikely to account for most of them. Other paranormal means of communication such as extrasensory perception (ESP) may account for some elements of some cases, but the evidence for telepathic or other types of ESP indicate that they alone could not account for the level of knowledge and the personal characteristics shown in these cases. Mills suggested three criteria be used as guidelines to evaluate whether reported cases of reincarnation are indicative of more than cultural construction and wishful thinking: While Stevenson wrote extensively on his reincarnation studies, his work earned limited circulation outside academia. At the outset, Shroder sees his role not only as observer, but also as skeptic. But as his journey with Stevenson progresses, Shroder finds it increasingly difficult to reject the possibility of past lives.
Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives is a 2005 book written by psychiatrist Jim B. Tucker, which presents an overview of more than 40 years of reincarnation research at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Life Before Life has been translated into ten languages and the foreword to the book is written by Ian Stevenson. Psychiatrist Jim Tucker took over Stevenson's work on his retirement in 2002.
Paul Edwards, a philosopher and skeptic, has analyzed many of accounts of reincarnation, and called them anecdotal, while also suggesting that claims of evidence for reincarnation originate from selective thinking and from the false memories that often result from one's own belief system and basic fears, and thus cannot be counted as empirical evidence.
Research protocols
In 2000, Jim Tucker demonstrated the way in which the University of Virginia has used the ‘strength-of-case scale’ (SOCS) to sort and classify about 800 cases. The SOCS uses four criteria to evaluate a reincarnation case:
(1) whether it involves birthmarks/defects that correspond to the
supposed previous life;
(2) the strength of the statements made about the previous life;
(3) the relevant behaviours exhibited, as they relate to the previous life; and
(4) an evaluation of a possible connection between the child
reporting a previous life and the supposed previous life. then assessing what the score would have been had Ajendra’s father not suspected that his son's statements represented a case of reincarnation and had not asked him questions. Ajendra made 12 statements spontaneously without questioning and a further 15 statements in response to his father's questions. The Ajendra case would have had a SOCS score of 0 and would not have been "solved", had the father not asked questions. As a result of the father's questions, the case was solved and most of Ajendra's statements were verified with a total SOCS score of 31, ranking high on the SOCS scale. This result shows how important parental questioning can be in eliciting the information necessary for solving a case. The case demonstrated the importance of having a written record of the child’s statements before the case is solved, to prevent possible cultural elaboration. In this case, after-the-fact embroidery was checked and was found less accurate, as it has been found in other cases, than the child’s initial statements.
Jonathan Edelmann and William Bernet say that the SOCS is an important tool for studying reincarnation. But an ideal research protocol would have the sort of evidence and employ the research methods able to “give substantive weight to a reincarnation hypothesis, even for those who have physicalism as a metaphysical bias and are therefore highly sceptical of reincarnation case studies”.
Antonia Mills and Steven Lynn noted a number of methodological issues in reincarnation research:
* The need for independent replication of Stevenson and his associates' work. A number of replications have been carried out by independent researchers, for example Mills, Haraldsson and Keil, who augmented Stevenson's work with methods such as (1) video-recording children who visit the village and home of a previous personality for the first time, and (2) assessing the psychological characteristics of children who appear to remember and act on the basis of experiences from a previous life.
* Interviewer effects. An interviewer's communications may cause young children to incorporate misinformation into their accounts and repeat it as actual experience. Thus, researchers' and others' expectations, communications and suggestions may shape a child's past-life report. It would therefore be worthwhile to study the role of investigator effects in studies of children's past-life memory reports.
* Difficulties with probability assessments. It is difficult to assess whether a child's statements regarding a past life exceed chance probability. Each case is unique and needs its own assessment of probabilities. For example, how does one verify the correctness of a detailed statement (e.g., how many people had two water buffaloes in the village decades earlier) or how much weight does one give to incorrect or invalid statements (e.g., statements that are self-contradictory)? Stevenson assessed the chance probability to be very low of having one or more birthmarks on the same regions of the body as the injuries to the previous personality, for example with bullet entry and exit wounds and the corresponding birthmarks. However, the assessment of birthmarks is very complex and collaboration with geneticists would be useful. Also, when a case is "solved" on the basis of corresponding bodily markings, the accuracy of the child's statements needs to be evaluated, noting whether socializers imparted knowledge to the child consistent with the reincarnation interpretation.
Criticism
Antonia Mills and Steven Lynn He concluded that "reincarnation is the best — even though not the only — explanation for the stronger cases we have investigated". Jim Tucker recognizes that this may seem to be an "astounding statement," that "memories, emotions and physical injuries can sometimes carry over from one life to the next". In a book review criticizing one of Stevensons' books, the reviewer raised the concern that many of Stevenson's examples were gathered in cultures with pre-existing belief in reincarnation. In order to address this type of concern, Stevenson wrote European Cases of the Reincarnation Type (2003) which presented 40 cases he examined in Europe. Stevenson's obituary in the New York Times stated: "Spurned by most academic scientists, Dr. Stevenson was to his supporters a misunderstood genius, bravely pushing the boundaries of science. To his detractors, he was earnest, dogged but ultimately misguided, led astray by gullibility, wishful thinking and a tendency to see science where others saw superstition".
Deducing from this research the conclusion that reincarnation is a proven fact has been listed as an example of pseudoscience.
Ricard Malley age 47 is an Arizonian Minuteman accused to aggravated assault against a police officer. It is alleged in the night in question he saw two police officers in a car, left his own car and approached them. He then while pointing an AR-15 demanded proof from the uniformed officers that they prove that they are police officers. He was heavily armed carrying two armed weapons and a large hunting knife. This has been the yet another incident where a member of the minutemen vigilante group has been involved in a felony.
As a result of this incident the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has issued new safety procedures for its members in dealing with heavily armed vigilante groups in the area. The Bureau has previously been involved for citing these groups for other infractions.
Ricard Malley is currently released on a 10,000 dollar bail and has described himself as a minuteman
references
http://www.kpho.com/story/23175887/mcso-az-minuteman-points-ar-15-rifle-at-sheriffs-deputy
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/20/arizona-minuteman-arrested-for-pointing-ar-15-rifle-at-sheriffs-deputy/
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/aug/20/ariz-sheriff-armed-militias-beware-or-be-shot/
As a result of this incident the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has issued new safety procedures for its members in dealing with heavily armed vigilante groups in the area. The Bureau has previously been involved for citing these groups for other infractions.
Ricard Malley is currently released on a 10,000 dollar bail and has described himself as a minuteman
references
http://www.kpho.com/story/23175887/mcso-az-minuteman-points-ar-15-rifle-at-sheriffs-deputy
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/20/arizona-minuteman-arrested-for-pointing-ar-15-rifle-at-sheriffs-deputy/
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/aug/20/ariz-sheriff-armed-militias-beware-or-be-shot/
Most major religions sometimes make claims to be the fastest-growing religion. As such, the title is hotly contested. Even the best method of determining which religion is the fastest-growing is a matter of contention. Several variables are brought into play, such as absolute number vs. percentage, conversions only or also births, etc., how broadly a religion is defined (e.g., Christianity as a whole, or a particular denomination), when the growth period is considered to begin, and the geographic region in question.
By careful selection of these parameters, most religions can make some claim to being the fastest-growing in some place and over some period of time.
Definition
Religions can grow in numbers because of conversion or because of higher birth rates in a religious group or both. Measures counting absolute numbers tend to favour the larger religions (Islam, Christianity, Hinduism for example which have at least 1 billion followers and more). Measures counting percentage growth tend to favour smaller ones such as Wicca, Falun Gong and other minority religions.
The fastest growing religion could refer to:
* The religion whose absolute number of adherents is growing the fastest.
* The religion that is growing fastest in terms of percentage growth per year.
* The religion that is gaining the greatest number of converts in the world.
Data collection
Statistics on religious adherence are difficult to gather and often contradictory; statistics for the change of religious adherence are even more so, requiring multiple surveys separated by many years using the same data gathering rules. This has only been achieved in rare cases, and then only for a particular country, such as the American Religious Identification Survey in the USA, or census data from Australia (which has included a voluntary religious question since 1911).
Statistics
What follows details some of the claims made by major religions (and atheists) to be the fastest-growing religion (or non-religion, in the case of atheism).
Buddhism
Buddhism is being recognized as the fastest growing religion in Western societies both in terms of new converts and more so in terms of friends of Buddhism, who seek to study and practice various aspects of Buddhism.
One estimate ranks Buddhism among the fastest growing religions in the United States and in many Western European countries. The Australian Bureau of Statistics through statistical analysis held Buddhism to be the fastest growing spiritual tradition/religion in Australia in terms of percentage gain with a growth of 79.1% for the period 1996 to 2001 (200,000→358,000). Buddhism is the fastest-growing religion in England's jails, with the number of followers rising eightfold over the past decade. A traditional belief among its majority Chinese population, Buddhism is the fastest growing religion in Macau.
Christianity
According to a 2005 paper submitted to a meeting of the American Political Science Association, most of this growth has occurred in non-Western countries and concludes the Pentecostalism movement is the fastest growing religion worldwide.
In Vietnam, the US Department of State estimates that Protestants in Vietnam may have grown 600% over the last decade. In Nigeria, the numbers of Christians has grown from 21.4% in 1953 to 50.8% in 2010. In South Korea, Christianity has grown from 20.7% in 1985 to 29.3% in 2010. In China, a recent boom in the Christian population has been called one of the "greatest revivals in Christian history". Mainland China now has about 67 million Christians, or about 5% of the total population, despite considerable persecution under Chairman Mao. In fact, the Christian population is growing so fast, it is expected to reach over 400 million people by 2040, which will make China the largest Christian country on Earth.
Evangelical Christian denominations are among the fastest growing denominations in some Catholic Christian countries, such as Brazil and France. In Brazil, the total number of Protestants jumped from 16.2% in 2000 to 22.2% in 2010 (For the first time the percentage of Catholics in Brazil is less than 70%).
Mormonism
The records of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints show membership growth every decade since its beginning in the 1830s. Following initial growth rates that averaged 10% to 25% per year in the 1830s through 1850s, it grew at about 4% per year through the last four decades of the 19th century. After a steady slowing of growth in the first four decades of the 20th century to a rate of about 2% per year in the 1930s (the Great Depression years), growth boomed to an average of 6% per year for the decade around 1960, staying around 4% to 5% through 1990. After 1990, average annual growth again slowed steadily to a rate around 2.5% for the first decade of the 21st century, still double the world population growth rate of 1.2% for the same period. Rodney Stark predicts that it could become a major world religion by the end of the 21st century if the current growth trend of between 30% and 50% per decade continues. Currently its growth rate, not internationally but in the United States, is at 1.6%, about the rate of the growth of the rest of the U.S. population, which is still the largest growth of the top ten largest Christian denominations, with many other churches having negative growth.
Deism
The 2001 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) survey, which involved 50,000 participants, reported that the number of participants in the survey identifying themselves as deists grew at the rate of 717% between 1990 and 2001. If this were generalized to the US population as a whole, it would make deism the fastest-growing religious classification in the US for that period, with the reported total of 49,000 self-identified adherents representing about 0.02% of the US population at the time. However, the percentage of Hindus in the population of India has decreased by 3 percentage points since 1961, dropping from 83.5% in 1961 to 80.5% in 2001.
Islam
Islam began in Arabia and from 633AD until the late 10th century it was spread after Arab armies began overtaking Christian lands from Syria to North Africa and Spain, as well as Buddhist/Hindu lands in Central Asia, parts of South Asia and Southeast Asia via military invasions, and conquering wars. Many converted for a whole host of reasons, the main of which was evangelisation by Muslims, though there were some instances where some were pressured to convert owing to internal conflict and friction between the Christian and Muslim communities, according to historian Philip Jenkins. However John L. Esposito, a scholar on the subject of Islam in "The Oxford History of Islam" states that the spread of Islam "was often peaceful and sometimes even received favourably by Christians". Yale University's The MacMillan Center Initiative on Religion, Politics, and Society states that forced conversions played little part in the history of the spread of the faith. However, the poll tax known Jizyah may have played a part in converting people over to Islam but as Britannica notes "The rate of taxation and methods of collection varied greatly from province to province and were greatly influenced by local pre-Islamic customs" and there were even cases when Muslims had the tax levied against them, on top of Zakat. The MacMillan Center has also discussed the Jizyah issue and stated that Muslim governments discouraged conversion but were unable to prevent it.
In 1990, 935 million people were Muslims. According to the BBC, a comprehensive American study concluded in 2009 the number stood at approximately 23% of the world population with 60% of Muslims living in Asia. From 1990 to 2010, the global Muslim population increased at an average annual rate of 2.2%. By 2030 Muslims are projected to represent about 26.4% of the global population (out of a total of 7.9 billion people). Several sources believe that this increase is due primarily to high birth rates. However according to others including the Guinness Book of World Records, Islam is the world’s fastest-growing religion by number of conversions each year: "Although the religion began in Arabia, by 2002 80% of all believers in Islam lived outside the Arab world. In the period 1990-2000, approximately 12.5 million more people converted to Islam than to Christianity".On the other hand in 2010 the Pew Forum stated "Statistical data on conversion to and from Islam are scarce. What little information is available suggests that there is no substantial net gain or loss in the number of Muslims through conversion globally; the number of people who become Muslims through conversion seems to be roughly equal to the number of Muslims who leave the faith. As a result, this report does not include any estimated future rate of conversions as a direct factor in the projections of Muslim population growth" The growth of Islam from 2010 to 2020 has been estimated at 1.70%
Wicca
The American Religious Identification Survey gives Wicca an average annual growth of 143% for the period 1990 to 2001 (from 8,000 to 134,000 - U.S. data / similar for Canada & Australia). The "Free Press Release Distribution Service" claims Wicca is one of the fastest growing religions in the United States as well. Wicca which is largely a Pagan religion is primarily attracting the followers of nature based religions in the Southern United States which is contributing towards its growth.
Nonreligious
In terms of absolute numbers, irreligion appears to be increasing (along with secularization generally). Even so, it is decreasing as a percentage of the world population, due primarily to population increases in more religious developing countries outpacing population growth (or decline) in less religious developed countries. (See the geographic distribution of atheism.)
The American Religious Identification Survey gave nonreligious groups the largest gain in terms of absolute numbers: 14.3 million (8.4% of the population) to 29.4 million (14.1% of the population) for the period 1990-2001 in the U.S. A 2012 study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life reports, "The number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public - and a third of adults under 30 - are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling." A similar pattern has been found in other countries such as Australia, Canada, and Mexico. According to statistics in Canada, the number of "Nones" increased by about 60% between 1985 and 2004. In Australia, census data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics give "no religion" the largest gains in absolute numbers over the 15 years from 1991 to 2006, from 2,948,888 (18.2% of the population that answered the question) to 3,706,555 (21.0% of the population that answered the question). According to INEGI, in Mexico, the number of atheists grows annually by 5.2%, while the number of Catholics grows by 1.7%. In New Zealand, over 34% of the population are irreligious making it largest percentage of total population in Oceania region.
By careful selection of these parameters, most religions can make some claim to being the fastest-growing in some place and over some period of time.
Definition
Religions can grow in numbers because of conversion or because of higher birth rates in a religious group or both. Measures counting absolute numbers tend to favour the larger religions (Islam, Christianity, Hinduism for example which have at least 1 billion followers and more). Measures counting percentage growth tend to favour smaller ones such as Wicca, Falun Gong and other minority religions.
The fastest growing religion could refer to:
* The religion whose absolute number of adherents is growing the fastest.
* The religion that is growing fastest in terms of percentage growth per year.
* The religion that is gaining the greatest number of converts in the world.
Data collection
Statistics on religious adherence are difficult to gather and often contradictory; statistics for the change of religious adherence are even more so, requiring multiple surveys separated by many years using the same data gathering rules. This has only been achieved in rare cases, and then only for a particular country, such as the American Religious Identification Survey in the USA, or census data from Australia (which has included a voluntary religious question since 1911).
Statistics
What follows details some of the claims made by major religions (and atheists) to be the fastest-growing religion (or non-religion, in the case of atheism).
Buddhism
Buddhism is being recognized as the fastest growing religion in Western societies both in terms of new converts and more so in terms of friends of Buddhism, who seek to study and practice various aspects of Buddhism.
One estimate ranks Buddhism among the fastest growing religions in the United States and in many Western European countries. The Australian Bureau of Statistics through statistical analysis held Buddhism to be the fastest growing spiritual tradition/religion in Australia in terms of percentage gain with a growth of 79.1% for the period 1996 to 2001 (200,000→358,000). Buddhism is the fastest-growing religion in England's jails, with the number of followers rising eightfold over the past decade. A traditional belief among its majority Chinese population, Buddhism is the fastest growing religion in Macau.
Christianity
According to a 2005 paper submitted to a meeting of the American Political Science Association, most of this growth has occurred in non-Western countries and concludes the Pentecostalism movement is the fastest growing religion worldwide.
In Vietnam, the US Department of State estimates that Protestants in Vietnam may have grown 600% over the last decade. In Nigeria, the numbers of Christians has grown from 21.4% in 1953 to 50.8% in 2010. In South Korea, Christianity has grown from 20.7% in 1985 to 29.3% in 2010. In China, a recent boom in the Christian population has been called one of the "greatest revivals in Christian history". Mainland China now has about 67 million Christians, or about 5% of the total population, despite considerable persecution under Chairman Mao. In fact, the Christian population is growing so fast, it is expected to reach over 400 million people by 2040, which will make China the largest Christian country on Earth.
Evangelical Christian denominations are among the fastest growing denominations in some Catholic Christian countries, such as Brazil and France. In Brazil, the total number of Protestants jumped from 16.2% in 2000 to 22.2% in 2010 (For the first time the percentage of Catholics in Brazil is less than 70%).
Mormonism
The records of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints show membership growth every decade since its beginning in the 1830s. Following initial growth rates that averaged 10% to 25% per year in the 1830s through 1850s, it grew at about 4% per year through the last four decades of the 19th century. After a steady slowing of growth in the first four decades of the 20th century to a rate of about 2% per year in the 1930s (the Great Depression years), growth boomed to an average of 6% per year for the decade around 1960, staying around 4% to 5% through 1990. After 1990, average annual growth again slowed steadily to a rate around 2.5% for the first decade of the 21st century, still double the world population growth rate of 1.2% for the same period. Rodney Stark predicts that it could become a major world religion by the end of the 21st century if the current growth trend of between 30% and 50% per decade continues. Currently its growth rate, not internationally but in the United States, is at 1.6%, about the rate of the growth of the rest of the U.S. population, which is still the largest growth of the top ten largest Christian denominations, with many other churches having negative growth.
Deism
The 2001 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) survey, which involved 50,000 participants, reported that the number of participants in the survey identifying themselves as deists grew at the rate of 717% between 1990 and 2001. If this were generalized to the US population as a whole, it would make deism the fastest-growing religious classification in the US for that period, with the reported total of 49,000 self-identified adherents representing about 0.02% of the US population at the time. However, the percentage of Hindus in the population of India has decreased by 3 percentage points since 1961, dropping from 83.5% in 1961 to 80.5% in 2001.
Islam
Islam began in Arabia and from 633AD until the late 10th century it was spread after Arab armies began overtaking Christian lands from Syria to North Africa and Spain, as well as Buddhist/Hindu lands in Central Asia, parts of South Asia and Southeast Asia via military invasions, and conquering wars. Many converted for a whole host of reasons, the main of which was evangelisation by Muslims, though there were some instances where some were pressured to convert owing to internal conflict and friction between the Christian and Muslim communities, according to historian Philip Jenkins. However John L. Esposito, a scholar on the subject of Islam in "The Oxford History of Islam" states that the spread of Islam "was often peaceful and sometimes even received favourably by Christians". Yale University's The MacMillan Center Initiative on Religion, Politics, and Society states that forced conversions played little part in the history of the spread of the faith. However, the poll tax known Jizyah may have played a part in converting people over to Islam but as Britannica notes "The rate of taxation and methods of collection varied greatly from province to province and were greatly influenced by local pre-Islamic customs" and there were even cases when Muslims had the tax levied against them, on top of Zakat. The MacMillan Center has also discussed the Jizyah issue and stated that Muslim governments discouraged conversion but were unable to prevent it.
In 1990, 935 million people were Muslims. According to the BBC, a comprehensive American study concluded in 2009 the number stood at approximately 23% of the world population with 60% of Muslims living in Asia. From 1990 to 2010, the global Muslim population increased at an average annual rate of 2.2%. By 2030 Muslims are projected to represent about 26.4% of the global population (out of a total of 7.9 billion people). Several sources believe that this increase is due primarily to high birth rates. However according to others including the Guinness Book of World Records, Islam is the world’s fastest-growing religion by number of conversions each year: "Although the religion began in Arabia, by 2002 80% of all believers in Islam lived outside the Arab world. In the period 1990-2000, approximately 12.5 million more people converted to Islam than to Christianity".On the other hand in 2010 the Pew Forum stated "Statistical data on conversion to and from Islam are scarce. What little information is available suggests that there is no substantial net gain or loss in the number of Muslims through conversion globally; the number of people who become Muslims through conversion seems to be roughly equal to the number of Muslims who leave the faith. As a result, this report does not include any estimated future rate of conversions as a direct factor in the projections of Muslim population growth" The growth of Islam from 2010 to 2020 has been estimated at 1.70%
Wicca
The American Religious Identification Survey gives Wicca an average annual growth of 143% for the period 1990 to 2001 (from 8,000 to 134,000 - U.S. data / similar for Canada & Australia). The "Free Press Release Distribution Service" claims Wicca is one of the fastest growing religions in the United States as well. Wicca which is largely a Pagan religion is primarily attracting the followers of nature based religions in the Southern United States which is contributing towards its growth.
Nonreligious
In terms of absolute numbers, irreligion appears to be increasing (along with secularization generally). Even so, it is decreasing as a percentage of the world population, due primarily to population increases in more religious developing countries outpacing population growth (or decline) in less religious developed countries. (See the geographic distribution of atheism.)
The American Religious Identification Survey gave nonreligious groups the largest gain in terms of absolute numbers: 14.3 million (8.4% of the population) to 29.4 million (14.1% of the population) for the period 1990-2001 in the U.S. A 2012 study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life reports, "The number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public - and a third of adults under 30 - are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling." A similar pattern has been found in other countries such as Australia, Canada, and Mexico. According to statistics in Canada, the number of "Nones" increased by about 60% between 1985 and 2004. In Australia, census data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics give "no religion" the largest gains in absolute numbers over the 15 years from 1991 to 2006, from 2,948,888 (18.2% of the population that answered the question) to 3,706,555 (21.0% of the population that answered the question). According to INEGI, in Mexico, the number of atheists grows annually by 5.2%, while the number of Catholics grows by 1.7%. In New Zealand, over 34% of the population are irreligious making it largest percentage of total population in Oceania region.
A ganjapreneur is an entrepreneur engaged in commercial activities in the Cannabis industry. Historically, virtually all ganjapreneurs operated within the black market, but over the past two and a half decades states have passed medical Cannabis laws and created a whole new state-sanctioned industries in which ganjapreneurs can operate. And with the legalization of recreational Cannabis usage in Colorado and Washington in 2012, opportunities for ganjapreneurs have never been greater.
Ganjapreneurs do not necessarily cultivate or sell Cannabis or Cannabis-infused materials. Ganjapreneurs also offer specialty services, such as accounting, legal-advise, packaging products, etc. aimed directly at meeting the needs of cannabusinesses. Many auxiliary industries also exist which sell products either made of Cannabis, such as hemp clothing, hemp foods or hemp plastic, or which cater to Cannabis consumers, like television shows or magazines.
No credible sources document the origin of the word which is popping up all across America. But even media giants like NBC News use the term when discussing Cannabis business professionals.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/42495102/ns/business-small_business/t/doing-it-money-movement
Ganjapreneurs do not necessarily cultivate or sell Cannabis or Cannabis-infused materials. Ganjapreneurs also offer specialty services, such as accounting, legal-advise, packaging products, etc. aimed directly at meeting the needs of cannabusinesses. Many auxiliary industries also exist which sell products either made of Cannabis, such as hemp clothing, hemp foods or hemp plastic, or which cater to Cannabis consumers, like television shows or magazines.
No credible sources document the origin of the word which is popping up all across America. But even media giants like NBC News use the term when discussing Cannabis business professionals.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/42495102/ns/business-small_business/t/doing-it-money-movement