Almost everyone has a religion, or at least they say they do. But why people are so drawn to joining a religion? The answer is very simple actually, they want to feel like they belong to something. Humans are social, we have the need to feel like we are not alone, and to know that there are other people out there who think like us.
Our religion is usually influenced by the place we were born, and the people we interact with on a daily basis, which is usually our families, but can also be our friends, colleagues or teachers. Every religious person insist that joining their religion was their choice, even tough is rarely is. There are is a great number of small religions throughout the world, but there are only a few major ones. Here are the three religions who has the greatest amount of followers in the world today:
- Christianity (31%)
- Islam (25%)
- Hinduism (15%)
These numbers go against some popular beliefs we have in the western hemisphere, for example, christians are not the majority, in fact more than 2/3 of the world population is not Christian. Something that may surprise you, is that 16% of the population don't have any religion, which means there are more atheists than Hindus.
From all religions, the one that's growing at a faster rate is Islam. This is due to the fact that most Muslims have more children than the members of other religions, and considering that many young Christians are becoming atheists today, Islam is expected to become the greatest religion in the world in the future.
As for me, I don't have a religion, for me there's no god and no afterlife. I'm not against religion as a whole, most of them have great teachings, but the problem is that every religion antagonizes the other, so while they bring their followers together, they separate themselves from the rest of the world.