I have traded 'Christian sects' for 'branches of Christianity'. The reason for this is that the word 'sect' also has a different, negative connotation. And that is not what is meant by this list, is it? Well, who doesn't agree can change it ofcourse. Another point: when adding some 'branches' I wondered for instance whether to type 'Methodists', Methodism, 'Methodist Church' or 'Methodist'. The list has all variations. Shouldn't we have some more unity here, or will the terrific new search function have to solve it?
In order to avoid apparent bias would it be appropriate to alphabetize some of the lists on this page, eg.
Religions: Buddhism -- Caodaism? -- Christianity -- Demonolatry -- Druzism? -- Hinduism -- Islam -- Jainism -- Judaism -- Mandaeanism -- Manichaeism -- Paganism -- Process Church of the Final Judgement -- Santeria? -- Satanism -- Scientology -- Shamanism -- Shinto -- Sikhism -- Taoism -- Voudun -- Yezidis -- Zoarastrianism?
Michael: If we want to organize them by size here is a rough list taken from adherents.com of religions over 1 million adherents today: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Nonreligious?, Buddhism, Chinese traditional religion (Confucianism, Taoism), Sikhism, Judaism, Baha'i, Jainism, Shinto, [Cao Dai]?, Tenrikyo?, Neo-Paganism
I deleted from the adherents.com list Juche? (North Korean Communism) since I would question if it counts as a religion. I also took out "Indigenous/Primal? Religions", "Yoruba Religion" and "Spiritism?", because although they have over 200 million adherents, it is rather difficult to separate the three of them.
Also, we might want to mention some religions which are quite small (Zoroastrianism?, Mandaeanism, Manichaeism, Samaritanism) which while small or extinct today, are of significant historical importance. -- Simon J Kissane
Looks like somebody's cruising to get "Yaohushuahim" filed under the "mock religions". :-) Need to write myself a zapper... sjc
From a scientific viewpoint the widespread existence of religious belief in societies around the world indicates that such belief is inherent in the human brain. In fact, recent studies in how epileptic siezures can cause transendent religious feelings has started to point towards a particular neurological basis for religion. It is not clear what is the evolutionary advantage of such belief. Perhaps it helped produce more stable hunter-gatherer societies.
Firstly, while there is some research that indicates that religious experiences have some link to particular structures in the human brain, I don't think this research at present provides an adequate total explanation for religion. And you totally ignore sociological theories, such as Rodney Stark's and the various other economic theories of religion, which are arguably equally scientific, yet they don't need to explain it in terms of specific features of the human brain. And "perhaps it helped produce more stable hunter-gatherer societies" is both pure speculation, and shows anti-religious bias (since perhaps it helps produce more stable modern societies also...) -- SJK