World religions and golden rule

Religion # of Followers Founded Holy Books/Texts Founder

Christianity 2.4 bil First Century Bible Jesus Christ

Islam 1.9 bil 600 AD

Qur’an, Hadith (sayings of the Prophet) and Sunna (descriptions of his

way of life.) Muhammad

Hinduism 1.2 bil Unknown, but at least 2000 BC The Vedas Unknown

Buddhism 0.5 bil Late 6th Century, BCE Tipitaka, Sutras, The Book of the Dead Siddhartha Gautama

Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist (see notes below) 450-500 mil

Sikhism 26 mil late 15th century the Adi Granth and the Dasam Granth Guru Nanak

Judaism 14.7 mil 1800 BCE the Tanakh Abraham

Taoism 9 mil 500 BCE Tao Te Ching (many authors including Zhuangzi) Lao Tzu (little evidence he existed)

Confucianism 6-7 mil 6th-5th century BCE The Analects disciples of Confucius, Mencius

Baha’i 5 mil mid 19th century The Kitab-i-Aqdas (the Most Holy Book) Baha’u’llah

Jainism 4.2 mil 6th century BCE

No one holy book, but many religious texts, the most well-known being

the Agam Sutras Nataputta Mahavira

Shinto 4 mil pre-6th century Kojiki (Records of Ancient Matters) along with the Nihon shoki No founder

Zoroastrianism 2.6 mil 6th century BCE Avesta Zarathustra (or Zoraster)

Atheist 450-500 mil (both)

The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins); The End of Faith (Sam Harris);

God Is Not Great (Christopher Hitchens); Breaking the Spell (Daniel

Dennett); The Four Horsemen ( a book on the New Atheism by all four

men)

Early thinkers: Epicurus, drawing from Democritus and the Atomists, Anaxagoras.

Later thinkers: Matthias Knutzen, German critic of religion, 1674. Ludwig Feuerbach,

Father of Modern Atheism (1800s). New Atheism: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris,

Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett and Auyaan Hirsi Ali (until her conversion to

Christianity in 2023).

Agnostic See above 1869

The Ethics of Belief (W.K. Clifford, 19th cent); Agnosticism and

Christianity and Other Essays (T.H. Huxley, 19th cent); A Treatise of

The Sophists and Socrates (not of Plato’s Republic), ‘agnosticism’ first coined in 1869