[Buddha-l] Buddhism,the second largest religion in the world

[L.S. Cousins]

Richard,

>The only honest way to calculate, I think, is to admit from the outset that we
>have no idea how many Buddhists there are in China and North Korea.

But that is simply not true. We know that Buddhism is the most 
influential religious tradition throughout that area. Even the 
Chinese Communist government admits that. It just that we don't know 
for certain how to translate that into specific figures.

>  It is no
>more accurate to extrapolate from Singapore and Taiwan into PRC than to
>ignore PRC altogether.

An interesting statement. In the first case, we know that the result 
of the extrapolation will be of the right order of magnitude. In the 
second case, ignoring North Korea gives a figure, which is 
practically equivalent to zero. We know for sure that that is wrong. 
Even the North Korean government doesn't claim that.

>Perhaps what would be best would be to take the
>figures we know to be reasonably accurate and then calculate percentages on
>the basis of the world's population minus the population of the PRC.

Well, if you omit 90% of the world's Buddhists from your figures, . . .

How about disallowing figures from any country that doesn't include a 
specific question about religious affiliation in its Census ?

Lance Cousins