When And Where World Religions Began

Here is a bit of history for you. It's a chart of world religions. I find this helpful because it shows that they were all created over time, and implied in this is that they were created by men.

This chart is interesting because obviously a lot of religions and religions-turned-myth are not on here. Also interesting is the fact that most of these are still being practiced. Though this chart doesn't show it, it seems that since the dawn of man, there has always been a yearning to understand the mysterious, and to name and personify it in some way by creating gods and stories.

And yet, most scientists and great thinkers, the great minds, are and have been atheists, agnostics or deists.



When and Where World Religions Began























































































4000–2500 BCEHinduismSouth Asia
1300–1200 BCEJudaismWest Asia
500–400 BCEBuddhismSouth Asia
ConfucianismChina
ZoroastrianismWest Asia
JainismSouth Asia
400–221 BCETaoismChina
1st century CEChristianityWest Asia, Europe
3rd century CEManichaeismWest Asia
6th century CEShintoJapan
7th century CEIslamWest Asia
11th centuryOrthodoxyWest Asia
15th–16th centurySikhismSouth Asia
16th centuryProtestantismEurope
19th centuryLatter-day SaintsNorth America
Babi and Baha’iWest Asia
19th–20th centuryPentecostalismNorth America

This chart is on page 1555 of The Encyclopedia of World History, volume IV.

4 comments:

  1. I'd love to see something like this with all the sects and splinter groups and a little more detail.

    I'm not sure there's enough documentation to accurately build something that massive but it would be damned interesting.

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  2. I agree FLance. I really hope to add a lot more detail to this as I gather more information. But this was just an appetizer, so to speak.

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  3. The date for Islam isn't strictly true because although that's when the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was alive and when God revealed the Quran, Muslims actually believe "Islam" essentially meaning submission to the One God, has been around since the dawn of time.

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  4. Thanks for commenting, Umhana, that's good to know.
    Of course, though, I don't believe in any god, so I stand by the relative date of islam's creation to be the 7th century CE.

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