Comments on floatingsheep: Google's Geographies of Religion

Taking Jesus as an indicator for Christian places ...

2011-04-06T12:35:02.191-04:00

Taking Jesus as an indicator for Christian places biaises the results. In reality you measured Evangelicals. A more neutral indicator would be both God (capitalised) and Jesus.

Nice piece of info. tnx Swabi

Shreyas and neha dutt sharma: The blog does not sa...

2010-04-01T02:44:10.928-04:00

Shreyas and neha dutt sharma: The blog does not say that India is a Muslim country. It says that the United Arabic Emirates is a Muslim country, but a lot of Indians live there.

Rogozin: Christian Orthodoxy also has Jesus, so it should show up as blue dots on the map. That Russia has less dots than Western Europe does not say that Russia has the wrong god, but that Russia has less internet connections.

I see no sense why there is no Christian Orthodoxy...

2010-03-31T13:42:40.387-04:00

I see no sense why there is no Christian Orthodoxy, which is widely supported in Russia (more than 70% of Russians, many in Ukraine, Belorus, Armenia, Georgia etc. profess it). It looks like a sort of humiliation to me, as if someone is trying to say that we have a wrong God.

FELICIDADES POR ESTE MARAVILLOSO TRABAJO. SOIS UNO...

2010-03-29T10:54:44.200-04:00

FELICIDADES POR ESTE MARAVILLOSO TRABAJO.
SOIS UNOS CAMPONES.
ABRAZOS,
MIGUEL
MADRID ESPAÑA Y
TAMPA.FLORIDA.USA

In addition to David's comment, I'd observ...

2010-03-19T20:52:40.061-04:00

In addition to David's comment, I'd observe that a censored internet in China must give a different response than that in freer countries. Persecution of Muslims and Christians there is well known. Meanwhile, rapid expansion of churches there since the Cultural Revolution suggests that China may have a higher number of practicing Christians than nearly any other nation.

I'm not sure if this is possible, but it would...

2010-03-16T20:59:14.191-04:00

I'm not sure if this is possible, but it would be interesting if you could plot the map according to a time series... For example, increasing references to a certain religion could point towards proselytization or increasing religiosity. Or on your Presidential race map, you could track the campaigns of candidates across states as they occur.

Some of the information are unbelievable because w...

2010-03-14T23:46:04.643-04:00

Some of the information are unbelievable because we did not know them before.

Well..definitely you might want to remove your ref...

2010-03-10T13:02:13.924-05:00

Well..definitely you might want to remove your reference to the Iberian Peninsula as an exception to the European supremacy of "sex". As someone said, Jesus is a very common given name in Spain.

Oh, and the map of the sex-related placemarks is v...

2010-03-08T17:17:14.175-05:00

Oh, and the map of the sex-related placemarks is very pretty. A globally contributed-to work of beauty! Artists don't have work alone anymore.

I have a theory. If I were Christian, I'd pret...

2010-03-08T17:14:13.539-05:00

I have a theory. If I were Christian, I'd pretty much know what I needed to about Jesus. Same if I were Buddhist about Buddha or Islamic about Mohammed.

What I wouldn't know about and would need to look up are the OTHER religions. Therefore, perhaps the maps should be considered in this light, too.

If I didn't know much about sex, then I'd have to look that up, too! ;^)

And "Isabella", there are relatively few computers on continental Africa per capita. "1 Laptop Per Child" is a great organization that's working to turn that around (in Africa and anywhere there are poor, under-served kids) with rugged, low-cost laptops. You can help at http://laptop.org/en/participate/index.shtml .

In response to the last comment, by M.k.B., the ma...

2010-02-21T03:21:32.052-05:00

In response to the last comment, by M.k.B., the map cannot show places where the internet is not in use -- the Church may be modernizing, but I seriously doubt monks in monasteries are often online.

My own observation: Buddhism is very prevalent in Southeast Asia, and in Korea and Japan, but almost absent from China. Given that China has more internet users than the population of the United States, this shows how completely the Maoist regime stamped out religion. Or perhaps China's Great Firewall keeps their people from religious content on the web?

Another interesting note is how Buddhist South Korea appears -- it is traditionally Buddhist, but in recent years Christianity has gained about 50% of the population. I know this because I used to live there, and also the world's biggest church is in Seoul. I am wondering what causes this not to show up?

Something seems really off to me -- there's no...

2010-02-03T17:08:00.145-05:00

Something seems really off to me -- there's no 'Jesus' demarcation at all on Mount Athos in Greece -- an entire peninsula of Christian monasteries. According to the Europe map that whole area has no religious leaning.

Being an Indian, I must bring a few points to you ...

2010-02-02T00:08:22.566-05:00

Being an Indian, I must bring a few points to you notice.
1. India is not a Muslim country. The predominant religion here is "Hinduism" with other religions present only as minority.
2. Hinduism is prevalent in UK owing to a large immigrant population from India.
3. God in Hinduism is not referred to as "Hindu". "Hindu" is to Hinduism what "Muslim" is to "Islam" or "Christian" to "Christianity". There are various forms of God worshipped in Hinduism, such as Rama, Krishna, Shiva,Vishnu,Lakshmi,Saraswati,Surya and innumerable others. So there is a lot of diversity within Hinduism.
Interesting read anyway.

U got a fact wrong: India is secular, it is not of...

2010-02-01T02:20:25.079-05:00

U got a fact wrong: India is secular, it is not officially a Muslim country. Bsides, even if there was an official announcement, it would say that India was Hindu, 80.5% of India is Hindu,as
against 12% Muslims. Anyway, that was an easy mistake to make. Nice blog, on the whole.

It is interesting to note that angry Muslims burne...

2010-01-31T15:55:59.054-05:00

It is interesting to note that angry Muslims burned down Christian churches in Malaysia a few weeks ago because of Christians referring to God as Allah.

Would be interesting to know what the searcher was...

2010-01-31T10:04:36.130-05:00

Would be interesting to know what the searcher was looking for and why. If I were looking up the term 'Hindu', it would not be in a religious for me context, I'd be doing pure research, the same as me looking up 'Othello' or 'Voltaire'.

The maps have a lot of areas that are not shaded. What goes there. Say in Spain?

One thing that the map doesn't show (at least ...

2010-01-31T09:41:09.756-05:00

One thing that the map doesn't show (at least to me personally) the density of people within those areas to help show differences between crowded areas and less dense areas. How are you dealing with this issue?

Otherwise, I think this is a very interesting study. I'm very excited that something of the sort is being considered.

thanks for this! was not surprised with the findin...

2010-01-31T04:59:59.996-05:00

thanks for this! was not surprised with the findings though.. ^__^ with this, would you agree with me saying sex = liberation and religion=conservatism??? just a thought...

Fascinating article. Good Analysis. Thanks for t...

2010-01-31T00:23:36.356-05:00

Fascinating article. Good Analysis. Thanks for this. (Justin @ http://www.iswapyou.com/blog)

nice mapping analysis. mapping religion across the...

2010-01-30T20:47:46.483-05:00

nice mapping analysis. mapping religion across the world and compare it to oldest issue of human history, reproduction.

Don't worry, Some Guy, all kinds of new maps w...

2010-01-30T14:57:45.787-05:00

Don't worry, Some Guy, all kinds of new maps with more search terms will be coming soon, including searches for atheist, agnostic, Zoroastrianism and many more.

Interesting, but I'm not sure what it tells us...

2010-01-30T14:26:48.610-05:00

Interesting, but I'm not sure what it tells us that most folks couldn't have guessed pretty accurately (like you said, it "clearly mirrors many of the expected religious geographies of the offline world").

I think it'd be more intriguing to track references to religions that don't fall under those Big Four, including atheists and agnostics, and see how those compare to either sex or the Big Four, or both.

This is quite interesting.

2010-01-29T23:12:53.267-05:00

This is quite interesting.

Fascinating... thanks... something good to ponder....

2010-01-29T16:35:42.403-05:00

Fascinating...
thanks...
something good to ponder... d