Religious Affiliation of History's 100 Most Influential People

[I, Brian]

Here's an interesting article:
http://www.adherents.com/adh_influ.html

Mohammed at No.1, Jesus trailing behind Isaac Newton...certainly a controversial list.

[flowperson]

IMO lists are one of the great curses of the digital age.

They just give us more to argue about. But thank you for posting this Brian.

OK... I'll argue that Lao Tsu should be much farther up on the list rather than in the mid-seventies. He should certainly be higher up than most modern scientists since he delineated mytsical aspects of physics about 600 bce that are turning out to be more true and factual each year.

flow....

[Tao_Equus]

I'l go with the Flow on that one

[China Cat Sunflower]

How do they compile these things? Hitler was more influential than Plato?

It amazes me that Nixon was a Quaker. I guess he didn't eat enough oatmeal.

Chris

[path_of_one]

I'm with the Flow on this one too. I'm not very concerned about them ranking Muhammed higher than Jesus- I don't necessarily agree, but I really don't care and in terms of social influence, I'd say it's a tough one to call at this point and all three of the Western religions are so interrelated that it's hard to call one more influential than the other.

But I did take offense to listing Lao Tzu and Mencius so far down on the list. After all, more than one-quarter of the earth's population have their cultures, governments, families, and philosophies shaped by Taoism and Confucianism- and Mencius is (I think) almost as influential as Confucius himself. I think there is a clear bias in the list toward Western religions and inventors/politicians, with little attention paid to many influential people in Asia.

But I hate lists anyway... especially ranked ones.

I'd list in the top ten whatever anonymous person invented domestication. From that was birthed civilization and societies bigger than your extended family. Domestication really was THE event that transformed human society and thus the rest of culture, including philosophy, politics, and religion.

[China Cat Sunflower]

I'd list in the top ten whatever anonymous person invented domestication. From that was birthed civilization and societies bigger than your extended family. Domestication really was THE event that transformed human society and thus the rest of culture, including philosophy, politics, and religion.

Path, you said you're a cultural anthropologist, right? I was just curious if you'd read Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs, and Steel, and what you thought of his theses.

Chris