Talk:Buddhism in the United Kingdom
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This is currently weighted towards the FWBO who are somewhat controversial. We need to write about them but we need to mention the controversy. Secretlondon 10:02, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
To give estimates of numbers of Buddhists supplied by a Budhist propaganda organization without the far smaller figures from the census is biased. Peter jackson (talk) 12:05, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
The additional info on the 700,000+ claim makes it even less likely. It states that these are mostly British orientals. The 2001 census found 247,403 ethnic Chinese & 230,615 of all races other than white, black, (South) Asian & Chinese (including mixtures of these). Not all of these were British.
The religious breakdown of the ethnic Chinese population was roughly as follows (I can't give a citation right now; it was on the website but was later space-saved; I don't know whether I can find printed sources right now):
- none 52% (may include no answer; I'll have to check this)
- Christian 21%
- Buddhist 16.14%
- ...
As an aside, the fact that there are more Christians than Buddhists lends some credence to the otherwise rather suspicious claims that there are 100,000,000 Christians in China.
The census form had the following boxes to tick in England & Wales (different in Scotland & NIreland):
- none
- Christian
- Buddhist
- Hindu
- Jewish
- Muslim
- Sikh
- other please specify
Peter jackson (talk) 10:39, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Some figures from Census 2001: National Report for England and Wales, part 2, Office for National Statistics, London, TSO, 2004, page 33
- Chinese (ethnic) 226,948:
- Christian 48,936
- Buddhist 34,304
- Muslim 752
- Hindu 155
- Jewish 105
- Sikh 79
- other 1,104
- none 119,382
- not stated 22,131
- other (than white, black, Asian, Chinese & mixed) 219,754
- Christian 72,480
- Muslim 56,429
- Buddhist 34,036
- Hindu 2,910
- Jewish 2,297
- Sikh 2,244
- other 1,969
- none 30,950
- not stated 16,439
- other (than Indian, Pakistani & Bangladeshi) Asian 241,274
- Muslim 90,013
- Hindu 63,560
- Christian 32,373
- Sikh 15,009
- Buddhist 11,690
- Jewish 731
- other 2,234
- none 8,290
- not stated 16,374
Now would anyone like to try to explain how these people might arrive at a total of nearly 5 times the census figure of 152,000, even including semi-Buddhists, ex-Buddhists & ex-semi-Buddhists? (I'll alert the people you mentioned, Angelo.) Peter jackson (talk) 10:17, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Don't delete useful information. If you think you can improve the format go ahead, but this tells people a lot of actual facts about the subject instead of propaganda. Peter jackson (talk) 17:27, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
OK, that's fine, Peter! But could you make it better? Because your list looks awful (a little bit, sorry, please forgive me!) and I think the section of History must be top priority! Thanks for your contributions!
Angelo De La Paz (talk) 17:49, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Do you have any specific criticism or suggestions as regards the format? At the moment you're being rather vague, so I don't know what you want or object to.
I don't agree that the history section should go at the top just now, tho' that might well be the proper place for it in a "final" state of the article. At present the lead para is almost entirely about statistics, so the article should follow its example. Peter jackson (talk) 09:46, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
- I think Western figures about religious affiliation are all Christian-oriented and heavily underestimate other religions. Regarding the Chinese population in UK: I think the statement that Christians are more than Buddhists is Christo-evangelical USA-style propaganda. Perhaps Buddhists in UK are far more than 100-150 thousand, and most of them are Chinese. --Esimal (talk) 22:19, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
-
- These figures are taken from the census, in which people were asked their religion & ethnic group. About 150,000 put down Buddhist & about 174,000 other (ie than Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh). Allowing for a reasonable number of not stated, that still cannot give anything like the 740,000 claimed by the VF. Are you accusing the census office of fakingg the results? Why would they want to do that? This is a secular society, not an evangelical one like a lot of the USA. Conspiracy theories generally have no place in Wikipedia. Peter jackson (talk) 10:43, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
I've just checked what the VF actually says. It doesn't say half the stuff attributed to it in the article, so I've deleted that. I suggest in fact it should be deleted totally, as it seems to be totally at variance with verifiable facts in reliable sources. Peter jackson (talk) 11:08, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Instead, I suggest something along the following lines:
"Many people of Far Eastern background follow a combination of religions including Buddhism. Some of these may have put themselves down as Buddhist in the census; others may be included in the total of about 174,000 for "other religions". Peter jackson (talk) 11:08, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
