Religion
The majority of residents of Hong Kong would claim no religious affiliation, professing a form of agnosticism or atheism. According to the U.S Department of State only 43 percent of the population practices some form of religion. Some figures put it higher, according to a Gallup poll, 64% of Hong Kong do not believe in any religion, and possibly 80% of Hong Kong claim no religion. According to another gallup poll, Hong Kong is the seventh least religious country in the world, with only 22% of the population considering religion an important part of their daily lives. In Hong Kong teaching evolution won out in curriculum dispute about whether to teach other explanations, and that creationism and intelligent design will form no part of the senior secondary biology curriculum
Hong Kong enjoys a high degree of religious freedom, a right enshrined and protected through its constitutional document, the Basic Law. A local religious scholar in contact with major denominations estimates there are approximately 1.5 million Buddhists and Taoists. Buddhists and Taoists share a common background of Confucian theory, Chinese folk religion (worship of folk deities and figures of Chinese mythology) and ancestor worship.
A sizable Christian community of around 560,000 local adherents (320,000 Protestants, 240,000 Roman Catholics) to 660,000 exists (if including over 100,000 Filipino Catholics), forming about 8% to 9% of the total population; it is roughly equally divided between Catholics and Protestants. Apart from the major religions, there are also a significant number of followers of other religions, including an estimated 90,000 Muslims; 22,000 members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who, in addition to numerous local chapels, are also served by the Hong Kong China Temple; 4,000 Jews; 5,307 Jehovah's Witnesses and a number of Hindus, Sikhs and Bahá'ís. There is also a small group of Jains in Hong Kong and their temple is situated in an apartment. Apart from offering religious instructions, many major religious bodies have established schools and provided social welfare facilities.
Read more about this topic: Demographics Of Hong Kong
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to children by the hands of storytellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the philosophers celebrate in vain. And nothing stands between the people and the fictions except the silly falsehood that the fictions are literal truths, and that there is nothing in religion but fiction.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Religion is a great force: the only real motive force in the world; but what you fellows don’t understand is that you must get at a man through his own religion and not through yours.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Magic is the envelopment and coercion of the objective world by the ego; it is a dynamic subjectivism. Religion is the coercion of the ego by gods and spirits who are objectively conceived beings in control of nature and man.”
—Richard Chase (b. 1914)