Most populous countries in the world

Here is a little exercise (DO NOT GOOLGE or REFER ANYWHERE!!!): Name the top 5 most populous countries in the world.

I have the answer below and DO NOT LOOK AT IT BEFORE YOU HAVE THE 5 COUNTRIES IN MIND

But just to fill up the space, heres something for timepass,

Refering to the debate Reza Aslan vs Sam Harris:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5og-hyD3A7A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAN6IFNPkbI&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXm8-Fq1H40&feature=related

Reza quotes: “Statements like there are millions of Muslims who, you know, have this sort of ‘death cult’ are profoundly inaccurate… (Osama’s) justifications for the terrorist acts are not religious justifications …its because of Palestine, its because of troops in Saudi Arabia, its because of now whats going on in Iraq…they are social grievances, they are political grievances, they are economic grievances unlike everybody on earth they are framed in the language of religion…”

Harris quotes: “…for instance in the End of Faith I cite these polls done in 9 Muslim countries, actually not the most radicalized, radicalized countries would not let the polling be done, but even in Turkey, the Muslim success story on many fronts, the level of support for suicide bombing against non-combatants in defense of the faith was shocking! …77% people in Lebanon say that it is justified…”

For fun, a comedy from Sam Harris:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93Fq_FxrVng

OK heres the answer (as per Wikipedia :) and all subsequent reference to data are all from wiki) in descending order (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population):

China

India

USA

Indonesia

Brazil

I don’t know how many of you have guessed Indonesia (please do comment if possible); I personally did not and even had asked 9 of my friends in person and none of them ever thought of Indonesia (only one came close saying ‘maybe some country in south east asia’)…

Now heres why I had quotes from the debate Reza vs Harris – As Reza brings out, I also personally believe that the “extremist” ideologies that have emanated are profoundly a consequence of geo-political and economic factors labeled in the name of theology or religion. Indonesia is a Muslim majority country with the most populous Muslim population of 210 million which is about 88% of the total population in Indonesia and which is almost 30 and 40% more than the second and third placed muslim population countries of Pakistan and India respectively.

Lebanon, a country in Harris’s survey, is 58th most populous Muslim population with 2 million. So I do not know if the survey was done in the democratic country of Indonesia, I apologize for not looking into Harris’ book, but I am trying to get a hand to it and might post my comments on it in my next post…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_by_country

But I definitely feel, right from Constantine to Osama, the religion is used as a mask to deal with the geo-political or socio-political issues.

“Anything, food, water, sex, religion or even thoughts when consumed more than what is needed is harmful…not just for you”