Re: the story that Kathryn linked to about there being more Muslims and Catholics, a couple of things:

  • Since when did Islam become a “denomination”? For want of a better word, that’s how you could describe the Sunni and Shia, and the Sunni and Catholics appear to be about equal in number. There are still a lot more Christians than Muslims.
  • Razib notes that the number of Catholics probably didn’t surpass the total number of Muslims until the 18th century, so it doesn’t give me a lot of confidence in the Vatican’s statistical yearbook if its compiler says this development is happening “For the first time in history.”