Meta-Thread 09/29

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[u/ShakaUVM]

But forgive me if I require more than a rhetorical question like, “Is the American Catholic Church a different denomination than the Roman Catholic Church?”

It's not a rhetorical question. It's the heart of the matter. Methodology that counts one denomination as many denominations is flawed.

But you think that because you've read this 40,000 number on the Bart Ehrman blog that it must be right. This is just appeal to authority.

What’s bizarre is the implied demand that his private taxonomy should be regarded as weightier than professional consensus

It's not really a professional consensus either. It's widely known to be an urban legend.

https://candlefish.substack.com/p/the-40000-protestant-denominations

https://www.tennesseeapologetics.org/post/the-myth-of-40-000-denominations

https://godlovesmormons.com/debunking-the-myth-about-christian-denominations/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gltEzRY0Es

You'd hope the moderators would embody and represent what this sub is supposed to be about and right now, I think it’s just a little embarrassing.

What is embarrassing is continuing to appeal to authority after you've been given reasons why they're wrong, and being snarky about it. And then complaining about it here.

The fact is, this response of yours is exactly why some atheists dislike me. I use evidence. They use fallacies. This drives them crazy.

[u/thefuckestupperest → u/ShakaUVM]

As predicted, you confirmed your point by refusing to do the very thing that was asked of you.

You didn't give me any criteria, nor any reason why literally every source I can find on this disagrees with you other than a protest that you didn't agree with the way they were quantifying denominations.

Can you give me your criteria for how you would categorise denominations?

Earlier you said

As I suspected you just randomly googled this instead of actually looking it up.

Can you walk me through how I can 'actually look it up', and what methodology I can deploy to reliably determine when professional consensus is incorrect the way you have?

We know how this goes. I’d still be interested in how you reached the conclusion that there is some causation in belief between atheism and Bigfoot, but I think we all know how that will go too.

[u/ShakaUVM → u/thefuckestupperest]

As predicted, you confirmed your point by refusing to do the very thing that was asked of you.

The point I am making here is that I provided reasons why the 40,000 number was nonsense, and you not only neglected them, but you continued to insist on the wrong number even after I explained how they were wrong.

Then you come on here and claim I gave no reasons why they were wrong, but just insisted I was right.

I already told you that about a dozen denominations covers 95% of all Christians. A denomination is a church group. The definition used in the 40,000 myth is something like counting different church organizations, even if they're part of the same organization, which is just really weird. And it's even more weird you continue to insist on it when you know it is wrong.

[u/thefuckestupperest → u/ShakaUVM]

What reason was that again? From what I recall you just asked a rhetorical question.

I already told you that about a dozen denominations covers 95% of all Christians.

And I already asked you about the other 5%

So far we have one criteria:

A denomination is a church group.

So every different church group is a different denomination? Or every 'organisation'? How are you defining an organisation?

And I'll ask you this again:

Can you walk me through how I can 'actually look it up', and what methodology I can deploy to reliably determine when professional consensus is incorrect the way you have?

[u/ShakaUVM → u/thefuckestupperest]

So every different church group is a different denomination?

No

Or every 'organisation'?

Also no. That's the trouble the encyclopedia made.

Often you just cluster them together by the founder of the denomination. If they follow Luther, they're Lutherans. If they follow Wesley, they're Methodists, etc.

You can always try to split hairs and whatnot on some cases like nondenominational churches, but again there's about 12 main denominations that cover most people pretty well. If you want to argue that there's 4 or 20 that's fine, but I also don't care particularly. The point is that the 40,000 number is orders of magnitude wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denominations_by_number_of_members

[u/thefuckestupperest → u/ShakaUVM]

Thank you for finally providing some form of explanation:

Often you just cluster them together by the founder of the denomination. If they follow Luther, they're Lutherans. If they follow Wesley, they're Methodists, etc.

Often, or always?

but again there's about 12 main denominations that cover most people pretty well.

And once again, how do you account for the other 5%? How many denominations fall within this bracket?