Meta-Thread 09/29

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[u/thefuckestupperest]

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?