Whatsisface
Well-known member
You tube has no checks and balances like Wiki, so taking that into account, do you trust some random poster on YouTube as a reliable source?
Daniel Dennett has passed
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Don’t know where you’re getting your numbers from, but they are grossly inflated. Evangelicals, which this site is a representation of, have very strict dogmas on what a true believer is, one of them being exactly what LDB believes about only being drawn by god. It’s not as simple as just identifying as Christian. In 2011 that elite cult of the saved was only 7% of the population according to 4 sources, Dr. Christian Smith - professor of Sociology at Notre Dame, David Olsen - The American Church Research Project, The Barna Group - Christian pollsters, Christine Walker - Religious Journalist. That’s less than 8M. What’s worse, as The Great Evangelical Recession, by John Dickerson, points out is that in 2011 over 60% of those believers were in the dying baby boomer generation and by 2040 the numbers will half again.
Looks like I’m not alone in my navigation of reality.
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stiggy wiggy
Well-known member
Christianity in the United States - Wikipedia
Where we find:
" Estimates from 2021 suggest that of the entire U.S. population (332 million) about 63% is Christian (210 million)."
So you didn't answer how you handle the pizza delivery guy. Do you have an "Atheist's Yellow Pages?" Do they advertise their listings as "Cult Free" for paranoiacs like you?
Because those numbers are crap. Those who culturally identify as Christian don’t know what the belief is even supposed to entail. The pizza boy is smoking dope, fornicates, and embraces his gay friends with acceptance and love for exactly what they are. Oh he’s heard about a guy named Jesus he thinks might be cool, so he may identify. Even I think the uneducated cultural identity of Christ sounds like a cool guy. But the pizza boy has never been to church, let alone read even a verse of the Bible. Let me repeat the real numbers of the saved by the 4 credible sources I gave you. Less than 8M - and dropping like a fat kid on a teeter-totter. And your cult... the Restorationists/Restitutionists... whatever...... well, your not even an intersection with a traffic light on the map.Christianity in the United States - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Where we find:
" Estimates from 2021 suggest that of the entire U.S. population (332 million) about 63% is Christian (210 million)."
So you didn't answer how you handle the pizza delivery guy. Do you have an "Atheist's Yellow Pages?" Do they advertise their listings as "Cult Free" for paranoiacs like you?
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stiggy wiggy
Well-known member
So what is the actual percentage if not 63%? (Be sure to show your work.) Let's say it's only 50%. There's still an even chance that the pizza delivery guy on your front porch is a "batshit crazy cult member." How do you overcome your paranoid fear and open your front door? It's gotta be tough being you in America. Frozen with fear, you can't even risk going to this mall you keep babbling about, in order to purchase a plastic bubble in which you can safely dwell, isolated from the dangers of potential David Koreshes.
Get the book The Great Evangelical Recession. I quoted the studies. Less than 8% depending on the study.
No Stiggy... not a chance. Here’s another good stat for you from those same studies (and some others) more in tune with the ground floor reality. Of the 22M left, it is estimated that 70% of the the teens that are accounted for in those numbers will leave the fold. So you’re getting burned at both ends (60% of that total number are dying boomers). So even if the kid that delivers my pizza identifies as a Christian now, well, as your colleagues like to point out, they aren’t really Christians either, because real Christians don’t ever leave.
So the pizza boy still gets a big tip from me.
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stiggy wiggy
Well-known member
Does "ground floor reality" get navigated as easily as 2nd floor reality?
..... blah, blah, Let's cut to the chase. Since you seem to be posing as an expert religion statistician, YOU tell me what the percentage chance is that the pizza delivery guy is a "batshit crazy cult member," and how you overcome your paranoia enough to open the front door.
My son worked the pizza biz for awhile... and he liked talking to the delivery guys the best as a result of their transient nature and other work experiences. I’m more likely to have one of your kids knock on my door and bite me than meet a “true” Evangelical Christian pizza delivery boy.
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stiggy wiggy
Well-known member
So tell me, Mr. Religion Statistician, what is the percentage of pizza delivery guys that are Christians, and according to you mentally insane cult members. 63%? 50%? 40%? Do you still risk your life and open the door for them? How bad do you like pizza?
O.K. you want to spew vapid rhetoric and copy/paste useless wiki counts that don’t even define Christianity accurately, but want me to do real math. Fortunately, I can.
Take 22M as the base for the church in 2013 (I’ll spot you the 10 year reduction from then till now - and it’s huge). 17% of that are guys/gals between 18-29. Let’s assume those are the potential Christian pizza delivery population.... so you get 3.75M. Now 70% of those are not true Christians because they will leave the church, and we all know that anybody that leaves the church was NEVER a real Christian to begin with. So we are left with 1.13M potential Christian pizza guys/gals. The number of 18-29 year olds in the US is about 35M. So potential Christian pizza guys/gals are only 3.3% of the whole market of competitors for such a job. There are 28K pizza deliver jobs in the US. So that makes the currently guys/gals that declare Christianity that might hold these jobs at about 924 kids in the entire US. So with 35M in the age group, I have a .00264 chance of having a real Christian pizza guy/gal deliver my pizza.
I still pick up my pizzas anyway even though I’m more statistically prone to getting in an accident on the way than I am exposed to having a Christian deliver it.
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stiggy wiggy
Well-known member
Hold it right there. We're not talking about Christianity. Christianity does not deliver pizzas. Christians and non-Christians do. I presented stats that you don't like which indicate that 63% of Americans CONSIDER themselves to be Christians, i.e. believers in Christ's resurrection. Now in spite of the fake stats you pulled out of your butt regarding the beliefs of pizza delivery guys, there is no reason to assume any greater difference in pizza delivery guys versus plumbers and bus drivers, so when you order a pizza, there is a 63% chance you'll get what you THINK is a mentally disturbed cult member at your doorstep.
And I've asked you before about barbers, and never got a response. Do you have any stats on the number of Christians who are barbers? How can you let a guy with scissors stand behind you while your arms are tucked beneath a big white sheet, believing that there is a 63% chance that the guy is a deranged cult member?
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Lastdaysbeliever
Well-known member
I already answered. You didn't. Do you believe wiki is always a reliable source?
Gus Bovona
Well-known member
I see that it's not clear at all what is dear from what I wrote. What is dear is the critical thinking and skepticism that led Hitchens and other atheists to be atheists. If his emotions overtook him on his deathbed and he converted, he'd be rejecting that critical thinking and skepticism that he had held dear throughout his life.
LoL. Those who “consider” themselves Christians? You’re adorable. The vast majorly of those, as I put in my original reply to you, don’t even know what the criteria for being a real Christian is - and that includes actually believing in the reanimation of flesh. I don’t think they are any more bat-shit-crazy than a guy who thinks he can fix his own car just because he drives one every day but finds out he can’t when the parts are strewn across his driveway. They are just clueless. We can talk down the majority of them into a harmless corner of modern vapid Christianity ala C.S. Lewis claptrap that thinks you live, die, and are simply assigned heaven or hell immediately upon death based on the three Easter services they attended in the last 30 years. In between the living and dying they don’t know crap about Christianity other than that.
It’s the ones who know what Christianity is and believe it anyway that are bat-shit-crazy culties of the percentages I outlined. Those are the ones to focus on and have the backing of the research... by bat-shit-crazy christians no less, on those actual numbers. So get serious, or get off.
So you don’t understand how to actually calculate probabilities and statistics then. Please buy a casino... I’ll attend daily.
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Gus Bovona
Well-known member
positive atheist
Well-known member
I've never understood why xtians extol this deathbed conversion nonsense as if it were some sort of triumph of xtianity. Isn't it essentially admitting that xtianity is so unbelievable people will only agree with it when they are in a total panic and moments from death? What is so great about that?
It would be like if I had this conversation:
ME: I am such and excellent atheist yesterday I got 5 xtians to agree "I am becoming an atheist"
OTHER PERSON: That is incredible how did you do it?
ME: I held a gun to their head and told them "Say "I am becoming an atheist" or I'll shoot you."
The fact that when people are in panic mode or in a highly emotional state, or their brain is shutting down, they will say, or believe, or try anything, is hardly proof of anything.
It would be like if I had this conversation:
ME: I am such and excellent atheist yesterday I got 5 xtians to agree "I am becoming an atheist"
OTHER PERSON: That is incredible how did you do it?
ME: I held a gun to their head and told them "Say "I am becoming an atheist" or I'll shoot you."
The fact that when people are in panic mode or in a highly emotional state, or their brain is shutting down, they will say, or believe, or try anything, is hardly proof of anything.
Lastdaysbeliever
Well-known member
I already said I liked wiki but don't consider it always a reliable resource. The whole discussion, I think, is because I linked to a YouTube video and a reply is to a wiki article, told to "be careful". And no, I don't consider youtube to always be reliable, given the topic and my knowledge of it nit hey, those shorts...sorry...all this over some claimed last words of famous atheists that seems to have triggered some atheists over the potentiality confirmed atheists had doubts at death about their rejection of God...I get that.
Gus Bovona
Well-known member
There is an important difference between YouTube and Wikipedia. Anyone can put out a Youtube and say pretty much anything (within YouTube's general guidelines). But a Wikipedia article can be challenged and changed through a group process. There is are checks and balances within a Wikipedia article that is absent for a single YouTube video (although you can probably find another YouTube video saying the exact opposite thing for any given YouTube video).
The bargaining phase of grief can resurface for a bit in the dying process.
Whatsisface
Well-known member
The reason I replied to you was because the video was biased towards implying deathbed conversions and in Humes case that there is an afterlife.
About Hume it says "He cried out loud on his deathbed, he cried, "I am in flames", it is said his desperation was a horrible scene"
Here is a letter from the doctor that attended towards and at his death.
Found here.
Do you know what the source of the "I am in flames" quote is? It looks very much like it never happened.
This why I said to be careful of deathbed quotes.