Religious Conversions

I agree with your comment. Sorry I didn't respond to it. The apples and oranges analogy is a good one. I know that. I mean the studies may be subjective not the conversions themselves. The numbers I guess. Holy crap, I did didn't I?!?! Well im glad you came along because I posted pretty much the same things back thread and everyone kept saying it wasn't evidence. Im Glad you showed up here. I can't catch a break. Holy crap again, I did didn't I?!?! Thanks actually tho, for giving me a little credit here. It's much more than I anticipated. Yep. I agree. According to? I think tho, we can have an idea don't you? If we do actualy study all of the available sources , articles, witnesses etc etc can't we make/form an educated guess?Is there no way to make an informed opinion? Can you agree that atleast there is an argument to be made? I see that. I made an error in saying (as Straggler keeps pointing out) quite "belligerently" that more muslims were converting to Christinanity than islam.What else is there? We can't test every conversion. From what i've read and seen and heard it's my opinion that it's true. Of course it might not be but I seriously doubt it.Everything else I agree with in your comment. I should have gave it a plus which I just did. Well, it's not that mysterious. It's not like we are discussing abiogenesis and assuming so so much ya know? Yeah I hear ya. That big bang is sure assuming a lot Edited by Chuck77, : No reason given.

Duly noted. Sure. I tend to give more credence to the missionarys who are in the field than islamic websites who are not doing any mission work.Instead the tons of muslims that are being born into the muslim familys that accounts for some of the growth but not conversions. Thanks. Mr. Straggler sir, I have learned to not ever ever ever be belligerant with you in the least unless im absolutly positive that I can back up my statments with absolute 100% evidence that not even you could not deny.How's that? Sure, let's pop them. I good with that. There is much more to christianity than the numbers, of course.After all, Jesus said few be there that find it. I just happen to think few more muslims are converting to christianity than the other way around.It's just my educated opinion tho. No such evidence to make the claim valid in the eyes of the unbiased tho.Edited by Chuck77, : No reason given.

I'm sure there are plenty of other threads for you to be wrong about abiogenesis and the Big Bang on. Let's stick to the religious conversions, eh? How would you go about studying all of them? Apart from the time factor, wouldn't the sources written in Arabic pose something of a challenge? And the witnesses who live thousands of miles away, don't speak our language, and don't have internet access?If, on the other hand, we limit ourselves to the data that is easily available to us, then it is inevitably going to be a biased sample.Then of course there's the problem of weeding out the people who are just plain making stuff up, as I have shown is the case for at least one of your sources. Now, this task seems to present us with a problem. Instead of relying on an actual census of converts, you suggest that we should make an educated guess from other sources. But this is only any good if the sources are reasonably reliable. But how can we test their reliability without comparing their claims to some sort of census?

Hi Chuck,Just to keep this as brief as possible:The problem is that an "educated guess" you could make based solely on a collection of personal anecdotes (second or third-hand) from your immediate acquaintances and what you find on the web will quite simply have an error margin far too large to draw a conclusion from.The closest feasible data we're likely to ever see is the basic census data of people self-reporting their religious convictions, not conversions, and measuring the changing rates over time. You might be able to pull off some clever math to correct for birth- and death rates and get a little closer to a real conversion number (I'm too lazy/busy and insufficiently curious to try), but that's about it.What you're basically saying, Chuck, is this:"I know of xxx Muslim to Cristian conversions, from what I've heard about through my circle of acquaintances and some brief research on the web of Christian sources. I didn't look for Muslim to Christian conversions, but I think they must be lower."This means several things:You "know of" several Muslim to Christian conversions...but some of those could be duplicate or even triplicate reporting of the same conversion reaching you through multiple paths (twice from two different websites, once from your pastor in a sermon, perhaps again from a fellow parishioner, and they could all be referring to the same individual yet be counted by you as four conversions).You'll only "know of" conversions that have immediate access to someone who speaks English and has access to communication. You'll never "know of" the vast, vast majority of conversions (in any direction, to and from any faith) in Saudi Arabia, or Iraq, or Iran, or Egypt, or Somalia, or Niger, or dozens of other countries simply because 1) very few people speak English or know someone who speaks English, and 2) very few people have access to methods of communication that would allow you to ever hear about it regardless of the language.You didn't look for Christian to Muslim conversions to the same degree that you searched for the reverse, because you already thought you knew the answer before doing any looking. You sought information that would confirm what you already believed, you didn't look for information that would tell you if you were wrong.The number of Muslim to Christian conversions you've given us, then, is a highly suspect number of well known statistical insignificance. It's just like only counting the orange trees in my city and predicting that there are more oranges than apples in the entire world. The methodology you used to gather your information simply cannot ever provide useful evidence to suggest even an "educated guess" about anything at all, ever. This is why sociologists and anthropologists don't do their research on the web, unless they're just looking up a book online. A question is mysterious if we genuinely don't know the answer, full stop. We genuinely don't know how many conversions in each direction happen yearly. We don't even know how to find the answer with any degree of certainty. It's a mysterious question.We can talk about abiogenesis or cosmology in another thread. I'd be happy to discuss either with you, in fact - despite your tendency to use light sarcasm (something I'm hardly innocent of myself), debating with you feels more productive and rewarding than with some others I've spoken to regarding similar subjects.

I know this has been asked repeatedly, but will venture to ask again.Even if this premise were true(and has been pointed out you have no evidence for, just anecdotes), what does it mean?Does this somehow make your flavour of Christianity(as you seem to feel Catholics, and I assume other "christian" groups you do not agree with, are not Christians) is some how more "true".ABEI see you used the phrase "a few" here. Seems you are trying to back pedal a little form your earlier statements. So if even one more Moslem converts to Christianity then the reverse, does Christianity "win"?Edited by Theodoric, : Final thought

The OP links the other thread, Message 411 is where this whole thing started:

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Chuck writes:

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Wonderful. You can start by picking up a Bible (some subjective evidence for god(s) and test it out.
Also there are many books written by wonderful christians that know this truth. Pick a few up. Prayer is good too. Some books will help you pray in a way that is like you were talking to your parents. It's easy. Church too, that's a good place for subjective evidence. Lot's of people to validate this truth.

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You have your hands full for the weekend. SONday find a good morning service and let me know what the Pastor talked about.

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Huntard writes:

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Muslim down the street writes:
Wonderful. You can start by picking up a Qu'ran (some subjective evidence for god(s) and test it out.

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Also there are many books written by wonderful Muslims that know this truth. Pick a few up. Prayer is good too. Some books will help you pray in a way that is like you were talking to your parents. It's easy. Mosque too, that's a good place for subjective evidence. Lot's of people to validate this truth.

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You have your hands full for the weekend. SOMEday find a good morning service and let me know what the Imam talked about.

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Huntard writes:

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Now, which one to choose, and why?

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The answer, apparently, is to choose the one that has more people converting to it from the other side.

Ultimately, enforced conversion comes to nought - or worse. Today's Islam is emulating medevial European Christianity. Conversion is only legitimate when it occurs by example only.Christian minister faces execution in Iran
Pastor won't renounce faith, Sharia law says all converts must die:http://live.radioamerica.org/loudwater/player.pl?upload=1...