Problem with "all the Christians I know" argument

[rmcdra]

Given that the world contains 6,890,215,699 people Source as of Dec 29, 2010. Of these people only about a third or roughly 2,100,000,000 profess to be Christians Source as of 2005. In the United States as of 2010 about 76.5% of this countries population profess to be Christian Source as of 2001. When viewed from a larger perspective this means only about 11.3% of the US makes up the world wide Christian community Based on the the US population estimation of Dec 29, 2010. This 11.3% gets drastically smaller when we start focusing on individual states and drops to insignificant numbers when we start looking at cities and towns.

The conclusion: When someone makes a generalization about Christians based on "all the Christians they know" you have to wonder, how many people do they actually know who profess to be Christians to make such an assertion?  

[Trusty Shamrock]

i dunt think i ever heard so much about christians before i joined this guild gonk  

[rmcdra]

Well I hope that it's not a bad thing. Maybe this can be motivation to have some new topics razz . This is more of a response to a recent post by a certain guild member here.

Also I am the "token" Christian here. lol  

[Trusty Shamrock]

hahaha nuu it was just somthin i noticed xp thems are some impressive numbers you got there tho 3nodding
im half santa believer too! surprised  

[Renkon Root]

Azhren

i dunt think i ever heard so much about christians before i joined this guild gonk

Most religious message boards and discussion sites I have been to tend to "condemn" Christianity. I'm actually very surprised that you'd never heard so much about it before joining the guild! eek

(Over generalization warning.) It appears to be a very popular source of butt-hurt withing the neo-pagan community.

 

[blindfaith^_^]

Renkon Root

Most religious message boards and discussion sites I have been to tend to "condemn" Christianity. I'm actually very surprised that you'd never heard so much about it before joining the guild! eek

(Over generalization warning.) It appears to be a very popular source of butt-hurt withing the neo-pagan community.

Agreed, and it's kind of annoying too. I get that sometimes people need to vent and I get that most pagans were Christians and that didn't work so here we/they are. Sometimes I just want to cyber shake people and scream "Let it go already".

rmcdra: Thanks for the stats, I think numbers like that should help any reasonable person see that Christianity is too big to judge by those you've met.  

[Copper Hare]

i have to say that i have defended christians against pagans almost MORE than i have defended pagans against christians on forums like these.

fact of the matter is, hate comes from people, not any one religion.  

[rmcdra]

CabbageTheif

i have to say that i have defended christians against pagans almost MORE than i have defended pagans against christians on forums like these.

fact of the matter is, hate comes from people, not any one religion.

Of course biggrin  

[Renkon Root]

It should also be noted that this fallacy applies not only to pagan community but other "minorities" as well. I just got done trying to explain this on one of my gay and lesbian message boards. (That was before I remembered all your lovely links.) I might just go back and take-up the cause again armed with some states, but not right now... I think some of these message boards are playing jump rope with my blood-pressure and I just don't wanna deal with it tonight.

I'm really just venting. (And bumping a very good thread.)