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Author Topic:   Religious Conversions
Granny Magda
Member
Posts: 2462
From: UK
Joined: 11-12-2007
Member Rating: 4.0


(4)
Message 45 of 97 (633923)
09-17-2011 5:10 AM
Reply to: Message 39 by Chuck77
09-17-2011 1:14 AM


Re: Religious Conversions
Hi Chuck,
I sense that you are getting somewhat frustrated here by the reaction to what you have posted. Please try to understand that when people react this way it is not simply because they are making knee-reactions, it's not personal. It's not because of some anti-Christian bias; it's because people think that you are making a flawed argument on the basis of a tiny amount of invalid evidence.
Well, for starters I posted my sources a bunch of times.
What you have posted so far on this thread;
Message 4 A personal testimony from a single Muslim-to-Christian convert.
This is only one man's testimony, thus it is invalid as evidence in favour of your claim that Muslim-to-Christian conversion is more widespread than the reverse.
Message 11 *You offer to visit Straggler with a Muslim-to-Christian convert. Even if you did this of course, it would be invlaid as evidence that Muslim-to-Christian conversion is more widespread than the reverse, since again, it's only one person. It does nothing to demonstrate the wider trend.
*You quote Joel Rosenburg. Now this article might be worth considering but for two unfortunate facts. Firstly, it offers no evidence. All it gives us is Rosenburg's contention that more Muslims convert to Christianity than vice-versa. It is unaccompanied by actual evidence. You cannot expect us to believe something just because someone says it is true. We didn't accept it just because you said it, so there's no reason to accept it just because someone else says it. Secondly, the article makes a number of false claims, as Dr Adequate has pointed out. That undermines its trustworthiness and makes it valueless as evidence for anything.
*You offer us a link - svm news117 - when I click that link, I get an empty blog page. No content. When I try to search the blog for the articles you cite, I get no results.
Message 16 You link to two wiki pages, but neither seems to support your contention.
Er... that's it. That's everything you've posted as evidence.
Can you not see why people are unsatisfied with this? You haven't given us a shred of valid and believable evidence to back up your claim, only opinion and anecdote.
No one as of yet has posted contrary.
This is probably for two reasons;
1) The other participants in this thread do not have any fixed opinion on how many Muslims convert to Christianity or vice-versa, since the evidence that might back up such a belief does not appear to be available.
2) The other participants are not interested in arguing that more Christians covert to Islam than the reverse, because they understand that at its heart, your argument is merely an Appeal to Popularity, which, as has been mentioned many times, is a logical fallacy.
Here is the only really relevant part of your post;
Chuck77 writes:
The actually numbers can't be known.
Right! You don't have the numbers, so you should not be making the claim.
There is nothing else to say.
Mutate and Survive
Edited by Granny Magda, : No reason given.
Edited by Granny Magda, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 39 by Chuck77, posted 09-17-2011 1:14 AM Chuck77 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 46 by Chuck77, posted 09-17-2011 5:46 AM Granny Magda has replied

  
Granny Magda
Member
Posts: 2462
From: UK
Joined: 11-12-2007
Member Rating: 4.0


(5)
Message 48 of 97 (633930)
09-17-2011 7:48 AM
Reply to: Message 46 by Chuck77
09-17-2011 5:46 AM


Re: Religious Conversions
Hi Chuck,
Once again, you seem to be getting very agitated over what I consider to have been a perfectly reasonable and polite post. Please, for the sake of conversation, reign it in a little.
Still, that aside, let's look at what you've provided.
From Message 4; A single testimonial from a Muslim-to-Christian convert. This is wholly invalid as evidence that Muslim-to-Christian converts outnumber Christian-to-Muslim converts.
And this is the actualy site I got it from if you would have bothered to click the link it will take you to the home page at the bottom, take a look:
http://www.answering-islam.org/Testimonies/index.html
I did click the link. I read some (admittedly not all) of the article. It is not up to me to follow all the links that might appear on the pages you link to. If I were to attempt to follow every link that led to another link, I would soon be trying to read the entire internet. I can't do that, I'm not the Flash. If you think that a particular page contains evidence that is important to your case, present it, link to it and explain why you think it is important. That is how debate works. It is not up to others to go looking for evidence that supports your position, that's your job.
Still, let's take a look. It appears to be a list of links, each leading to another testimony about how awesome it is to be a Christian convert from Islam. Once again, these testimonies are irrelevant to the question of whether there are more Muslim-to-Christian converts or otherwise. If any of them contain data on this question (and I'm certainly not going to go ploughing through them all), please present it. Otherwise, it's just a bunch of testimonies. These are invalid as evidence for your claim. The plural of anecdote is not data.
Also, yeah I screwed that link up. Here is the correct one. Thanks.
Cool. Let's take a look...
Oh dear. It appears to be a page full of uncorroborated claims. It claims over and over again that there are millions of converts, but it offers no evidence for this, no citations, no statistics. It lauds the number of Christian converts from Islam, but provides no umbers at all for the Muslim converts from Christianity, so no comparison can be made. Further, the page contains claims that have been clearly demonstrated to be false, so it seems reasonable not to trust it as a source.
I do not regard this page to be evidence in favour of your claim.
And all this from Message 11:
Ah, I see. I thought that all of those pages were part of the Salem Voice blog, whereas they are actually from disparate sources across the net. If you want people to look at your links, it's just good form to y'know, link to them. Remember, it's your responsibility in a debate to provide evidence for your own position. it's not my job to do your homework for you.
But okay, let's look at them;
Millions of Muslims Converting to Christianity
This page contains much the same material as the Salem Voice link. Once again, it consists solely of claims and anecdote, none of it provides us with checkable data. This is not valid evidence for your claim.
Muslims turn to Christ" (article of the American Daily)
This is just a blog post. It amounts to no more than one person's opinion. Further, it appears to simply be recycling the claims from the previous links. This is by no means valid evidence for your claim. It really isn't evidence for anything.
"Persecution Harder Among Muslims Who Convert to Christianity, But Saved Souls Bring Great Joy to Believers" (news story of Assist News Service)
This is simply a report on the comments of Pastor Ciniraj of Salem Ministries, the same source that appeared in your previous link. It is also the same source that made the discredited claims about Uzbek and Kazakh Christians. This is simply more repetition, more baseless claims and more recycling of the same information. It contains no hard data, no attributable information and amounts to no evidence for your claim.
"India: Islamic Extremist Threatens Christian Convert" (news story of the Compass Direct News)
This article recounts the sad story of the murder of a Christian man by al-Shabab, the Somali al-Qaeda affiliate. The article makes no mention of conversion to or from Christianity save that the murdered man was a Christian convert. That Christians are oppressed by Muslim terrorists does nothing to further your claims about conversion.
Frankly I am amazed that you could even consider this evidence for your claim. It is obviously irrelevant.
"6 Million Muslims LEAVE Islam every year" (Interview of AL-Jazeera satellite TV between Maher Abdallah and Shiekh Ahmed Katani)
This is nothing more than a repetition of the claims by Sheikh Ahmed Katani. Those claims are as baseless in this article as they were in the first, since he just pulls the claim out of his ass, offering no statistical back up whatsoever.
As a side note, I am curious as to why you seem so eager to take the rantings of an Islamic fundamentalist as gospel.
"Muslim converts face ostracism in France" (Zee News).."
It doesn't matter how they might be ostracised or not. The claim you made was that there are more Christian converts from Islam than the other way around and this article has absolutely no bearing on that claim, beyond repeating the same unverifiable figures that all the other pages cite. This is not evidence in favour of your position.
Im sorry I didnt provide the every single link in the posts. You could have searched them just as easily.
It doesn't really work that way. Apart from the fact that it's your job to back up your argument, you need to consider that more than one person is going to read your posts. If you provide the links, only one person (you) will need to mess about searching for them. If you don't hotlink them, everyone who might want to read them will have to search for them. You are just creating more work for everyone and in the process, you are making it far less likely that people will be bothered to read your sources. If you want to communicate as effectively as possible (and why wouldn't you?) then link to your sources!
As for the wiki links, if you actually read my post Message 16
you will see me asking Straggler what he would like to discuss and WASN'T using the links as evidence. Nice try tho
I know that. I was just mentioning them for completeness' sake.
So, to recap, I have gone through every single page you linked to and found no evidence whatsoever for your claim. All you have presented is a long list of repetitious claims, none of which are backed up with hard data. Not one of them makes any serious effort to compare the number of Muslim-to-Christian converts with the number of Christian-to-Muslim converts. Absolutely none of this is valid as evidence for your position. You have effectively provided us with nothing at all.
If your going to try to make me look bad atleast do it honestly or, just join the club that follows me around saying im a liar. I'll add you to the list.
Everything in this comment can be found in my comments back thread. So it seems you are the liar here. Not me. I'll await your apology.
You're not going to get an apology because I did not accuse you of being a liar. I have no idea where you got that idea from. I was trying to discuss your claim in a polite and reasonable way. You have responded by calling me a liar. That is not good form. For the record, I do not believe that you are lying, I think that you are simply mistaken.
Please Chuck, don't get overwrought over nothing. I've already said, this isn't anything personal, it's just that I disagree with your position, so I am criticising it. That is what we do here. It is called "debate". If this is all it takes to get you riled up, then I think that you either need to grow a thicker hide or consider whether this is really the place for you.
Mutate and Survive

This message is a reply to:
 Message 46 by Chuck77, posted 09-17-2011 5:46 AM Chuck77 has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 49 by Theodoric, posted 09-17-2011 9:58 AM Granny Magda has seen this message but not replied

  
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