Religious Conversions

Nobody is calling you a liar. What we're telling you is that, so far, the evidence does not seem to support your claim. This has nothing o do with lying. Perhaps you were lied to, and are simply repeating the lie, that does not make you a liar, just not so sceptical as to check their claims. Perhaps you think you heard it somewhere. Perhaps the person telling you was lied to, and simply repeated the claim. None of that makes you a liar.Basically what we're saying is this: After all our posts to the contrary, do you stand by your claim that more Muslims are converting to Christianity than vice versa, and if so, do you have some positive evidence for this. Or will you admit you were wrong when you made that claim(not a liar, just mistaken, it happens to everybody), and we can move on to other subjects?

Ok, that's all well and good, but the first comment made under the article you linked says this:

quote:

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There are MANY, MANY, MANY more christians who convert to Islam than Muslims converting to christianity. Islam is winning the conversion war in Europe and America(and maybe in other places too)

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Now, I don't think he has any more evidence than you do for this claim, but I'm sure it is his "belief/conviction based on the subjective "evidence" [he's] seen/come across in the years".So again, we are left with the question: How am I, as an outsider, to determine which one of you is correct?

Well, I happen to know a Christian to Muslim convert, yet no Muslim to Christian convert. However, I'd say this is all irrelevant. My point was more to show that this "subjective evidence" you keep citing, is pretty worthless if you don't already believe certain things. For example, the Muslim convert will tell me one thing, and I'm pretty sure the Christian convert will more or less tell me the same thing. That's the problem with subjective evidence,it can work in any situation, for any viewpoint. So when I, as an outsider, who holds no viewpoint on the matter, do as you suggest, for both sides of the matter, I'll be left scratching my head and wondering why either of you believe a you do, because clearly, it's not the evidence, being equal in both cases.And this interests me, I wonder how someone, even with a lack of "real" evidence, can, with such certainty, make statements like you did in the other thread "there are more Muslim converts than there are Christian ones". If instead you would have said, "it is my strong belief, based on "subjective" evidence, that there are more Muslim converts than Christian ones", I think people would've just said "Yes, well, ok, sure, but that's a belief based on "nothing", so we can just dismiss it and move along". But you didn't. You made it a statement of fact. Now why was that? That is what really interests me in these cases.

I wasn't trying to pin you on that Chuck, I was trying to explain where my resistance to you using those terms came from. It is not a resistance to your belief, it is a resistance to a tendency, at least, in this case, to cite belief as fact. I certainly don't care what kind of things you believe, but to present that belief as fact is not warranted in my view. And now I'm asking you why did present them as fact, because I want to understand the reasoning behind it. I wasn't taking advantage, I was explaining my thoughts. In fact, I thank you for your humbleness for essentially admitting that the quote as made originally was probably not the right way to put it. All I was trying to do was caution you on future instances of this happening, and trying to find out why you did as you did, to understand the psyche and thought processes of a believer, if you will. No no, you got it all wrong. It is enough, in fact, I think it's a very brave thing, to admit you were wrong. I merely wondered why you thought you could make the claim as you did in the first place, I don't understand how. If it was an honest mistake, ok, sure. It's just that I notice a lot of these mistakes when talking to some believers. I wonder why they make the claims in such a manner. Is it, perhaps, because they view essentially everything they believe as fact? Well, it doesn't answer the why though, in my opinion. Perhaps I am wrong here, but I don't see why you thought you could make that claim as though it was a fact. I'm not riding you on you doing so, I'm looking for the reason why you did so. I'm trying to understand the reasoning process here.

Always happy to debate What I think I'm looking for is I think a reason to value "subjective evidence". Why do you think it is so valuable, when, in my view, it can be used to support contradictory claims?But perhaps this is not the thread to so.