updated top 10 denominations list

There are about 40,000 Christian denominations. You still have a way to go. What are we missing?

You converted to.... uh well, they have nice prayers. Rosary is quite nice to do before sleep.

As a Catholic why do you personally choose Catholic over the other 39,999 ?

The Catholic Church made Christianity a universal religion.

Your list appears to be exclusively Christian, as if no other religion is splintered in factions.

Of course they are, but none seem as splintered as Christianity, of which I am part. Within ten years, by observation of Pew Research, Christianity will be taken over by Islam as the world's largest religion by population, if not by frequent devotees in attendance at regular worship services. Christ was prophesied by Isaiah as the "Prince of Peace" [Isa 9: 6], but we've made of him the Prince of Pieces. Time for us to think maybe we do not have our finger on the pulse.

LDS is not christianity, your prophet was literally a known fraudster who attempted multiple hoaxes.

The only thing we have to learn from islam is to reproduce more and take our religion more seriously. Hopefully christians realize that before its too late.

in the mean time, hopefully mormons will realize they are even less aligned with the bible and church history than baptists are. You guys have this insane capacity to ignore everything and stubbornly cling to mormonism. I honestly don't know how you do it.

Why do people still cling to religion at all?

Because they can't help themselves.

Teach children nonsense and they will grow up believing in nonsense.

Clever stupid gene.

read summa contra gentiles and say that

It is true the LDS is not accepted as a typical Christian denomination.

The heresy level is actual insane, and there isn't any excuse to believe it when you look at the history

I started looking at their history. Thanks.

Personal attack is the first in the line of losing arguments. I would have thought by now you realized that fact. No other response is necessary but this: We did not call ourselves Mormons; that was hung on us by others due to the Book of Mormon, which title page declares itself to be "... to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God, manifesting himself unto all nations..." so as for your erred claim that we are not Christians, or that Baptists lack any claim of being so, is manifestly misapplied criticism. You may malign Joseph Smith all you wish; personal attack on him, or any other person or organization to the alleged benefit of yourself, is, as well, a losing argument. Stand on your own merit, and no one or nothing else.

It is true the LDS is not accepted as a typical Christian denomination.

By whose claim? No one but anyone wanting merit of their own by the claim. And that is ill-gotten alleged gain by anyone making derogatory claim against others. We stand upon our own merit, only, before the judgment bar of God, the Judge of all the Quickened and the Dead, and that is all that will stand for us. "But, Father, look a that guy!" will curry no favor with Him in our own pleading. The ancient Egyptians knew this well, and is recited over and over again in their numerous "books" of the Spells of Coming Forth by Day" [aka The Book of the Dead] of pleading before Osiris, and they had no knowledge of Christ. It was and is a universal principal for all people of every stripe. As I claim Christ as my sole Savior and Redeemer, I am therefore a Christian, period, worlds without end.

The LDS is not accepted as denomination of Christianity. It denies doctrines central to classical Christianity, and Christianity denies doctrines central to LDS. They are not compatible.

The two religions differ on the basic nature of God, the person of Christ, the extent of special revelation , the fall, man , eternal marriage, the priesthood, the afterlife , the atonement, sin, salvation and Satan. They follow the Book of Mormons and not the Bible. That alone should exempt them.

I prefer to think for myself.

Which was the gist of my previous comments.

The perpetuation of religion is largely about formative indoctrination.

If you misinform kids between the ages of 0 and 10, then that misinformation will become permanently established operating data.

And the need for fantasy creation and existence hypotheses, was all about ignorance.

Thomas Aquinas similarly indoctrinated, may have been a clever man, but a nonetheless ignorant clever man, which does not necessarily result in logical or correct conclusions.

Such is the clever stupid nature of the human condition.

If there were a omni-sensible GOD, it would come and visit every once in a while...Or at least send us a text, assuming that it is omniscient of course.

Which isn't to suggest that a super-intelligent universal interventionist is not a reasonable hypothesis, even if somewhat thwarted by problematic logistics....Nonetheless I would propose that the human inspired socio-political dogma of the Bible and the Catholic Church is solely the invention of the derived thinking primate, namely Homo-Sapiens

So MasterDestroyer, what do you think that a future dominant AI will make of human Religious behaviour?

"Thinking for yourself" is not as appealing as it sounds.

Thinking is something you do with the help of information that comes from outside of yourself. So when you fail to examine evidence, thinking for yourself becomes an excuse to ignore it.

The quality of your thinking depends largely on how informed you are, and your ability to examine things without bias. In my experience people who are seriously informed about higher level arguments about God tend to be theists, and atheists rarely get "into the weeds" to that extent. The majority of atheists are genuinely just ignoring the higher level arguments and assuming "oh thats just a fairy tale" on very limited information.

Jesus was an atheist. See link.

https://www.debateart.com/forum/topics/2351-jesuswas-an-atheist

In my case, I have examined the issue of religion without bias for decades and concluded that as creation and existence hypotheses religions are reasonably analogical but nonetheless dogged by the need for fantasy embellishments.

Now, I'm pretty confident that the heavens and the Earth were not created in a few days by a Magicman from somewhere else, though quite where somewhere else is eludes even fantasy.

So the only logical super-intelligent creator scenario is that of a universally evolved advanced intelligence that planted the seeds of life here many millions of years ago, and may have revisited a few thousand years ago. Though biblical writings never really portray GOD as anything other than a typically vindictive and discriminatory bloke, which leads me to conclude that GOD of Middle Eastern fantasy is nothing more than a product of the minds of typically vindictive and discriminatory Middle Eastern blokes.

Moving on, what we refer to as Abrahamic religions were readily adopted and adapted and became the basis of newer vindictive and discriminatory systems of government and people oppression, Catholicism and Islam for example.

Now I'm also pretty confident that a super-intelligent universal seeder or creator would be a tad more logical and sensible than Abraham et al ever described, quite frankly most of the bible is based upon the theo-political bunkum and ramblings of a few vindictive and discriminatory men...Vindictive and discriminatory men whose states of mind can only be guessed at.

So MasterDestroyer, strip away the pomp and ceremony of modern Catholicism and what are you left with?...Just an over bloated theo-political business empire, overseen by the same old, same old style taskmasters.

All that theists need to do to convert me, is prove that an extra-universal creator-GOD actually exists, but they cannot...All that they have is repetitive diatribe and certainly not "higher level thinking".

Thought is thought...And higher level thought is the realm of fantasists with a conditioned superiority complex.

1: you can believe in God and evolution at the same time, people actually do that and the catholic church even dogmatically says you're allowed to

2: As much as "God seems mean" is a compelling argument (unironically since he is supposed to be the ultimate good) you can't really take an honest look at history and tell me that any single movement has done more to make the world a more moral place than christianity

3: you cannot go around saying "all you have is this strawman" when you haven't engaged with the heavy hitting arguments. In those decades of examining you should have read summa contra gentiles instead of only engaging with what I presume was a bunch of baptist nonsense.

If Jesus was an atheist he appealed to both sides. Which explains why his message survived the test of time.

As I keep saying, perpetuation is a testament to the efficiency of generational data transfer and formative conditioning.

Saves us having to continually rediscover and relearn everything.

Though whether or not Jesus's message was of any real significance remains to be seen.

Which isn't to suggest that theo-political societies did not play a role in progressive science and the furtherment of material evolution.

Though I'm not sure that Jesus was big on material sciences.

More sort of, blah blah sin, blah blah heavenly father, blah blah salvation, blah blah sin etc.

Why Jesus was successful. He took us where no science ever could showing us the path to salvation and heaven. All science did was recycle matter.

Well, not sure that J's life was much of a success.

An idle bloke who spent most of his time wandering around pontificating about sin and salvation to the few that would listen, whilst simultaneous pissing off everyone else...So much so that they nailed him to a post.

Nope, the successful bods were the ones who later turned his stories into massively profitable theo-political business empires.

He preached in Aramaic that was the problem. But once translated into Greek. His message reached the world and became successful.

What you mean to say, is that once someone reinterpreted and edited what might have been said, it became more profitable.

Though what the bod actually said cannot be known.

Only a small Jewish group spoke Aramaic. So Jesus’s message was heard and understood by a small population. But when the Romans produced the Greek version Jesus’s message spread throughout the Roman Empire and later Christianity became the state religion.

Well, I expect that Greeks produced a Greek version and Romans produces a Roman version.

Though a version of what, is impossible to know...Because most tales were never recorded and were made up some time after J's death.

The real promoter/s of what is now regarded as the Christian message was not Jesus at all.

Jesus was the primary figure in the Bible promoted by Christianity. Hence its popularity.

Nope it's popularity is largely down to formative programming relative to generational data transfer...Other religions perpetuate in the same way.

And most fantasy story books have central heroes and heroines and gods and enemies etc etc...Though the central idea is that of the author and not of the fantasy characters...Which isn't to say that authors are not sometimes inspired by real situations and events.