0.22% chance of being born into true religion as JW!!!!!

Qcmbr

I've just been reading some cool books, one, Freakonomics is very very good at revealing why statistics are important and we make a lot of assumptions based on false info. Well anyway I decided on a purely statistical front to use the rough figures found on the pages below:

http://www.ibiblio.org/lunarbin/worldpop
http://www.adherents.com/adh_branches.html#Christianity

To give a rough estimate that a child being born right now would be born into the correct way of belief (as opposed to someone being converted). This makes the assumption that 'correct' can be equated to the following logic.

1/ There is an absolute truth (which would favour extreme viewpoints - in this case atheism or any belief in the divine.)
2/ Even if neither extreme position is right then an intermediary position could be considered 'correct'.
3/ No actual beliefs are being validated or discussed - for the purposes of this experiment no weight is given to any individual tenets or results of given worldview.
4/ No appeal to God/evolution/TalkOrigins.com/Dawkins is used merely the strength of numeric adherance.
5/ No distinction is made between shades of belief - you either get counted in one group or not.
6/ Even though it is arguable that agnostics do not take a position and so either have a foot in all camps (and must be right) this study argues that in general gods don't take kindly to those who ignore them and generally 'spew them out.' Thus a no vote is considered a vote for atheism.
7/ I am willing to skew the results for foldable cash

6,720,000,000 People in world

2,100,000,000 Christians
1,300,000,000 Muslims
1,100,000,000 No Religion (inc. Atheists)
900,000,000 Hindus
394,000,000Chinese Traditional
376,000,000 Bhuddists
300,000,000 Primal-Idigenous
100,000,000 African Traditional

Chance you've been born into a family believing the right God (by number of adherants)
31.25% Christian
19.35% Muslim
16.4% Don't believe / No Firm Conviction

Now if you're in the roughly 1/3 group who happened to be christian what is your chance of being born into the 'right' christian church (the one that Jesus would join/start or at least closest)

1,050,000,000 Catholic
240,000,000 Orthodox
110,000,000 African
105,000,000 Pentecostal
75,000,000 Presbyterian
73,000,000 Anglican
70,000,000 Baptist
14,800,000 Jehovah's Witness

Overall chance of being in correct faith and then of being in Jesus' church.
15.6% Catholic rising to 50% if the christians are on the winning god side and Jesus just returned
1.6% Pentecostal rising to 5%
1% Baptist rising to 3.3%
0.22% JW rising to 0.7%

And you wonder with odds like that why JWs bother!! (just to be fair LDS are even worse)

Qcmbr

If you're an atheist or agnostic that means - against each denomination of christianity you actually have a better statistical chance of being right.

16.4% against the highest ranking christian (Catholic) at 15.6%.

neverendingjourney

Funny that the website you got your numbers from lists the number of JWs at over 14 million. The Society's numbers say there are less than half as many. Of course, only active publishers are accounted for by the Society.

Qcmbr

Its counting JW numbers as Memorial attenders I believe.

neverendingjourney

You're probably right. I didn't think about that.

Madame Quixote

On another thread, I just read the 14 mil = meeting attenders (Sunday?)

6 mil = active ~~sales people~~ publishers

Aside: I wonder what the figures would be for being "born" an Amway distributor?

Interesting post, Qcmbr!

Marcel

damn, my life begun damn unlucky :( this chance was even lower ~25years ago. damn.

Hellrider

0.22%...someone up there obviously had it in for me, right from the start.

moshe

To put this in perspective- the lifetime odds of becoming a Jehovah's Witness or being killed in a motor vehicle accident are about the same. At least with the car it's over quickly, but with JW's they slowly suffocate you for the rest of your life.

jwfacts

Ever since I was a kid I found this to be the flaw in the concept of only JWs being saved. I would think that I was going to be saved simply for being one of the lucky few to be born into the 'truth'. How was it fair that all the other kids at school would be destroyed due to the bad luck of being born to parents in false religions? Was God unjust, or the doctrine faulty.

On these stats the safest bet is to be Agnostic. Reserve your bets till the very last moment. If Armageddon comes wait till God reveals himself and then side with whoever he says are his people. If Armageddon does not come, on your death bed dedicate yourself to Almighty God, without professing allegiance to any single organization. Referring to God as Almighty can't be too offensive to him, I am sure any God would take that description as good enough. As soon as you start naming him you risk alienating God if his name is something different.

0.22% chance of being born into true religion as JW!!!!!

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