What's so Special About FREE Home Bible Studies?

Ethos

Continuation of this thread: http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/242543/2/FREE-Home-Bible-Study

NewYorker: The familiar observation that the Bible is the best-selling book of all time obscures a more startling fact: the Bible is the best-selling book of the year, every year. Calculating how many Bibles are sold in the United States is a virtually impossible task, but a conservative estimate is that in 2005 Americans purchased some twenty-five million Bibles—twice as many as the most recent Harry Potter book. The amount spent annually on Bibles has been put at more than half a billion dollars.

Now that's just an estimation. There is much room for marginal error, which means this figure could be even higher. But for the sake of conclusiveness, let's take a median of 25 million for the past ten years (since November 2000).

25 million X 10 = That is a total of 250,000,000 Bibles sold *not distributed for free* in just the last ten years.

The article also states: But other research has found that ninety-one per cent of American households own at least one Bible—the average household owns four—which means that Bible publishers manage to sell twenty-five million copies a year of a book that almost everybody already has.

According to United States Census Bureau: The number of households in the United States in 2000 was 105.5 million. 1 In 2010, there were 114 million households. 2 You get a median of about 111 million. Now if the average household owns four Bibles, we multiply 111 million (for the past ten years) times 4 and we get 444 million total Bibles in household possession between 2000 and 2010. 250 million Bibles were sold in the last ten years alone and the number of households (which factors in immigration, emigration, deaths, foreclosures, and so forth) only increased by about 7-10 million.

So if 250 million Bibles were purchased in the last ten years, and if the estimated aggregated total of Bibles owned (for every American household) is 444 million, then most American households have purchased a Bible. Subract the two and you get 194,000,000 Bibles that weren't purchased in the last ten years. So, to simplify all the statistics:

2000-2010: 250 million Bibles *PURCHASED IN THIS TIME INTERVAL*

2000-2010: 194 million Bibles *NOT PURCHASED IN THIS TIME INTERVAL*

Even if we assume all 194 million Bibles were given away for free, most households still purchased a Bible.

Who really was spewing a whole bunch of crap without researching and looking up the facts?

Reference 1: http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/c2kbr01-8.pdf

Reference 2: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html

Ethos

fakesmile

say the word "free" and americans will stand in line. reminds me of the old song... come take lifes water free.

come take lifes water free, will you're assets to the gb. than you can be like me, a sheep for slaughtering. key of C

Ethos

Jeffro: It isn't clear if the claim refers to number of copies actuall sold (rather than given away) or number of copies printed, or whether it refers to the number of copies printed per year, or total printings ever

New Yorker in their article: "Annuals of Publishing": "a conservative estimate is that in 2005 Americans purchased some twenty-five million Bibles—twice as many as the most recent Harry Potter book. The amount spent annually on Bibles has been put at more than half a billion dollars.Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/12/18/061218fa_fact1#ixzz2CpaOMn2I

mrsjones5: Waa! What a baby you are. You made the mistake of not doing any research and obviously didn't know what you were talking about.

Who really didn't do any research and didn't know what they were talking about?

So everything else in the thread were red herrings (like questions about why JW's use the Bible Teach Book) or that the WT used to charge for subscriptions. All red herrings. All diversionary tactics. All issues that detract from the substantiated and thoroughly documented facts.

ChristAlone: Ethos, I was really hoping for a jw that would argue honestly. I know they are rare, but I was hoping. And the reason you get so many replies to your comments is because the WT (and you by association) have little to base your claims on. You both make so many claims that you can't support while others CAN.
perfect1: Ethos, dont say stupid shit. Its like no one ever loved you enough to tell you you are wrong before. dont worry, youve found us.
Jeffro: Maybe you should make better statements.
carla: How you can flat out lie like that is beyond me especially on this board! You may think you are getting away with lying to the public but fortunately jw's reputation usually preceeds them at the doors.
mrsjones5: Ethos is full of crap as usual.

This thread was started not to debate the issue (as I believe it's been thoroughly debunked in one post) but to show that I am not ignoring arguments and am not haphazardly making ludicrous and unsubstantiated 'crap' statements as so many have insinuated recently. 607 thread response shortly.

atrapado

But you do make unsubstantiated statements do you want a list? not about the Bible obviously.

brinjen

The whole point of that original thread was the Watchtower Society claims to be the only ones who offer to study the Bible with someone for free. They heavily imply no one will spend that time with someone without charging for it and they are unique by offering this time free of charge. They are not. Nothing to do with how many Bibles were sold.

atrapado

Ethos you complain about red herrings yet the posted question of this thread 'What's so Special About FREE Home Bible Studies?' never gets address and the objection that JWs don't give a FREE Bible study is a valid one. JWs give free studies but of the WT publications.

What's so Special About FREE Home Bible Studies?

Ethos

Ethos

fakesmile

Ethos

atrapado

brinjen

atrapado

wolfman85

fakesmile

fakesmile

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