Posted by Dawud (211.22.33.151) on September 07, 2002 at 00:57:06:

In Reply to: Have I been misrepresenting the Faith? posted by Jamey on August 23, 2002 at 07:29:59:

Probably not. You see, if I start my own religion, and then convert you, I just doubled my population in like two seconds. Obviously this rate of growth can't be sustained. It's easiest to have high relative growth when you're tiny.

Baha'is could get around that by saying they don't count the religion I just started as a legitimate religion, they only count largish ones. Then why not put the cut-off line even higher, and only count religions with at least 10 million followers, or 100 million? It's all arbitrary.

I notice you also don't want to consider denominations which are rapidly growing (such as Mormonism, which has at least twice your population and is growing faster).

In terms of absolute growth (not relative), Christianity and Islam are increasing fastest through purely demographic means (more kids). There's no way the Baha'is could ever keep up with that, you're just too darn little.

By your own numbers you're about half to one-third the size of Judaism, Sikhism, or Mormonism. By mine you're about even with Caodaism or I-kuan Tao. I think that some Baha'is like to "cook the books" because the idea that they're growing in numbers has almost become a religious belief to them. (If Baha'i is the way of the future, then surely it must be growing...?) And of course you'd rather be grouped with the big religions, whose founders and writings you respect.

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