Monday, March 31, 2008

bad comparisons

You may have seen the hysterical Drudge headline, "Muslims More Numerous than Catholics." The article says:

Islam has overtaken Roman Catholicism as the biggest single religious denomination in the world, the Vatican said on Sunday.

The problem, of course, is that Islam is not a single religious denomination. A proper comparison would be between all of Islam and all of Christianity, and there, the ratio remains about the same as it's been for a while: about 2 to 1 in favor of Christians. (The article offers no hard figures, but guesses at a ratio of 2 billion Christians to 1.3 billion Muslims.)

Beware false comparisons!


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