When Xianity was just getting started, its evangelists would routinely take credit for converting thousands of heathens.
But those heathens hadn't been converted at all. They just came out to gawk at freaks like Simeon Stylites (who sat on top of a pole for weeks at a time, which somehow glorified Gawd).
When the show was over, the heathens went back home and continued their heathenism. But just for showing up, they got included in the conversion to Xianity head-count.
It was an amazing piece of duplicity. Covered in detail in Ramsey McMullen's book "Christianizing the Roman Empire."
And they're pulling the same scam to this very day, using the Internet. That really amazes me. Two thousand years later, the same damn shell game.
I know this because I sometimes poke around Xian websites. Many of them claim "
x) number of conversions to Jebus THIS MONTH ON THIS WEBSITE!"
The number really doesn't matter. Because simple math shows that if ALL the claims of all the different websites are true, the entire population of the United States would now be committed Fundie Xians. Or maybe the entire world. Probably several times over.
One site provides free downloads of the Bible, and extrapolates from its number of downloads that all those downloaders are now converted to Jesus. They don't even stop to consider that many of those D/L's may be (1) multiple D/L's by Xians to increase the numbers, (2) curious non-Xians, (3) non-believers looking for ammo, etc. etc.
Nope, if you downloaded a Bible from them, you are now counted as one of the Faithful, QED.
Like much of modern Xianity, it all reeks of desperation. IMO, anyway.
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