> I wasn't intending to argue that number of believers is any sort of proof.
It definitely doesn't provide any proof, but I didn't say that. I said "sheer quantity of believers doesn't work for making a point", as in, how can the number of people in any way support the validity of any beliefs held by those people?
There's plenty of concrete historical evidence that beliefs held by many many people turned out to be wrong. It's basically the story of science. I.e. we have clear evidence that the fact that a lot of people hold a belief does not mean anything about the truth of that belief.
> In any case, at least Christianity and Islam each have over one billion believers globally.
It definitely doesn't provide any proof, but I didn't say that. I said "sheer quantity of believers doesn't work for making a point", as in, how can the number of people in any way support the validity of any beliefs held by those people?
There's plenty of concrete historical evidence that beliefs held by many many people turned out to be wrong. It's basically the story of science. I.e. we have clear evidence that the fact that a lot of people hold a belief does not mean anything about the truth of that belief.
> In any case, at least Christianity and Islam each have over one billion believers globally.
But that illustrates my original point.