There is a story of a Scotsman telling that Scotsman were the bravest or something like that. Someone pointed out an example that didn’t fit. The person then claimed that person wasn’t a “true” Scotsman.
The fallacy is when you make a statement that no true Christian or Muslim or American would do something there is always an exception.

@Oldcurmudgeon Thanks. I googled it and got the story about Angus putting sugar on his porridge but no true Scotsman would do that so Angus couldn't be a Scotsman.
Never heard of it before,

@SeaGreenEyez I agree actually in general, but to be fair that 33,000 figure counts the slightest variation. Christians will rightly point out that there's not that much difference between many of them ... in my Christian daze, I was comfortable being part of several different "denominations" at various points -- Bible, Baptist, independent, and Plymouth Brethren just off the top of my head. And the feeling was mutual; they didn't grill me about my exact beliefs.

There were others I could get along with even if uncomfortably -- Assembly of God (too happy-clappy), Christian Reformed (too dour and Calvinist), Episcopalian (too "ritualistic" ), etc.

By contrast that 33K figure would for instance count every sub-sect of Baptists to be different, despite that people regularly move between those offshoots. They are or course different, but more in terms of style than substance. Churches have been known to split over stupid things like what color carpeting to put in the new auditorium (true story from my hometown), but that doesn't really make a truly new denomination that we can point and laugh at for reasons of doctrinal incoherence. It's more like how people own different makes and models and trim options of cars but they're all cars and you or I could drive any of those thousands of different models without difficulty even if they weren't our personal fave. And regularly do when renting cars on vacation, etc.

I point this out only because most of us unbelievers here and on other sites have seized on this "tens of thousands of denominations" narrative and it's a little bit overplayed. It's fair to say there are "hundreds" and those probably subdivide into a dozen major groups such that the more zealous partisans in each of those major groups would be hesitant to extend fellowship to people outside that major group. A good example is the anti-Catholic sentiment among many Protestant denominational groups, ranging from identifying them with the prophesied "great whore, Babylon" to condescending to them as "mistaken but sincere", having perhaps a poor grasp of god's grace and too much emphasis on works, blah-de-blah. But most would be hesitant to say Catholics are counterfeit Christians, even so.

The bottom line is that all Christians affirm Jesus to be divine and the founder of their faith, and to in some way provide them with "salvation" from their "sins", so we're on thin (if fun) ice teasing them for not being able to make up their minds.

As @Lutherzme points out, a similar critique could be mounted for Islam given that each mosque appears to be independently governed under a sometimes autocratic imam who apparently doesn't have to answer to a central authority for his views and teachings. You could argue there are then effectively hundreds of thousands of Muslim "denominations" but in practice I'm guessing that's also a stretch. All of them are going to call the deity Allah and affirm Mohammed as his prophet and demote Jesus to the role of prophet, etc. Any given Imam will have his mentors and teachers to answer to and probably those hew to some rough school of Islam like Sunni or Shia; how much latitude the Imam gets in his own mosque is probably a function of his success in growing his mosque and his skill at politics. No man is an island, not even an imam.

@SeaGreenEyez I've looked at the supporting lists behind that claim of 33,000 denominations and while I have far more first-hand familiarity with the American scene obviously, I have better than average familiarity with global Christianity too. I stand behind my position; none of my arguments for a less florid number are dependent on an American perspective. Of course ... while in my view it's an overdetermined claim and a tactical forced error, it's true so far as it goes and I'm not going to flog it beyond the above ... I tend to want to avoid needless hyperbole as a distraction from the basic point but at the end of the day, nothing I said actually negates the argument. If you have 500 or 5,000 or 50,000 denominations the basic idea still stands. Really if you have 12 different versions of Christianity, the idea stands. So everyone should carry on as they see fit; this is only one person's input. Consider it, dismiss it, accept it ... entirely up to the reader.

@SeaGreenEyez Thanks, I hadn't seen this in a long time. The authors can, of course, define denominations however they wish to, but in practice denominations transcend national borders so they are inflating the number in two misleading ways: counting the same denominations more than once according to the number of countries they happen to have legal entities in regardless of any actual doctrinal differences; and secondly, counting "independent" congregations as separate denominations, which, while it fits a certain contrived legal / organizational definition, also does not consider actual ideological differences or similarities between them. That's 22,000 of the "denominations" right there.

There are also loose associations that might not fit the typical structure of a "denomination". For example, the IFCA is what I'd call a pseudo-denomination in that member congregations are not in any way governed or controlled by the association but rather simply subscribe to a common doctrinal statement and use some shared services. For purposes of this conversation I think that counts as a denomination even though it's not typical denominational governance because it's clearly a single dogma. I don't know which way they went in counting those specifically, but it highlights that one can add or not add hundreds of "denominations" over any one hazy judgment call.

Heck, they even define some televangelists as "denominations".

It's always harder than one would think to classify any set of real-world entities. One gets into the weeds very easily. But I simply don't understand the rationale or the motivation to so slant these numbers. Perhaps it's typical "governance by committee"; they couldn't agree on a functional, enlightening definition and so decided to use a very mechanistic one based on a count of legal entities because that's very black and white.

One thing is for sure, the underlying fact is that this is a count of legal entities, not of substantially different ideologies.

@SeaGreenEyez It doesn't unnerve me. I just disagree with it for the stated reasons. And I don't feel obligated to agree with it because it's out of Oxford. And yes I get that it's globally. My argument doesn't hinge on that in any way.

If you or others like the study, that's fine. I've just seen these numbers bandied about and argued over here and on other sites over the past 5 or 6 years and I can tell you it's not an impressive argument and feels to most theist detractors like a stacked argument. So it's not in our rational self interest to use it when, for the reasons I stated, it's an argument that is hard to defend. Even the URL you cited admits there are a half dozen major subdivisions of Christianity. It's not like we need to invent these massive numbers to establish that Christianity has internal disagreements about how to interpret scripture. We know there are a half dozen major cohorts and probably something like a couple dozen major hermeneutical systems and that is enough to establish that the Bible is not a black and white document that isn't subject to debate concerning what it means.

@SeaGreenEyez Yeah sometimes I think we're so used to Christianity we don't really grok the harms it brings to society. It is insidious and structural and poisonous. No argument with you there!

@OwlInASack For the most part, they're all fanatics. They're all mentally ill.

@OwlInASack I have no use for the adherents of any religion. They are all mentally ill.

If I see you there I will buy you a drink.