Countries with the Most Christians

Well, a lot of the population is hindu, another part is muslim.

Even a tiny fraction of 1.4 billion people is a lot.

I was a little surprised too. The North Eastern states of India have a large Christian population, majority in Manipur and Nagaland. I guess it just goes to show how big the other parts of the country are!

Me too - Wikipedia reckons 2.3% which works at around 30 million, so just shy

Never knew that about "enormity". I think we can let Freestatebear off this time since the debate is up in the air a bit but your nitpicking has enlightened me. (For anyone else wanting to be enlightened, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/enormity#usage-1).

It's not a misuse of the word. Enormity can simply mean "the great or extreme scale", which the population of China certainly is. It doesn't necessarily mean anything wicked.

From Wiktionary:

Enormity as a synonym for enormousness is sometimes considered an error, though other usage guides hold that there is little basis for the distinction. Both words ultimately go back to the same Latin source word ēnōrmis meaning “deviating from the norm, abnormal”.

So the meaning of "enormity" is closer to original than "enormous".

I think this is one of those curios of language. The dictionary definition of "enormity" means "the extreme scale of something bad." The word definitely, when used correctly, has a very negative connotation. But because it sounds like it should be the nominalization of "enormous," people use it that way, and when a critical mass of people use the same word in the same wrong way, then it becomes an accepted use. This has also happened with "hopefully" (which modifies a verb -- "Hopefully it will snow" technically describes snow falling in hopeful manner) and "momentarily" (which also modifies a verb -- "I'll be with you momentarily" technically means "I'll be with you *for* a moment," not *in* a moment. "Nonplussed" is the next domino to fall. It means "surprised and confused about how to react," but many people think it means "unimpressed," so...it also kind of means that now. Everyone is wrong until so many of them are wrong that they become right.

For anyone wanting to know more about The Great Enormity Debate, check out Dreyer's English (by the chief copyeditor of Random House). Generally speaking, nitpicking somebody based on a dictionary's overly specific (and often behind-the-times) definition is a pointless act. Enormity used to just mean greatness in a bad sense, perhaps, but it's long been used differently. And usage essentially determines definition.

Only on JetPunk will you find chains of people with paragraph-long comments on the nitty-gritty semantics of "enormity" on a quiz that has absolutely nothing to do with the word.

Of course usage determines definition, but when you use a word with more than one commonly-used definition, it's the responsibility of the speaker to disambiguate. That's what makes a usage wrong, even with a descriptivist approach.

If I say "I literally cut my own head off," and I still have a head, I don't need to otherwise make it clear that I did not literally cut my own head off, but that I'm using literally as a synonym for its traditional antonym. Likewise, if I praise a painting for its masterful brush strokes, I'm clearly not indicating that the brush strokes were applied in a domineering manner, because that wouldn't make sense--how could I?

But when describing the population of China as an enormity, I could only be saying that it's enormous, or I could be saying that it is out of control--an evil. I'd grade it wrong on a test, because if the point of language is to communicate, the speaker has failed to do so, due to an error of usage.

According to the Merriam Webster page linked above, this "enormity" vs. "enormousness" controversy has been going on since the 1700s.

Ethiopia is one of the oldest Christian states in the world. They were Christian even before Europe

common sense

it apparently says something, then. Look at all that stuff you just typed.

It's possible that in some surveys or even in the census many people self report as Christian despite only being culturally Christian/having a Christian upbringing, and no longer attending church or believing.

I feel like "plus their children" is a bit of a stretch these days, I know a hell of a lot of people who don't follow the religion of their parents - whether that's becoming religious, becoming irreligious or changing religion.

The pope's an atheist.

A Christian atheist, then.

Hey, if we're going to count people who think they're Christian for every other country, why enforce stricter rules on the Vatican?

poland is not at 96%