First, the philosophy behind the 38,000 denominations, no it is not sects as alleged by a poster here, but denominations, which no two denominations (sects is the word he uses and it is pejorative) agree on any point of doctrine, he also alleges.
If you will do some serious and keen research just in the internet, and correct me if my findings are wrong, denomination in the World Christian Encyclopedia means a group of churches or congregations
in one country professing the same doctrinal statement and life discipline -- that is in my own words as I have found out from my readings on denomination as used in the World Christian Encyclopedia.
Pay attention to the phrase, "in one country," it is a very important qualifier, as you will notice next.
So that there are 236 denominations of the Roman Catholic Church in the 238 (sic) countries, wherefore only two countries monitored do not have, it seems to the editors of the World Christian Encyclopedia, any presence of the Roman Catholic Church.
[ Enter this phrase in google, 236 denominations in 238 countries. ]
And also there is only one denomination of the Southern Baptist Convention in the whole USA, but where there is a presence of churches belonging to the Southern Baptist Convention in every country in the world, those collected churches in each country count as individual denominations.
So that as with the Roman Catholic Church there are as many Southern Baptist Convention denominations as there are countries having churches belonging to the Southern Baptist Convention.
If there is only one Southern Baptist Convention church in say Fiji, then that one church in Fiji counts as a denomination, for the purpose of the World Christian Encyclopedia.
That is why it is commonly mentioned in the media that there are as many as 38,000 Christian denominations, basing their statement on the World Christian Encyclopedia, but people in the media don't know about what is a denomination for census number in the World Christian Encyclopedia.
Now, mind you, the number is about denominations not sects; no, there are no tens of thousands of Christians sects and no two can agree on any point of doctrine, as alleged by that poster Gracchus.
Why do they adopt that method of counting denominations in the World Christian Encyclopedia?
Why else but so that they the editors can have a lot of Christian denominations, but atheists then interpret that lot of Christian denominations in reference to no two denominations agree on any one point of doctrine.
Whereas unless you are a total ignoramus you know that there are common doctrines among all Christians at least who call themselves Christians, and foremost is the belief in one fundamental concept of God in relation to the universe, namely, God is the maker of everything that is not God Himself.
That is philosophy, if it is not philosophy, then I am not sorry to disagree with you, and I suggest you read more about philosophy and realize that philosophy is the continuous unending search for the programming that exists, or might exist, or should exist in everything in the light of reason.
That is my definition of philosophy and I always try to say things so that man in the street can understand it right away and know what is black and what is white.
Shall we return to the fundamental concept of God in the Christian faith in relation to the universe?
Maker of everything that is not God Himself.
Maker
of
everything
that
is
not
God
Himself.
No one has yet gone into an examination the concept, as far as I know but I have not read every post here carefully, because as soon as I notice that the author of a post is into obstructionism I stop reading -- it is pointless and I can't be wasting my time and attention trying to answer every obstructionistic utterance made by posters here, who can be motivated by all kinds of agenda, foremost among vociferous atheists is to make it impossible to have a genuine exchange of thoughts on the fundamental concept of God in the Christian faith in relation to the universe.
You see, dear gentle readers here, a concept is like an invitation to go on an exploration, unless you have a concept for example of BigFoot that is carefully conceived and verbalized you cannot go forth into the expedition to find him, unless you are insane or not using your intelligence.
Pachomius