Why do you doubt? Jedi is an officially recognized religion in some countries.

Jedi is not taken on faith however hence its common appeal with the atheists. For example, there is substantial evidence of the existence of Jedi's inside the LucasArts films.

This doesn't matter. My argument is sufficient to address the issue you raised:

Given that Jedi is an officially recognized religion, reaching this standard should not be that difficult. Thus,

You'd still need followers or supporters, much like the Jedi religion.

Do you have any basis for your assumption that the correct religion has to be on that list? What if they increase the criteria to having 100+million members. Does that somehow eliminate 79,990 religions from being potentially correct? of course not.

To elaborate on aaron's example, religions are constantly being added and removed from the list - not to mention that the list hasn't always existed. Surely if some variant of christianity was the correct religion, it was correct even before this list was created. And if Jedi is correct, it was correct even before it obtained a sufficiently large roster as to be included on the list and even if the list criteria is changed to exclude it in the future.

This gives the impression that you're neither reading what I write nor thinking about what you write.

I'm not a film buff; can you please expand on this?

There are many, many things one can say about this statement... but I'll stick to the most important and obvious bit:

If we assume a humanwide obsession to "make things up" would be displayed at an individual level, this does not mean the ratio of people to religions would be larger than 50000 to 1. It would mean the ratio of people to "made up stuff" would be larger than 50000 to 1.

There is nothing in OP to assume he claims that "religion" is identical to "something made up". He seems to be saying religion is made up, which is a very different statement.

Could we stop inflating the # of religions by factors 10-20 without citing supporting evidence? Thx

It would probably be good if you quote the posts where this is actually done, so we can all know who you are actually referring and responding to.

This reading would undermine OP's actual argument. (See below.)

While this is true (there can be other "made up" things other than religion), given that the argument is premised on the large number of religions, one would expect a much different ratio. Adjusting for actual numbers of religions, the argument looks much, much worse.

I'm addressing a specific deduction that he made:

As this is a "deduction" I am challenging the basis upon which it was deduced. He's claiming that the abundance of religions demonstrates an obsession with making stuff up. I'm saying that this conclusion does not follow from the premise.

It's an induction not a deduction, and it is fairly straightforward. Here is one of identical form, with an analogous protest to yours:

A: "Look at the pyramids, humans seem to have a tendency towards construction".
B: "No, if they did... we would see smaller groups of people constructing pyramids"

I don't really see these as analogous at all. The change of language from "tendency towards" and "obsession with" is significant. Second, physical construction and intellectual construction are not similar processes.

This is the structure of my objection:

A: Look at all the religions. Humans must be obsessed with making stuff up.
B: Since there is only 1 religion for every 50,000* people, I don't think looking at religions is good evidence of this obsession.

* It's more like 1 religion for every 1,000,000 people.

Ya but how many tries were there at establishing a religion that failed to blossom?

Good question. Do you have anything other than a speculation on the answer? If not, then I would continue to question the success of your logic.

There are lots of different kinds of cars on this planet too. Even so, generally it is better to have one than not have one.

The issue was that you treated this as a deduction, when it is clearly an induction - and that what was my analogy showed.

I don't really have a response to "pyramid-construction can't be used to teach us about the social forming of religions" (paraphrased), as it would take a fair degree of impoliteness and unfairness to understand my post in that manner.

Now, if you want to argue the soundness of OP's claims.. .that is probably a more fruitful venue.