In Reply to: Berg & Manson posted by OT2 (reposted) on January 19, 2006 at 13:18:22:
The 30,000 former members estimated is a number provided by TFI in the late 1990s or early 2000s. They produced this estimate in order to defend themselves against the charge that the suicide rate among former members (particularly SGAs) is much higher than that of the general population.
Being a rational empiricist doesn't mean I don't appreciate the destructive power of evil at work in the world or that I have no way of recongizing things of a spiritual nature. Quite the opposite. I just don't subscribe to Aristotelian metaphysics--i.e., the conceptual model of a supernatural realm--as a way of understanding the consequences of sin and alienation.