Christianity vs. "Cultural" Religions

[Prodigy54321]

In a discussions with a christian friend or mine, he often talks about how the huge number of christians is evidence for its validity. I made the argument that he must also, then, count the number of people who believe Islam to be evidence for that as well, and since christianity and islam are not compatible, he must concede that billions or more poeple believing in their religion is not evidence for its validity..basically saying that people are typically of a certain religion because they are brought up that way, not because there is any better reason to believe in that particular religion..

He refuted that by saying that unlike islam, christianity is not a cultural religion..in typical christian societies, there are a lot of things in the culture that pressure people away from christianity..and being religious in not necessarily the norm...but in muslim societies, there is little pressure to go against the teachings of the religion and being a religious person IS the norm..so the number of christians compared to other religions like islam IS a testament to its validity.

I see this as a pretty good rebuttal to my argument..

certainly a huge number of people believing in something does not necesarily make it true, especially when there is little to no evidence to back it up...but I suppose that it may be a testament to its validity at least somewhat. I would also say that although christian societies may not be culturally christian in the sense that muslim societies are culturally muslim, christian societies ARE culturally theistic, and since the only "reasonable" religion around in most of these societies is christianity (basically just because most people around them are christians), there IS great pressure to be a christian in much the same way that there is great pressure to be a muslim in a muslim society...also the huge numbers of apathetic christians may point out this difference between our culture being generally theistic rather than christian.

What are your thoughts on this?