Science Keeps Working

[Surgenator]

Nope, but it sounds painful.

[C4RM5]

My reality isn't crumbling

Religion is crumbling.

While Gallup polls and other statisticians have turned in the same percentage — about 40% of the population — of average weekend church attendees for the past 70 years, a different sort of research paints quite a disparate picture of how many Americans attend a local church on any given Sunday.

Initially prompted to discover how church plants in America were really doing, Olson, director of church planting for the Evangelical Covenant Church (covchurch.org), began collecting data in the late “80s, gradually expanding his research to encompass overall attendance trends in the Church. In his study, he tracked the annual attendance of more than 200,000 individual Orthodox Christian churches (the accepted U.S. church universe is 330,000). To determine attendance at the remaining 100,000-plus Orthodox Christian churches, he used statistical models, which included multiplying a church”s membership number by the denomination”s membership-to-attendance ratio.

The Numbers

His findings reveal that the actual rate of church attendance from head counts is less than half of the 40% the pollsters report. Numbers from actual counts of people in Orthodox Christian churches (Catholic, mainline and evangelical) show that in 2004, 17.7% of the population attended a Christian church on any given weekend.

Another study published in 2005 in The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion by sociologists C. Kirk Hadaway and Penny Long Marler — known for their scholarly research on the Church — backs up his findings. Their report reveals that the actual number of people worshipping each week is closer to Olson”s 17.7% figure — 52 million people instead of the pollster-reported 132 million (40%).

“We knew that over the past 30 to 40 years, denominations had increasingly reported a decline in their numbers,” Marler says. “Even a still-growing denomination like the Southern Baptist Convention had reported slowed growth. Most of the mainline denominations were all reporting a net loss over the past 30 years. And at the same time, the Gallup polls had remained stable. It didn”t make sense.”

2. American church attendance is steadily declining.

In 1990, 20.4% of the population attended an Orthodox Christian church on any given weekend. In 2000, that percentage dropped to 18.7% and to 17.7% by 2004. Olson explains that while church attendance numbers have stayed about the same from 1990 to 2004, the U.S. population has grown by 18.1% — more than 48 million people. “So even though the number of attendees is the same, our churches are not keeping up with population growth,” he says.

http://www.churchleaders.com/pastors/pas...erica.html

Yet still my point makes sense, religion as a whole is crumbling but my personal believes aren't.

[MissR]

Interesting stuff. The Bible is full of shit!

[Tonus]

Yet still my point makes sense, religion as a whole is crumbling but my personal believes aren't.

That's an acceptable scenario.

[Tombochan]

@IATIA: Fucking hilarious scene!

[Ryantology]

Prostitution, in this case is just like the kind we are most familiar with- doing something for money that no normal parent would want their daughter to do.
Only by closing our eyes to the power of money can we imagine these "Researchers" are bereft of influence via the desires of government.

If money is prostituting science, then imagine what it must be doing to religion. You'd therefore have no issue with taxing church income at 100% less absolutely necessary expenses, because they are nothing but whorehouses making profits and not paying their fair share.

[Cyberman]

At least science delivers what it promises for the money. Religion just takes the cash then describes a picture of what you're buying.

[abaris]

If money is prostituting science, then imagine what it must be doing to religion. You'd therefore have no issue with taxing church income at 100% less absolutely necessary expenses, because they are nothing but whorehouses making profits and not paying their fair share.

And imagine what it's doing to politics. According to this analogy, politics is full of sluts and rent boys. And I even agree with that kind of assessment.

Compared to these, science is a sad old five dollar hooker, scraping by on the street corner.

[robvalue]

I'll give you a quick hypothesis for 5 bucks. If you want a full theory, that'll set you back 20.

[Cyberman]

Tits are extra.