Science Keeps Working

[Brakeman]

It's hard to accept your reality is crumbling because science is proving it wrong. ..

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

[robvalue]

Oh, yeah. It's on its way out baby. Time to get on the A train

The age of reason is coming.

[Ryantology]

My skepticism is at max level when the topic is anything having to do with either government or government subsidized research.
As long as scientists are tied to the grant strings of the (publicly financed) feeding trough of govt. my skepticism is unbounded. Yours ought to be also.

But nonexistent regarding the fairy tales you want to believe. Because, at the heart of it, what you want to believe is all that matters. You dismiss what reality has to say about itself every single time it contradicts the fairy tale.

That's not skepticism. That's just pitiful. So much of what you use and benefit from in life comes from a source you insist has nothing useful to contribute, for no reason you can even coherently describe. You're an old man who is hell-bent on dying as ignorant as the day you were born.

[professor]

Ryan, the vast majority of benefits you and Beccs have considered here, have had absolutely NOTHING to do with grant backed "Research" by people doing it for government entities.

Perhaps you somehow missed my usage of the word "Government" in my above words.
The granting of bucks to research is a relatively new event, thus the prostitution of scientist is a covert ongoing process.

Remove public funding and scientific investigation becomes more in line with other businesses.
Yes- businesses.
Every enterprise involved in research is doing it for some benefit.

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.

[IATIA]

So let me get this straight. If the government quit giving out grants for research, then the scientists would no longer "do it for the money".

Makes sense to me.

[professor]

NO IA, the granting of money is the creation of INFLUENCE to fulfill govt. desires.
The scientist comes up (or a similitude of it) with what the agency wants and he gets money.
No longer does he need to eat at McDonalds.

[IATIA]

One can receive a grant for researching just about anything. One can receive a grant to study the life cycle of a tree frog in South America. I guess the government is hoping the frogs can be used as WMD. Raining South American frogs could devastate a country.

I see your point.

[Surgenator]

Ryan, the vast majority of benefits you and Beccs have considered here, have had absolutely NOTHING to do with grant backed "Research" by people doing it for government entities.

Perhaps you somehow missed my usage of the word "Government" in my above words.
The granting of bucks to research is a relatively new event, thus the prostitution of scientist is a covert ongoing process.

Remove public funding and scientific investigation becomes more in line with other businesses.
Yes- businesses.
Every enterprise involved in research is doing it for some benefit.

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.

So I'm a prostiture. Well, I better buy a short skirt and some stelatoes. Ladies, should I wax my mid region or shave?

[rexbeccarox]

So I'm a prostiture. Well, I better buy a short skirt and some stelatoes. Ladies, should I wax my mid region or shave?

While, initially, the most painful thing I put myself through every six weeks, I find waxing to be a much more pleasant method on the hole... I mean whole.

[IATIA]

So I'm a prostiture. Well, I better buy a short skirt and some stelatoes. Ladies, should I wax my mid region or shave?

Have you ever tried waxing? I am thinking "What Women Want".