This is so fuckin' weird...

[Jeremy NYC]

Atheist Shermer tells us to give up hope of ever disposing of religion, because it is sweeping over the U.S., with 95% beleiveing in the god thingy and most of those going to church.Religous conservative Hans Zeiger, on the other hand, quotes:"According to the Barna Group, the number of American adults who do not attend church has doubled from 39 million to 75 million in the past 13 years, despite a 15 percent rise in the American population. While 21 percent of adults never attended church during a six-month period (with the exception of weddings, funerals, Christmas, or Easter) in 1991, 34 percent are un-churched today.Churches have particularly alienated men. 55 percent of the un-churched are men. And only 38 percent of Americans who consider themselves "born again" are men. 9 million American men use Viagra. Fewer men have joined churches in the past decade combined.The un-churched are radical individualists. According to the pollster George Barna, they are less likely to vote, contribute financially to non-profit organizations, or become involved in community activities. Nearly 40 percent of the un-churched are single, never-married adults, compared to 26 percent of the general adult population.The un-churched are also younger, at 38, than the median age of Americans, 43. Combining the Barna information on age and gender, church demographics are seriously lacking in young and middle-aged men. The face of the American church in 2004 is the elderly woman." ---------------------------------Miller's Law of Strange Behavior- To understand any apparently baffling behavior by another human, ask: what status game is this individual playing, to show off which heritable traits, in which mating market?

[SunSprite86]

Jeremy,There's not enough of a quote from Shermer to tell whether he had some good numbers to go by or whether he was just making a general estimate with that 95% (sorry, I don't have his book, so I can't go read more). The other guy [Zeiger] seems to have a lot of numbers, but after taking a statistics class - I learned folks can make numbers say just about anything they want. Of course, this guy isn't liking what his numbers are telling him.I don't like the attitude of folks like Zeiger. They believe that to be "religious" you have to go to church. That may be true, if they're talking about religious ritual. However, one does NOT necessarily have to go to church to have a spiritual life. Maybe some of that 38% of "unchurched" people fall into that category. Attending church is supposed to help people improve their spiritual life, but many times in my own life I've found the exact opposite to be true.Anyway, there are many reasons why those numbers might not match: number of people polled, cross-section of the country, wording of the questions, honesty of those answering the poll, etc.Karen