Religious Conversions

In case you need a translation for Coragyps' reply: Nazi (ie, Nazionalsozialistisch) does not equal "atheist". Rather, it comes closer to equaling Lutheran.After all, consider Luther in the process of the creation of the Reformation. Early on, he sought to reach out to the Jews, to draw them in. But when they refused to convert, Luther's rhetoric became very anti-Semitic.Yet, as I understand it, Hitler was a Catholic. Circa 1934, he had negotiated an agreement with the Catholic Church, the Reichskonkordat, which remains in effect to this day and was used in the mid/late-1980's to prosecute dissidents against Catholic views on birth control for blasphemy.At the very least, Nazi forces all marched into the field under the same banner: Gott mit uns ("God is with us").Nazis were far more Christian than they were atheist. Incredibly far more so.Now, what are the numbers of those deconverting from Christianity? 60% to 80% of those children raised on fundamentalist Christianity. And most of them are not converting to another form of Christianity (which is the primary source of fundamentalism's numbers in Catholic countries), but rather giving up on religion altogether.Sources of new members is one thing. The hemorraging of current members is an entirely different thing. What is the net flow? And how long can you keep it up?

Mais certainment!First source is Kent Hovind. ... OK, now that you've cleaned the coffee off your monitor screen ... In his fourth seminar video (downloaded from his site circa 2003) at about 42 minutes 55 seconds, he displays a slide that quotes from a Jeremiah Films video, Let My Children Go, by Caryl Matritiano:

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75% of all children raised in Christian homes who attend public schools will reject the Christian faith by their first year of college.

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The video promotes home-schooling, so obviously the statistic was cited by both Matritiano and Hovind as evidence of public education being hostile to religious beliefs. My interpretation of that statistic is that the religious beliefs being taught those kids are false and cannot withstand exposure to the real world. But regardless of what cause or causes we assign to that statistic, it does still represent a high rate of loss.My primary source, however, is from a review for a book, Generation Ex-Christian: Why Young Adults Are Leaving the Faith. . .and How to Bring Them Back by Drew Dyck. The review is at http://thechapel.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/6885/ and the book's amazon.com page is at http://www.amazon.com/...ving-Faith/dp/0802443559/ref=sr_1_1. The pertinent quote from the review is taken from the book's product description which is also posted on amazon.com, so I'll copy it from there (besides which, web filters here at work block the review site):

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Young people aren’t walking away from the churchthey’re sprinting. According to a recent study by Ranier Research, 70 percent of youth leave church by the time they are 22 years old. Barna Group estimates that 80 percent of those reared in the church will be disengaged by the time they are 29 years old. Unlike earlier generations of church dropouts, these leavers are unlikely to seek out alternative forms of Christian community such as home churches and small groups. When they leave church, many leave the faith as well.

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Drawing on recent research and in-depth interviews with young leavers, Generation Ex-Christian will shine a light on this crisis and propose effective responses that go beyond slick services or edgy outreach.

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Drew Dyck is the editorial manager of the ministry team at Christianity Today International. This is a Christian book that finally addresses a serious problem that churches have been unable or unwilling to handle. The first two reader reviews are from youth ministry leaders who have first-hand experience with the problem.Of course, most Christians will simply go into denial about this problem. Dawn did, insisting that they weren't "real Christians" to begin with. I'm sure the Chuck77 will do the same, even though we also have his favorite kind of evidence, anecdotal.For example, there are the several "evolutionists" here who used to be creationists. I've got links to stories by ex-creationists on my links page. And there's also ex-Christian forums like ex-christian.net that's just chock full of anecdotal evidence. What more could Chuck ask for?Now, I think though that the real question is not how many are converting/deconverting/cross-converting, but rather why? Dyck found that there's no one answer to that.

Here's an analogy. An important statistic for councils of Boy Scouts of America, Inc, is the number of boys being served by that council. If you look at a graph of membership over the year, you will notice something interesting. It starts out low in February and climbs throughout the year, never dipping down anywhere, exhibits a sharp upward surge in September, continues to climb, and then suddenly plummets way down in February, whereupon it starts its steady climb again.The explanation for the behavior of that curve is that it does not reflect reality. Throughout the year, you have boys joining and leaving units all the time, sometimes to go to another unit and oftentimes dropping out of the program, but BSA only tracks the boys joining and never the ones who leave. Then every February all the units recharter with the council, turning in everyone's annual dues as well as a roster of who all is actually in the unit. It is only then that BSA can take into account everybody who's left during the year, which explains why membership suddenly plummets in February. And the sharp upwards spike in September is due to the massive signing up of new cub scouts at the start of the school year.So except for that one time of the year, BSA is grossly inflating its membership figures. A cynic would also note that teh amount of aid BSA receives from charities is often tied to those inflated membership figures. But what is the alternative? How can BSA track those kids who leave? Take attendence all the time like the public schools do? Federal and state funding for the schools is based on those daily attendence figures, so taking attendence is very serious business. But would that work for BSA? Could that work? And what incentive does BSA have to implement such intensive records-keeping?I see religions and churches in a very similar situation to BSA's. They can and do record new members joining, but they don't really have any way to track who's leaving. Also, they do have incentives to record new members, but no incentive to record departing members. Besides, most who leave simply disappear from the church and it isn't until later that someone might comment that they hadn't seen so-n-so for a while. And religions don't usually have something like BSA's annual rechartering to reset their numbers back to reality, at least for one instant each year.The Unitarian-Universalist Association (UUA) has the opposite problem from BSA's. In census and opinion polling, many times more respondents self-identify as UU than are members of the UUA. We're just to darned independent!

OK, so just how exactly is that supposed to contradict evolution?Oh do please be very specific.

So then why bring it up?For that matter, just exactly why do you say that it doesn't?

Similarly on a Yahoo forum a decade ago, when a creationist repeated the "amount of sodium in the sea" PRATT and I explained residence times to him, I also asked him why he and so many other creationists repeatedly resort to such unconvincing claims and arguments. He replied that the only reason I find those claims and arguments unconvincing is because I am not already convinced.Chuck is already convinced. That is why he finds that claim so convincing.Of course, that is based on anecdotal evidence, a single individual's personal testimony, but I find it convincing.