It seems that not being religious is a form of risk-taking, consistent with other patterns of short-sighted behaviour in men.
From Rodney Stark
Had the followers of Jesus remained an obscure Jewish sect, most of you would not have learned to read, and the rest of you would be reading from hand-copied scrolls.
Theology is in disrepute among most Western intellectuals. The word is taken to mean a passe form of religious thinking that embraces irrationality and dogmatism. So too, Scholasticism.
It can be demonstrated that in any society there is a distribution of religious tastes and concerns.
American churches work very hard at reaching out to people to bring them in.
Every minister knows it's harder to get the guys to church than the women. We ought to be asking why this is.
A whole lot of Americans have never met a Mormon.
Most churches are run by preachers who went to seminaries, who decided to be preachers when they were 18, 19, 20 years old. These preachers never met a payroll. They don't know how the world works.
There was only one decline in church attendance, and that was in the late 1960s when the Vatican said it was not a sin to miss Mass. They said Catholics could act like Protestants, and so they did.
Those who belong to megachurches display as high a level of personal commitment as do those who attend small congregations.
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