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This is important as many studies are based solely on self-reported [use or identification], even though recent work found only one third of participants give accurate accounts of how much time they spend online when asked after the fact .

True story, although I read it many years ago in stat class:

Students, as a project for class, covered a medium-small town and collected self-reported church attendance. Sure enough, the "40% attended church each week," figure surfaced.

The students took that information to area churches and the leaders there (several sects) said, "We wish that were the case!"

Suspicious, the team of students surveyed the parking lots of the various churches during hours of worship and counted the cars in the parking lots.

Conclusion? "60% of the population did not attend church in the last week, 20% of the population did, and 20% were liars."

Here's a link to a similar finding:

We should not expect religious behavior to he immune to such misreporting.

Several years ago we teamed up with sociologist Mark Chaves to test the 40 percent figure for church attendance.

Our initial study, based on attendance counts in Protestant churches in one Ohio county and Catholic churches in 18 dioceses, indicated a much lower rate of religious participation than the polls report. Instead of 40 percent of Protestants attending church, we found 20 percent. Instead of 50 percent of Catholics attending church, we found 28 percent. In other words, actual church attendance was about half the rate indicated by national public opinion polls.

If you want logic, then you could try this on for size, it's available in its entirety online, only lasts for about forty pages:Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead? by Oscar Cullmannand addresses the severe discontinuity that exists between the metaphysical philosophy of the ancient Greeks and the soteriology of Christendom. This discontinuity was ignored and partially syncretized to result in the keystone misconception regarding Christian eschatology that seeped in through Scholasticism in the middle ages.

The Kingdom of God is Within You by Leo Tolstoy
which was second only to
Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead? by Oscar Cullmann

I have pretty good reasons for doubting polls that purport to show that regular religious observance is much over 25% of the U.S. population:

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=237

The methodology in your poll is pretty flawed to begin with. Just asking folks "Do you go to church?" will bring an avalanche of false positives because many people will respond with an idealized answer rather than the cold, hard truth.

Incidentally, try talking to church leaders about "48% US church attendance" and you'll find lots of skepticism about that figure from folks who are in a position to have fairly authoritative opinions on the topic.

My former residence, Dallas, was called the "most Christian large city in North America" in a fascinating BBC documentary on religion in America back in the 80's. This was based on the churches-per-population stats. I believe it was the same program which also pointed out that Dallas also had the highest ratio of adult businesses (topless clubs, porn shops) to population. And, bitingly, it also pointed out that the Day of Worship was the "most segregated day of the week in America." Which is absolutely true. We can all work together, eat together, play together, but don't let an African-American try to get a pew in the white Baptist church across the street from me. God forbid. Our real best efforts at morality shine in our secular society, not in our religious institutions, unfortunately.

I thought the original version of Hebrews was in Greek.

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?tit le=91#_Toc439066025

My two cents: I would like to think that most of America finds creationism so compelling because it seems to balance the tendencies of the scientific method towards philosophical naturalism, reductivism, towards ignoring questions about first and final causes, towards secularism, etc. Creationism then becomes a sort of heroic optimism against the perceived nihilism of science, even if it is a bit of an over-reaction. However, I frankly don't think that most of us here in the US understand science well enough to be scared of its tendencies. No, I have to understand creationism as the result of bad theology. Creationism is not compelling. Instead, it is needed for a literal reading of the Bible. Without a literal reading of the Bible, it no longer seems be possible to find moral and religious truths in as straightforward a manner as we find scientific and mathematical ones. The person who is not conscientious now seems able to interpret the Bible in whatever way happens to be the most convenient, and the person who is conscientious must now doubt that his or her actions are the right ones. In any case, the average Biblical literalist is still interpreting the Bible. For example, he reads Genesis very differently than, say, a 3rd century BC reader did. This article says it far more convincingly that I could http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?tit le=1917 . Creationism, then, is not about defending theism. Instead, it is about trying to keep the doubt of modern life sequestered from certain religious principles. Unfortunately, religion has always involved doubt. It is certain aspects of the modern scientific method that do not involve doubt- we do not doubt, for example, that a jet will take off (barring some sort of catastrophe), or that an apple will fall towards the Earth. This kind of certainty is what needs to be kept separate from religion.

You obviously think everyone is an idiot.

Some people don't have time to read 8 hours of fucking news every day to meet your standards.

One should take in all sources of news and make up their own minds.

1) "To me the evidence is conclusive...Over and over again in the high court I have secured the verdict on evidence no nearly so compelling [as the evidence for Jesus' resurrection]."--Sir Edward Clarke, former Justice of the High Court of England
http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/num9.htm,
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/2964/resurrecti on-evidence.html,
http://www.leaderu.com/truth/1truth22.html

2) Not true. Christian teaching is that sex is a gift from God, and cannot in itself be sinful, but it is sinful to indulge yourself, to the exclusion of God. Never mind the psalms, read the song of songs.

3) hardly a basic or core belief, but prove it never happened, and that it was meant literally, which you must do say it is "bunk"

4) "The odds against a universe like ours coming out of something like the Big Bang are enormous. I think there are clearly religious implications" (John Boslough, Stephen Hawking's Universe, p. 121).

First of all, the top tax rate only taxes the portion of income that is over that level. The lower tax rates are applied to the income below that level. (ie, if you make 200,000, the first 10,000 is taxed at rate 1, the next 50,000 is taxed at rate 2, etc.) Nobody pays the top rate on their entire income.

Secondly, let's compare the percentage of taxes paid to the percentage of wealth held. The wealth numbers are a few years older than the tax numbers, so I expect the differences to actually be larger.

The top 1% of wealth owners had 40% of the wealth, but paid only 35% of the income tax burden? Seems like a pretty sweet deal to me. The richest 20% owned 80% of the wealth, and the tax stats show that at the 25th percentile the tax burden is 82%. Looks like the trend is for tax burden to lag behind "wealth burden".

Magic/Myth/Religion are all ways to explain the world to those who can't bother to be interested in the actual truth.

No it doesn't, I'm afraid. I wish it did, but this is in fact quite deliberate.

By seeing something as overt as this but letting it go, the public is subconsciously, (and not even very subconsciously at that), chosing to accept subserviance. The level of overt control is raised slowly, and the public lets it go at each level, until they have attained a completly defeated slave mentality.

The aim of the current war being waged by government against Americans is not to overtly defeat the populace. It's to lead the populace into a state of self-defeat.

That's how it works. --If they push too far with one attack, (Like this MATRIX shit), and the people start getting rowdy, then they'll immediately pull back and say, "Sorry, Sorry. Didn't mean it, we won't do it. --Well, except for maybe these little parts here and here." And then they'll try again in two weeks with something else. You cannot get them to stop, and you will not be able to find a rational agreement through legislation, because the enemy is not seeking balance; it is seeking total domination and it will not stop pushing and pecking until it has achieved its ends. The public, though dull-witted, is for the most part 'good and reasonable' which means that it will continue to act in good faith. Psychopaths, like Bush are not human and so they will never act in good faith. It's like a diode. The current goes in one direction only. You don't play cards with psychos.

There are exactly three responses one can take to this kind of tactic:

1. Haul the heads of government out of their offices and hang them all for high treason.

2. Get out of the U.S. before they haul you out of *your* office and send you to a camp. (Here's another with site with some photos, --one including a shot of a placard with a date stamp, reading "Jun 00", presumably indicating a construction date shortly after Shrub's election. This particular set of photos is of an un-manned camp, hence the ability to take photos).

3. Sit on your ass and try to pretend that everything will work out okay until it's too late. See, "Why I did not leave Nazi Germany in Time".

-FL

Sterno [is] warmed over a fire of newspapers preparatory to squeezing it through a sock to make a drink called "Pink Lady."

As an aside, the alcoholic 67-year old survivor of The Andromeda Strain had a penchant for strained Sterno - causing the acidosis that spared him from the (fictional) pestilence.

Crighton's character explained the process of deriving potable hooch from the magenta glob, and referred to the product as 'squeeze.'

Aww!