Haven't read the whole thread, didn't want to go down that rabbit hole again. But to opine on the original question, the decline in church attendance can mean nothing good for our society. When I was growing up, it seemed just about everyone attended church and society was on the whole much more well-behaved and civil. Being in church made you part of a community, and there were behavioral expectations that one felt compelled to meet; a sort of peer pressure, if you will. I am sure there were some, perhaps many, who simply warmed the pews and whose behavior outside of church was, shall we say, less than exemplary. But the church served to keep a lid on the sinful impulses that we all have. That lid, to the extent that it is still in place, is not as tight as it used to be and we see the result everywhere around us. And I do believe that regular church attendance might eventually have brought some into a real belief in Christ. It did for me.
I am not saying that just because someone doesn't attend church they are a bad person; I am saying that in my opinion the more people that a society has attending church, the fewer bad people it will have.
Let's take a look at the countries with highest Church attendance.
1. Nigeria. 2. Zambia 3. Haiti 4. Tanzania 5. Central African Republic 6. Chad 7. Liberia 8. Mozambique 9. Uganda 10. Kenya 11. Ethiopia 12. Cameroon 13. Guatemala 14. Democratic Republic of the Congo 15. Rwanda
The first civilized country on the list is Japan, at 50% of the population who attends at least weekly.
Since you believe Church attendance makes people behave so well, let me know which of those 15 countries listed above you will move to and leave you door unlocked at night.
I do not consider any of the places you have named as "our" society.
Your incessant animus toward Christianity has long worn thin.
Sorry to hear that you don't like facts, but they are stubborn things. Point of the matter is, there is a correlation between Church attendance and measures of well being, but it's a NEGATIVE correlation. In general, the more fundamentalist a society or group of people, the worse the outcomes for measures of well being.
If you took a careful look at the list above, you would notice they are not all Christian majority nations. Some are such a Rwanda were the genocide was preached for the pulpits of the Catholic Churches, but some are not, such as Ethiopia and Nigeria. Bottom line is, more people in church does not benefit the general populace.
You didn't use logic or reason to get into this opinion, I cannot use logic or reason to get you out of it.
You cannot over estimate the unimportance of nearly everything. John Maxwell
