Continued decline in baptisms, membership, attendance, donations / increase in churches

There is a point to this?  Somewhere ?

One would have to be minimally literate for starters, but It's just factual information and current knowledge particular to the majority of Southern Christians. Make of it what you will.

So, you are asked to clarify why this would matter to anyone here, and you felt the need to cast an insult about literacy? 

Did I make you feel inadequate or something?

I remember a time when someone would visit a church, they were made to feel welcome. These days, a visitor is lucky to be spoken to, much less made welcome. It's all a social network now & has no room for strangers.

BMC,

I actually did clarify what should have been obvious. Hence why I think literacy is a start but reading comprehension is key.

Speaking of literacy, don't you know that species names are not capitalized, you big ape? 

Witty, but it's my forum name, so capitals. And I'm a great ape.

So, are you trying to reassure yourself with your "intelligence" as you trudge down the wrong road? 

I'd rather be on the right road, than intelligent, but fortunately God blessed me with both qualities. 

Well then, who am I to tell you that you might wrong on both counts then.

BTW, 8 more Baptists left the church while you guys vainly try to focus on me, instead of why Southern Baptists are disappearing.

Maybe they became Jehovah's Witnesses. 

They were raptured.   Just us Heathens left on the Earth. 

No juan, it would be a much better world if there were only the "heathens" left.

I would guess membership is down in most churches. Seems they have forgotten what a church is for.

As for JW, they have the most faithful members I have ever seen.

Uh, Rumfoord--

You chide A. Robustus for capitalizing a species name and then you go on to identify A. Robustus as a "big ape."

Those who study the fragmentary remains of critters from long ago do not consider Australopithecus robustus to be an "ape," but rather to be a "hominid."

"Broom spent some time working on a monograph of the australopithecines, which was published in 1946. This monograph included the description of TM 1517, and was a turning point for the South African australopithecines in the eyes of the world. The monograph received the U.S. National Academy of Sciences award for the most important book of the year in biology, and along with L Gros Clark’s published approval of the South African australopithecines as hominids, was very important in altering the view that the South African specimens were human ancestors and not simply an ape."

http://archaeologyinfo.com/australopithecus-robustus/

Personally, I do not place much credence in the interpretations of the creative paleontologists who classify such fossils, since they so often have to back-track and revise their initially confident findings.  But if you are going to pedantically insist on correctness in capitalization, then you should also respect the more significant matter of taxonomic accuracy.  A hominid is not an ape. Australopithecus rubustus, per the "experts," is a hominid, and therefore not an ape.  Thus A. Robustus, of this forum, might be a "big hominid," but is not a "big ape." 

I thought most hominids had evolved a sense of humor. 

How funny would "big hominid" sound? 

Also, from Wikipedia:

"The Hominidae (pronounced /hɒˈmɪnɨdiː/; anglicized hominids, also known as great apes^{[notes 1]}), as the term is used here, form a taxonomic family, including four extant genera: chimpanzees, gorillas, humans, and orangutans.^[1] In the past, the term was used in the more restricted sense of humans and relatives of humans closer than chimpanzees."

Great ape, big ape, big deal. 

These stats are not pretty. Less members and more churches tells me we have more churches splitting. Its a shame that believers cannot work out their differences and get along. Just because I don't believe exactly like others in the congregation doesn't mean we can't worship together.

Since they can't afford new clothes, they can't carry out the original intent.

bump

Oops, you did it again.

  More FAIL....jimi.

Adot,

The time has simply come for religion to fade away.  There is a reason why atheism is the fastest growing school of thought on religion in America today. 

Science and reason don't know everything, but religion doesn't know anything.

nsns

If Religion should fade away then the Earth would end, It was destroyed before because People were so Wicked, and you take all the Christians away and what reason does God have to let it stand? God would have spared Sodom and Gomorrah if there had been Ten righteous People lived there but there was not Ten so He destroyed it, and what reason would he have to let a World stand where there were nothing but Athiests?

by the way when I attended School they taught that  a Person, Place or Thing should be Capitalized, has it changed?

Why did your god even put you on earth to begin with? What reason does your god have to leave you on the earth right now? Makes NO sense. Why doesn't he just take you on to that wonderful heaven? Seems to me he'd have just cut out the middle man (earth) and "created" you in heaven to begin with.

Not one word in the above sentence is capitalized correctly. The rules have not changed; do you remember the one about capitalizing the first word in a sentence? Also, how about capitalizing proper nouns? There are none in your sentence.

That particular style of writing is almost as annoying as the "StUdLyCaPs" used by AOLosers and sixteen year old girls.

Proper nouns, yes.  NOT "everyf#%king noun in a sentence." A person's name, a place name, a thing's proper name.

Start Case should be used in advertising and newspaper headlines, and maybe even song lyrics- not in everyday sentences.

Because Capitalizing Words that Don't Need to be Capitalized makes you sound kind of retarded.

If you've ever had to struggle through an entire paragraph full of capitalized words and run on sentences written by a bubblegummer-you know what I mean.

Sorry, Al...

That statement is just so retarded I don't even know how to respond to it.

In my opinion, anybody who would actually believe that is not only dumb enough to be led around by the nose ring, but is actually dumb enough to need watering twice a week.

no use trying to prove anything to the Children of the Prince of  darkness, I have found out from reading this Forum that everybody on here  is a born genius, and if my posts don't fit the way you think Ignore them nobody makes you read them.

Who is the prince of darkness and who are his children?

You prolly should hope nobody hands ya a fork.

Seems like that was the same school of thought they had right before

Noah's Ark started floating.

Skippy

Hey skip, tell me more about that ark. The one large enough to hold two of every animal in the world and food for them. And why are some animals only found in certain parts of the world skippy? Shouldn't every species be found in the area where the ark landed? How did noah pull that off?

Yeah, c'mon Skip.

*This oughtta be good.*

The Prince of darkness is the Devil and his Children are unbelievers

Prince, are you really that small minded and mean? You post crap like that and want people to believe you're a good person? I don't believe in a god and I am far from being a child of a devil. BTW prince, satan doesn't exist either.

NSNS,

Religion may not know much compared to science, but it knows how to perpetuate itself, it's myths and protect it's power. I suspect that modern religions will progressively fade away for the majority just like all previous religions have. Just don't hold your breath for a timely outcome to your liking, at the risk of expiring very prematurely.

Just more weeping and moaning. No better than some of these religious nuts here.

well that's just silly.

if there IS a prince of darkness, and it IS the devil, i promise you any children of satan are fully aware of the existance of God.

if you're trying to equate athiests to the children of satan, ie , non-christians... what about the people who were before the judao-christian mythology begain?

are they all children of satan?