Oh, And One More Thing...

Our buddy Ken Ham recently put up a blog post about stopping the "moral freefall" in the United States. His answer, of course, is that we're in this "freefall" because people are getting less religious and thus the solution is that people should get more religious. Unfortunately, Ken's got it all wrong. Church attendance in the U.S. remains both relatively stable and unsually high compared to the rest of the world.* At the same time, our crime rates have been trending unmistakably downward for years. (There's a slight hiccup in the last couple of years, accounted for by worsening economic conditions, but 2007 remains well below, say 1980 in terms of per capita crimes.) So wait...church attendance is more or less unchanged and crime is decreasing.+

What moral freefall is Ken talking about? Hmm...what's he define as a moral freefall?

...replacing God as the cultural centerpiece.... abortion, sexual permissiveness and moral relativism.

Oh, okay, so when Ken talks about a "moral freefall" he doesn't mean actual crime, he just means stuff that he doesn't like. Luckily for Ken, there's a place on earth where God is the centerpiece of all of daily life, abortion is almost totally illegal, sexual permissiveness is strongly discouraged, and morals are defined with absolute rigid certainty. Have fun, Ken. Don't forget to write.


*These church attendance numbers may be somewhat higher than reality. Surveys like the ones cited above rely on self-reporting and thus are prone skewing because respondents tend to tailor their answers to fit what they think is socially acceptable. Since church attendance is still considered to be a morally desirable thing in this country, some respondents may be likely to answer "yes" to the standard "have you been to church in the last seven days" question even if they really haven't.

+ Don't get cocky though, both our violent crime rates and religiosity are unusually high compared to rest of the world.