"Death of God" versus "Death of godlessness"

From the allegations of plagiarism (not the same old ones) to the pseudoscientific nonsense lifted from dishonest "work" by the Disco Institute, Ann Coulter's new book is basically nothing but cannon fodder by this point. I have nothing new to say about it, but you really ought to read what real scientists have said about her anti-evolutionary screed. In all honesty, most people dismiss the polemicist as the right-wing version of Michael Moore, and in so doing, allow her rhetoric to pump up her own choir, to which she enthusiastically preaches and gets a few feedback "Amen!" shouts from.

One of the things that really bothers me is when people use the word "bombshell" to describe Ann, or in any way imply that she is sexy/attractive. Look at this picture of the woman, and make sure you take some Phenergan first. She is dog ugly. Peroid.

While reading over some reviews of her new rant-rag, I noted that William Dembski had proudly endorsed her book on his site. He also boldly steps up for credit for "helping" with all of the "science" in her book. Reading over there, I attempted to leave a comment on Debmski's post after scanning it, in response to a Gildodgen there who asserted that godlessness is on the wane. Of course, might doesn't make right, so minority views aren't necessarily right or wrong as a virtue of their popularity. However, in this case, the veracity of Gildodgen's claim is highly dubious. My response follows:

(begin comment)
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Gildodgen wrote:

The 19th and early 20th centuries witnessed the death of God. At the turn of the 21st century we are witnessing the death of Godlessness. It’s all rather exciting.

I'm afraid that this hopeful assertion is terribly contradicted by recent studies, (ARIS) which rather conclusively showed that the number of people who went from any religion to no religion increased by 23% over the years studied.

In their words, the researchers note:

The top three "gainers" in America's vast religious market place appear to be Evangelical Christians, those describing themselves as Non-Denominational Christians and those who profess no religion. Looking at patterns of religious change from this perspective, the evidence points as much to the rejection of faith as to the seeking of faith among American adults. Indeed, among those who previously had no religion, just 5% report current identification with one or another of the major religions.

The raw number of "no religion" folks swamps the Evangelicals by about 30-fold and non-denoms by about 14-fold. In numerical form, the "no religion" switch from some prior religion increased by approx. 6.6 million persons, and those "switching out" were approx. 1.1 million persons = approx. 5.5 million net deconverts.

Do the math on this, and you'll see that no other category even comes close. Not one. The next highest number of net converts is 1.4 million for "Christian" (fourfold less) and then 600,000 for "Pentecostal". So, you may want to start checking the data before baldly asserting that "godlessness" is somehow waning. On the contrary, friend, it is waxing full.

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(end comment)

They probably won't publish the comment, but I wanted to give its major point an airing...somewhere. Unfortunately for Gildodgen, and Coulter, godlessness is a growing phenomenon, and one that they will have to learn to intelligently deal with, should they want to maintain [that's a joke] intellectual credibility in the 21st century.
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Technorati tags: Ann Coulter, Intelligent Design, Evolution, William Dembski, Discovery Institute, godless