Future Pundit Randall Parker -- who often has some very interesting links and perspectives -- misses the boat with his analysis of a study about church attendance and virginity. First the study results:
His team's survey found that 13.9 per cent of men and 8.9 per cent of women said they have never had sex.Men and women who attended church at least once a week were respectively 5 and 3.9 times more likely to be virgins than those who attended church less often. Virgins of both sexes were slightly less likely to have swigged a beer in the last year, compared to non-virgins. And women with college degrees were 5.4 times more likely to be virgins than women who never got their Bachelor's.
From this, Parker concludes:
I see this as a sign that church attendance and intelligence are both being selected against.
But of course sexual promiscuity is very different from actually having children. According to this Pew U.S. Religious Landscape Survey from 2008, people of pretty much every religion have a lot more children (and have them younger) than atheists and agnostics (see page 68 for a table).
Furthermore, Parker's impression of churchgoers seems to be somewhat warped:
Note the higher incidence of virginity among church-attending men than among church-attending women. I had a girlfriend who attended church (unlike myself) who complained to me that too many of the guys at church were basically pussies. Not masculine enough for her.
Presumably his girlfriend was not attending a Baptist church.
