Article: Divorce Shocker: Most Marriages Do Make It


 This based on a book. I saw a post of this somewhere a few weeks back, so the book has been out for a while now.

The commonly used statistic for divorce in the US is 50%; that is, 50% of all US marriages end in divorce. Turns out there was never any basis for this number. Nobody ever researched the actual rate of the divorce. The 50% statistic was derived from the increase in the divorce rate in the 1970's to 1980's and extrapolated.

Various quotes:

"First-time marriages: probably 20 to 25 percent have ended in divorce on average," Feldhahn revealed. "Now, okay, that's still too high, but it's a whole lot better than what people think it is."

[I]t's even lower among churchgoers, where a couple's chance of divorcing is more likely in the single digits or teens.

Feldhahn has more shocking research: four out of five marriages are happy. That number flies in the face of the popular belief that only about 30 percent of marriages are happy.

Some observations:
1) Herbert Stein's law paraphrased, no trend that can't continue, won't.
2) No trend lasts forever. (I could not find an attribution)
3) People like to believe bad news.
4) Some people love to spread bad news.
5) "There are three types of lies: Lies, d**n lies, and statistics." This has been attributed to various wits, wags, and writers.

Bible Verses That Atheists Love

Original article: Bible Verses That Atheists Love

Hat tip: Atheists Pick Their Favorite Bible Verses From BibleGateway.com

Interesting selection. As Andy from the BibleGateway Blog notes, a lot of the favorite verses are out of Ecclesiastes. Reasons for specific passages include, "humanist," "a genuine, human cry," and "So miserable in a terrific way!"

The latter comment refers to the famous "Vanity, vanity..." passage, from a version that translate the word as "Meaningless! Meaningless!..." I understand why this appeals to the atheist. Do they?

Life without God, or at least a god, is meaningless. The problem is that all humans are hard-wired to find meaning as part of something larger than the self. People can find meaning with other people with a common world view; think of it as self-identifying as part of a tribe. It may be Christianity or Islam or Judaism. It may be socialism/communism, environmentalism, anarchism, feminism, or most other "isms".

The former group we call faiths; the latter ideologies. Both are belief systems with adherents, heretics, infidels, etc. (I could also include on-line communities; left, right, and other)

The person who loves the "vanity" passage is Pippa Evans, co-founder, Sunday Assembly; "a global network of people..."  A tribe of atheists, in whose company and shared ideas, she finds meaning.

If one does not believe in God, one will find something else to believe in.

[Side note here: a case can  be made that all belief systems are actually a way of finding a "righteousness by faith." That is, if I believe something to be true, that belief can make me be righteous in my own eyes. However, only if my righteousness by faith is rooted in Jesus is this a saving and transforming faith. The others merely result in self-righteousness because they are self, or man-made, beliefs.]