4 ms·

> https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2018/06/13/how-religious-commitment-varies-by-country-among-people-of-all-ages/pf-06-13-18_religiouscommitment-03-08/ htt

> https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2018/06/13/how-religious-commitment-varies-by-country-among-people-of-all-ages/pf-06-13-18_religiouscommitment-03-08/ https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2018/06/13/how-religiou... 10% of Germans claim to go to church every week? I've got friends, relatives, and acquaintances all over the country and of all age groups, and I don't know a single person who would even remotely qualify. That's at least a hundred people. Plugging that into the PMF of the binomial distribution gives me a likelihood so minuscule I should consider buying a lottery ticket. I call bullshit. That research is bunk. Even the churches themselves claim their weekly attendance is only about 3,300k (catholic church, 2017[1]) + 770k (evangelical churches, 2019[2]) - that doesn't yet mean the same attendees every week. I still don't trust these numbers, but that's already less than half the above research, making their self-reported attendance numbers essentially worthless. [1] https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/gottesdienste-laaaangweilig-100.html https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/gottesdienste-laaaangweilig-1... [2] https://www.ekhn.de/aktuell/detailmagazin/news/studie-ueber-gottesdienstbesuch-vorgelegt.html https://www.ekhn.de/aktuell/detailmagazin/news/studie-ueber-...

mlyle 3y ago
I'm not sure if you're trying to argue with me or enhance my point. If it's the former, note I said: "It's probably lower than this-- research indicates that people overstate their church attendance in surveys" and also pointed out the data is somewhat old.
- chmod775 3y ago
  > I'm not sure if you're trying to argue with me or enhance my point. My intent is neither. It's merely tangential.
hnaccount_rng 3y ago
That really says more about your social circle than anything else. Your assumption of statistical representativeness is (quite naturally) completely off. Depending on which part of my social circle one would talk about 10% would have been far too few.. At least a couple of years back. It’s getting better though ;)
- chmod775 3y ago
  > Depending on which part of my social circle one would talk about 10% would have been far too few. Depending on which part of the pizza you take, it's not going to have any pepperoni. In other words, if you intentionally take a non-representative sample, unsurprisingly your sample is not going to be representative. I don't really see the point you're trying to make. 10% of Germans cannot be weekly churchgoers when there's at most ~4 million weekly attendees overall. It's obviously impossible. A number lower than 5%, preferably ~1-2%, I can easily square away with that number and my own, not intentionally cherry-picked, sample.
  - hnaccount_rng 3y ago
    If I hadn’t gone to study in a reasonably sized city, my only social circle would have far beyond 10% weekly churchgoers (I’d guess roughly half). My point is: you seem to have grown up in a very church-removed part of the country (if I had to guess either big city or east Germany). That is where your biased sample comes from. It’s most certainly not representative, and if you claim it to be just because you don’t sub select, then you are at best ignorant and at worst intentionally dishonest ;)
    - chmod775 3y ago
      My family is from a rural area of Hesse (Waldeck-Frankenberg), spread over many small towns and villages. Very down-to-earth folk. Of course they're religious: lots of them go to church, but certainly not anywhere close to weekly. The vast majority will only go on major christian holidays, a smaller number occassionally when they make up their mind on a weekend. I don't doubt that if I asked, my relatives would however know some people who show up every sunday without fail. Same story for others I know in the former west: my Bavarian acquantainces, others in the south. I don't think there's a German state besides Bremen where I don't know someone. Currently I live in Berlin - I don't think the situation in the northeast needs explaining. Is your point that I must be wrong and that ~4 million weekly attendees in fact means 10% of Germans do attend church weekly? Cause if that's the kind of mathematics we're doing this conversation is pointless.

mlyle 3y ago

I'm not sure if you're trying to argue with me or enhance my point. If it's the former, note I said: "It's probably lower than this-- research indicates that people overstate their church attendance in surveys" and also pointed out the data is somewhat old.

chmod775 3y ago
> I'm not sure if you're trying to argue with me or enhance my point. My intent is neither. It's merely tangential.

hnaccount_rng 3y ago

That really says more about your social circle than anything else. Your assumption of statistical representativeness is (quite naturally) completely off. Depending on which part of my social circle one would talk about 10% would have been far too few.. At least a couple of years back. It’s getting better though ;)

chmod775 3y ago
> Depending on which part of my social circle one would talk about 10% would have been far too few. Depending on which part of the pizza you take, it's not going to have any pepperoni. In other words, if you intentionally take a non-representative sample, unsurprisingly your sample is not going to be representative. I don't really see the point you're trying to make. 10% of Germans cannot be weekly churchgoers when there's at most ~4 million weekly attendees overall. It's obviously impossible. A number lower than 5%, preferably ~1-2%, I can easily square away with that number and my own, not intentionally cherry-picked, sample.
- hnaccount_rng 3y ago
  If I hadn’t gone to study in a reasonably sized city, my only social circle would have far beyond 10% weekly churchgoers (I’d guess roughly half). My point is: you seem to have grown up in a very church-removed part of the country (if I had to guess either big city or east Germany). That is where your biased sample comes from. It’s most certainly not representative, and if you claim it to be just because you don’t sub select, then you are at best ignorant and at worst intentionally dishonest ;)
  - chmod775 3y ago
    My family is from a rural area of Hesse (Waldeck-Frankenberg), spread over many small towns and villages. Very down-to-earth folk. Of course they're religious: lots of them go to church, but certainly not anywhere close to weekly. The vast majority will only go on major christian holidays, a smaller number occassionally when they make up their mind on a weekend. I don't doubt that if I asked, my relatives would however know some people who show up every sunday without fail. Same story for others I know in the former west: my Bavarian acquantainces, others in the south. I don't think there's a German state besides Bremen where I don't know someone. Currently I live in Berlin - I don't think the situation in the northeast needs explaining. Is your point that I must be wrong and that ~4 million weekly attendees in fact means 10% of Germans do attend church weekly? Cause if that's the kind of mathematics we're doing this conversation is pointless.