God is Not Going Anywhere: I see that Hitchens has a new book out entitled, "God is Not Great," but it seems to me that a much more interesting topic might be called "God is Not Going Anywhere." The argument that religion is terribly harmful seems about as fresh as grandma's fart, and it makes Hitchens sound like his mom made him go to Sunday School when he wanted to be watching girls' boobies at the matinee.

I'll do a more careful analysis later, but for now I looked at the earliest and latest years (1981 and 2001) that the World Values Survey asked a very large sample of people all around the world how often they attend religious services. In 1981, 8.0% went more than once a week. In 2001, the number was 21.0%. Attending for holidays, etc. was also up from 6.3% to 14.7%. The one large drop was the never- or almost never-attending category--down from 29.5% to 17.9%.