These poll results should be quite pleasing to the Devil.

Perhaps it is a good thing. Consider that secular countries like Canada and France do a far better job of following the teachings of Christ with things like universal health care and childhood hunger. And look within the US -- states in the Bible Belt have higher rates of divorce, abortion and murder.

When the basic premise of a religion is "faith, not works," that religion cannot help but be associated with those who will act in evil ways secure in their baptism. Basic morality seems to be more and more associated with those who do not follow Christianity.

As someone who ministers in the state of Utah, I can tell you that the numbers being reported are not realistic; in fact, they seem incongruous to reality among the LDS community. Their own numbers being reported in local newspapers (Salt Lake Tribune, Deseret News) indicate a dramatic decline in their membership rather than any growth. This is what has been reported now for a few years. To read the report findings indicated in your article then become troublesome to me because they do not match the reality here. This is my first response; I would have to do some more research into the research to understand how they came up with their numbers. Nevertheless, I must say there is some serious conflict with reality.

Then, with the Muslim numbers there is also a problem. I have had contact with missionary leaders because of my interest in missions as well as being an instructor for the internationally recognized missions training known as “Perspectives.” The mission leaders I know tell me that the reporting of Islam regarding membership is always skewed because they report birth rate numbers, not conversions only. When you remove the births in Muslim families, their growth is not nearly so dramatic. Their child birth rate per family is at least three times the number of children reported in American homes so you can imagine what that would do their number reporting.

Statistics are truly an unruly set of numbers to control and correctly portray.

Without repeating Mr. Gomez's observation about birth rates skewing the data sets, I think the other thing we need to keep in context is that Islam, like early European and early American Christianity, was/is mostly cultural and not a true indicator of spiritual faithfulness to the respective tenets of faith.

In short, nothing new, nothing old, just the same-o, same-o on a different day with different weather.

Did you know that 87.3% of statistics are made up on the spot?