It’s always interesting when the church releases its statistics for the year.<\/p>\n
I noticed something that’s either miraculous or … or … I don’t really know what it would be.<\/p>\n
In 2005 the church had 12,560,869 members and in 2006 it increased to 12,868,606 – an increase in membership of 307,737.<\/p>\n
In the 2006 stats we’re told that newborn member kids totaled 94,006 and converts accounted for 272,845 of the increased membership – kids+converts=366,851 in total.<\/p>\n
Well if you take the total membership increase and subtract the kids and converts, you’re left with the number -59,114.<\/p>\n
I’m going to assume this negative number is deaths, excommunications and resignations.<\/p>\n
But even assuming a zero number of excommunications and resignations (which is not likely, but I’ll gloss over that fact for this example), that means that the LDS have a death rate of 4.59 per 1000 people.<\/p>\n
To illustrate how miraculous this number is, the National death rate in the US in 2004 was 8(ish) per 1000, and in Canada it was 7.7(ish) per 1000.<\/p>\n
Are Canadians really dying in numbers 1.7 times that of the LDS?<\/p>\n
… or is there something screwy with these numbers?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"