I am an engineer. I prefer data that is untainted by its gatherers. I detest experiments that are designed to point the outcome in one direction or another, or to come to a prearranged conclusion. Whatever my interpretation of Lumen Gentium, I will accept untainted data and unbiased analyses and will not accept either sloppy or deliberately misleading conclusions.
While stats can be misused, and a slight margin of error is assumed, the reality is that multitudes of comparative demographical studies (http://www.peacebyjesus.com/RC-Stats_vs._Evang.html), and every study i have ever seen, including Catholic sponsored ones, shows RCs to overall being more liberal in faith and morals than their evangelical counterparts. And which other data concurs with.
If you have a good scientifically designed and performed study, by all means, trot it out and let's have a look at it. I will repeat: I am no advocating the CUNY study, I merely prefer it or one managed in like manner because I will have confidence in its outcome.
Rather than impugning the credibility of such reports, some conservative RCs as well as evangelicals invoke them in warning against spiritual declension, which is the more reasonable response.
The reasonable response is to gather and use accurate data in order to arrive at a realistic world view and the truth. If Catholics are shrinking in the US for real, I will accept it. However, everything that has been trotted out by my opponents has been bereft of facts, methodology, and design to eliminate biased conclusions; an interesting side note is that even those waved about give different results than those waving them about are claiming.
As for the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, info on that is easily obtained, and is done by the the "Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan "fact tank" that provides information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world.
I see that you are shilling for Pew, now. Pew is non partisan in the same manner that Media Matters is non partisan, or The Huffington Post is non partisan. Or PBS, for that matter.
Find a good pollster with a good and open data set, methodology, and analysis and let's talk. That way we can discuss totals, percentages and trends. In an objective fashion.
Why? If the past is prelude, you will simply ignore that evidence and ask for more, just as you have repeatedly done.
After 20 or 30 times around the block, people don't take your kind of dissembling posts seriously, Mark.
Mark, while I esteem your desire for open data sets, and i found that Pew offers such, (http://pewresearch.org/databank/datasets/) it is your assertion of bias, equating such to anti-Catholic Calvinists due to its conclusions, and which imaginatively presumes favoritism of politically conservative evangelicals, that lacks proof and credulity, despite the general media bias.
Resorting to charging all such as part of a conspiracy against Catholics is not unexpected, and since such studies also testify to an increasing declension of evangelicals, we could be tempted to do the same.
It also seems that you yourself have invoked statistics, and your demanding standard is not shared by RCs who quote stats which show things which make Protestants look badly. And if that were overall the case, i do not think i would find RCs questioning their veracity.
And rather than showing great disparity, an overall uniformity is evidenced Catholic studies show Catholics as more liberal. If you find stats that overall show the opposite, then let me know. I have not.