"Looking for God Online" - Friday, Mar 16 Time article

The Friday, Mar 16 Time article "Looking for God Online" caused lately much of debates in IECG Community.

The article indeed makes some serious claims, for instance:

Despite the fact that religion is always in the news, visits to religious websites in the U.S. are declining rapidly. They dropped over 30% within the last year, down 35% the last two years, while visits to online entertainment, in the form of video sites and social networks like MySpace and Facebook, continue
to soar. Does the erosion of online interest in religion translate to a major shift away from spirituality? Are we losing our religion?

Besides these confising tstats stuff there are also some other inreresting facts to be mentioned:

On average, religious websites receive 36% of their traffic from the likes of Google, Yahoo! Search and MSN Search.

... maybe a better question is: what are we looking for when we search for religion? The answer depends on denomination.

Searches leading to Roman Catholic websites reveal a fascination with saints: from the generic query "saints" to the religious ties to what most of us now consider secular holidays, "St. Valentine's Day and "St. Patrick's Day." Contrast that with the search terms used by seekers of Protestant and other Christian sites. The majority of search terms concentrate on bible study ("bible," biblical verses" and "bible online") and evangelical personalities ("Joel Osteen" and "Joyce Meyer"). Information seekers on the Jewish religion are different still, with a mixture of subjects such as Jewish heritage, humor and bio-ethical issues such as "cloning" and "right to die."

Below are some of the interesting facts&figures on thу article's claims:

John O'keefe, founder/designer of ginkworld.net

ginkworld is not the standard "religious site" but we keep growing in hits and bandwith - people are always coming back and new people are always visitint - some month we have a 400% increase in views - and the time they stay on is also longer - so, i am not sure who they are looking at for the decline - and how they define "religious sites"

I'd rather take it as a reason to think more than to fall into despair.