The prospects for Mormonism becoming a major world faith are beyond reach

[Gadianton]

I know LDS missionaries visit non-LDS churches.

With the exception of one other time I can remember, the many other churches I visited were all on my mission. It's not encouraged for missionaries, but it's not taboo either because you're getting your brand out there and it's as good as spending that same time knocking on doors or spending another two hours at a member or eternal investigator home. Of course, our motivation wasn't always pure, it was more like, "let's see what these weirdos got going on," or poking the bear, rather than serious interest in finding people to teach. I would say that 90%+, if a missionary is visiting another church, it's ironically.

It's absolutely taboo to visit another church as a regular member. There's no rule against it I suppose, and if you have a cousin getting some rite of passage done I think most would understand, but just visiting another church to see what they believe? It's a very strange thought. I don't think there needs to be a rule because nobody would ever consider it. As a child, I recall going to breakfast and having pancakes on a Saturday at a Baptist function because we were invited by our Baptist neighbors. I recall it just a little because it made such an impression, because it felt so weird being around all these people who were just ever-so-slightly different than we were, having breakfast just like we would.

We only went, of course, because my dad was a missionary (either as a stake missionary, a normal member role, or just of his own accord, something Dan, Kiwi57, and Lou have never been) and thought if we went to their church function maybe they would come to ours? Of course they didn't, as conservative as we were as a family, they were even more so.

[Res Ipsa]

Excluding black Africans from the priesthood for so long makes Moronism a tough sell.

Freudian slip?

Mormons are not allowed to visit other church services to see what the competition has to offer.

That's a false statement, and I'm pretty sure you know it. What's the point of doing that?

Oops.

[Physics Guy]

I was all fascinated a couple of years ago when I first noticed that the LDS church's own reported numbers clearly had not been showing exponential growth for a few decades. There was steady growth but it was linear, within small year-to-year variations, to the point where we were suspecting that the numbers might be being fudged, probably at a ward or stake level, to keep up the appearance of not doing worse than last year.

Since then I happened to read a bit more about population dynamics and have realised that the LDS numbers are probably quite a close fit to what is called a logistic curve. Logistic curves are a class of functions that are a bit more complicated than exponentials. They're very close to exponential at first, but then they straighten out and look almost linear for a while, before levelling off to a plateau. How long the different stages last, and how high the final plateau is, depend on exactly which logistic curve you want to dial up. There are up to three knobs you can turn.

There's no good reason to expect to find a perfect match for LDS growth over two whole centuries even within the somewhat larger family of logistic curves. Conditions have no doubt changed a lot over that many decades, so there's no reason to expect a single, simple equation to govern this population over all that time. Still it makes sense to think of a religious population as being determined by some set of competing factors that can be modelled with a logistic curve over any given span of a generation or so.

Logistic curves are defined by two ideas:
1) The rate of increase, at any given time, is in one part proportional to the current population at that time. If this is the only factor in the increase rate, then you get exponential growth. This kind of proportional-to-current-population rule makes sense for things like proselytising, where the number of missionaries is probably proportional to the current church population, or for things like reproduction, where the number of babies should likewise scale with the number of parents.
2) There is also another term in the rate of increase, which cuts back on growth in proportion to the square of the current population. This is what distinguishes logistic growth from exponential. When the total population is small, its square is even smaller, so the cutback doesn't matter at early stages, and you pretty much just have exponential growth. As the numbers rise, that population-squared cutback takes a bigger and bigger bite out of your growth, until at some point it takes away all your growth and you have a population plateau.

If you really have logistic growth, then that plateau will never turn down and fall, but just stay flat forever. In reality, the factors can change and a plateau can certainly become a decline. That's beyond what a logistic model can describe.

I still think it's interesting to speculate what kind of diminishing returns to LDS growth could be setting in that are proportional to the square of current LDS numbers. What factor that tends to lower the growth rate could be proportional to the square of the current number of members like that?

[Dr Moore]

Neither the Seventh Day Adventists nor the Jehovah Witnesses have the malodorous albatross of polygamy hanging about their necks.

Or securities fraud…

[Marcus]

I was all fascinated a couple of years ago when I first noticed that the LDS church's own reported numbers clearly had not been showing exponential growth for a few decades. There was steady growth but it was linear, within small year-to-year variations, to the point where we were suspecting that the numbers might be being fudged, probably at a ward or stake level, to keep up the appearance of not doing worse than last year.

Since then I happened to read a bit more about population dynamics and have realised that the LDS numbers are probably quite a close fit to what is called a logistic curve. Logistic curves are a class of functions that are a bit more complicated than exponentials. They're very close to exponential at first, but then they straighten out and look almost linear for a while, before levelling off to a plateau. How long the different stages last, and how high the final plateau is, depend on exactly which logistic curve you want to dial up. There are up to three knobs you can turn.

There's no good reason to expect to find a perfect match for LDS growth over two whole centuries even within the somewhat larger family of logistic curves. Conditions have no doubt changed a lot over that many decades, so there's no reason to expect a single, simple equation to govern this population over all that time. Still it makes sense to think of a religious population as being determined by some set of competing factors that can be modelled with a logistic curve over any given span of a generation or so.

Logistic curves are defined by two ideas:
1) The rate of increase, at any given time, is in one part proportional to the current population at that time. If this is the only factor in the increase rate, then you get exponential growth. This kind of proportional-to-current-population rule makes sense for things like proselytising, where the number of missionaries is probably proportional to the current church population, or for things like reproduction, where the number of babies should likewise scale with the number of parents.
2) There is also another term in the rate of increase, which cuts back on growth in proportion to the square of the current population. This is what distinguishes logistic growth from exponential. When the total population is small, its square is even smaller, so the cutback doesn't matter at early stages, and you pretty much just have exponential growth. As the numbers rise, that population-squared cutback takes a bigger and bigger bite out of your growth, until at some point it takes away all your growth and you have a population plateau.

If you really have logistic growth, then that plateau will never turn down and fall, but just stay flat forever. In reality, the factors can change and a plateau can certainly become a decline. That's beyond what a logistic model can describe.

I still think it's interesting to speculate what kind of diminishing returns to LDS growth could be setting in that are proportional to the square of current LDS numbers. What factor that tends to lower the growth rate could be proportional to the square of the current number of members like that?

Just spitballing here, but, 'current number of members' actually represents 'current number of members on the books' and not necessarily actual people practicing the religion. So, it could be that the larger that artificial count becomes relative to actual people practicing the religion (and therefore proportionately proselytizing and reproducing, as you mentioned), the less influence the size of the artificial count has.

This could explain the increasing effect of the second part of the derivative, but it seems we would have to assume that this kind of artificial inflation of membership count was built into the function from the beginning, which raises other interesting questions.

[malkie]

I thought it was true. I can't remember it ever being suggested as something to do. Do they say "Go see for yourself if it is the most true"?

I can't remember bird watching ever being suggested as something to do either, but that doesn't mean Mormons are not allowed to do it, now does it?

Kind of like giving flowers?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Cheers/comment ... d_flowers/

[Marcus]

I can't remember bird watching ever being suggested as something to do either, but that doesn't mean Mormons are not allowed to do it, now does it?

Kind of like giving flowers?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Cheers/comment ... d_flowers/

Omg thank you. That was hysterical.

[Marcus]

Freudian slip?

Oops.

[Physics Guy]

Just spitballing here, but, 'current number of members' actually represents 'current number of members on the books' and not necessarily actual people practicing the religion. So, it could be that the larger that artificial count becomes relative to actual people practicing the religion (and therefore proportionately proselytizing and reproducing, as you mentioned), the less influence the size of the artificial count has.

This could explain the increasing effect of the second part of the derivative, but it seems we would have to assume that this kind of artificial inflation of membership count was built into the function from the beginning, which raises other interesting questions.

That's a really good point. The counts we see are just the reported counts, and there is indeed a simple reason why inflated false counts can grow exponentially at first but have to plateau at some point.

A small and obscure congregation can safely report high proportional growth, knowing that no-one will ever notice the exaggeration. If your advertised numbers get too big, though, people who matter are going to do double takes, notice how few signs there are in your area of the impact such a big group should be making, and maybe even visit you to see for themselves.

And anyone in charge of reporting numbers is going to feel that instinctively. So they'll be wildly optimistic as long as the absolute numbers that they're reporting are still low enough, but get more and more cautious as their report numbers rise. The ultimate plateau in the reported numbers will just be the threshold at which the exaggeration becomes too unbelievable, the maximum you can report without anyone suspecting too strongly that something's not right.

The onset of caution as exaggerations rise might indeed work as a (reported numbers)^2 cutback, so this mechanism might well deliver a nice logistic growth in the reported numbers, without ever having much connection at all to any real numbers.

[I Have Questions]

My understanding is that the numbers reported are just the factual number of members listed on the Church records for each congregation, totalled up centrally. So there’s no manual fudging of this number. It’s not an accurate reflection of the number of people attending church because it includes everyone on the list, regardless of wether or not they’ve seen the inside of a Mormon Church for the last ten years. The only way this count reduces is if members request name removal, members are excommunicated, members are known to have died, members reach 110 years old but it’s not known if they are alive or dead.

Attendance count is different to membership count. That’s done manually one Sunday a month and is a simple headcount during sacrament meeting. That’s a number that can be fudged, but it’s a number that isn’t published.