Hopefully the church will provide more lifelong farming and manufacturing opportunities for christians over the next 50 years so its not just giving a man a fish but also teaching a man to fish, thereby creating a more vibrant Christian experience which might change some of the numbers in the article

teaching a man to fish,
progressive pat,
Just don't send them to the Great Barrier Reef !

Unfortunately, metaphorically speaking, too many men have been taught to fish resulting in (almost) complete depletion of the planet`s fish species.

Hey Peter Bowden,

Well I'll slide into Category 3 'I do not know (agnostic)'

"God does not appear to be looking after the welfare of those people who have chosen to support him. Maybe he is not there."

Whether God does or doesn't exist, people still have their own freewill.
This is important, because if entertaining the idea that God exists you will still need to separate 'Man's Will' from that which you may often mistakenly consider as 'God's Will'.

"God does not appear to be looking after the welfare of those people who have chosen to support him."

Is this 'God's Will', or is it 'Man's OWN Will'?
If it is 'Man's Will' alone, then this does not prove, God doesn't exist.

"More than half are willing to come straight out and say they are atheists."

You think that there's 3 categories.
Believers, Agnostics and Atheists.
I could argue that there is in fact only 2:

1. Those who claim to know (Believers and Atheists)
2. Those who admit they don't know (Agnostics)

On the face value of it, the argument could be just as likely that 'Those who claim to know' are suffering mental delusions than they actually know what they claim to know.
'Those who admit they don't know', they may in fact be more well-grounded, are not so easily lead and can better look at things and make judgements for themselves.

It may be that 'those who admit they don't know' may be more mentally stable and well adjusted than 'those who claim to know'.

[Cont.]
"Margaret Court’s church, which was founded by Court in 1995, believes she is safe from Corona virus. Full believers, it would appear, are safe."
What bothers me about all this is Christian's failure to act in a manner that doesn't harm others, or Christians failure to understand ethics:

"Everybody has the right to live however they choose so long as it doesn't have a negative or detrimental impact on others"

Also their failure to understand the difference between morals and ethics:

'Ethics is knowing the difference between right and wrong, morals is how you act upon this knowledge.'
- Which means that you can't have good morals, if you don't firstly understand ethics.

Christians 'Leave it up to God', making the choice themselves to throw all care to the wind, i.e. 'Man's Will' and then attribute the bad outcome as being 'God's Will' instead of their own, when their choices were the direct cause of the outcome not God's.

The 'Margaret Court' example is the 3rd example I've found this week of Christians acting in a manner that is likely to harm others.

Christian's problem, I believe is that they substituted religion into the empty space that was originally reserved for ethics.
I've tried to lay out my reasons as well as growing evidence for this behavior in a number of comments on a recent thread with Spencer Gear.

As a person concerned with religious matters I think you should take the time to look at what I've outlined there.
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=20802&page=0#366775

Hey progressive pat,

"Its not just giving a man a fish but also teaching a man to fish"

If it's the woman or mothers job to be the nurturer (feed the fish)
Then what's the man or fathers job?
It's the fathers job to fish for himself to provide for his family;
and to teach (his children) to fish.
- To be independent and support themselves.
(And not be overly nurtured to their detriment by their nurturer mother)

We live in a complicated society.
There are people who have employees and people who are employees.
If the only product and service you have to offer others is a resume, then you are a modern day slave.
You are not fishing, and can't teach anyone else how to fish either.