Measure the gap between our values and our behavior.

Why this exists

The description that started it

This project began with a passage that reads less like a prophecy and more like a checklist. Written to a young minister named Timothy roughly two thousand years ago, it describes what a society looks like when it comes apart — and it does so by listing behaviours rather than beliefs.

Why a list of behaviours is useful

Notice what the passage does not do. It does not name a party, a nation, an era, or a class of person. It does not ask what anyone believes. Every item on it is a description of conduct — something a person does, repeatedly, that other people can observe.

That is exactly the kind of claim that can be examined honestly. Beliefs are private and largely unfalsifiable. Behaviour leaves a record: court filings, survey responses, mortality data, participation rates, votes taken and not taken. A framework built on conduct can be checked. A framework built on who is righteous cannot, and should not be attempted.

The verse the whole project is built on

One line in that passage does more work than the rest combined: holding to a form of outward godliness, although they have denied its power — for their conduct nullifies their claim of faith.

That is not a description of people who have abandoned their principles. It is a description of people who still profess them loudly while living as though they were never binding. The failure is not disbelief. It is the distance between what is claimed and what is done.

That distance is measurable. It is the entire reason this site exists, and it is why the banner at the top of this page reads the way it does: measure the gap between our values and our behaviour. Every score, every case file, and every indicator on this site is an attempt to put a number on that gap and then show the working.

How the list maps onto what is measured

The traits in the passage are not abstractions. Most of them correspond to something with a public dataset behind it.

The correspondence is not perfect and is not meant to be. It is an origin, not a formula. The scores themselves come from Gallup, the Census Bureau, the CDC, SAMHSA, and the FBI — not from Scripture — and the full workings are set out in the Methodology and Data Sources.

It is a mirror before it is a measure

There is an obvious way to misuse a passage like this, and it is the most common way it gets used: as a list of other people. Read that way it becomes a weapon, and a fairly lazy one — every item conveniently describing whoever the reader already disliked before they opened the page.

Read in context it points the other direction. Paul is not warning Timothy about outsiders or unbelievers. The people described are inside the community — they hold to a form of godliness. The warning is about the household of faith, not about the world outside it. It is an instruction to examine one’s own side first, at a moment when doing so would have been least comfortable.

That is the discipline this site tries to keep. The standard is only worth anything if it survives a change of subject — if it applies as readily to your allies, your party, your church, and yourself as it does to your opponents. A standard that only ever indicts the other side is not a standard. It is a preference wearing a standard’s clothes.

So the passage is used here as a mirror before it is used as a measure. That is also why the Moral Consistency Audit exists, and why it asks about ordinary situations rather than political opinions.

What this does not mean

Being clear about the limits of a framing is part of using it honestly.

• It is not a prediction about a date. Nothing here claims to identify a timeline, or to announce that any particular moment has arrived. The passage is used because it describes a recognisable pattern of social decay with unusual precision, not because this site claims to know where anyone stands in history.
• It is not a judgment of any person or group. No score on this site says a state, a country, a party, or a person is wicked. The indicators measure conditions and conduct. They are not, and cannot be, a measure of anyone’s worth.
• It is not a religious test for readers. You do not have to share the premise to use the work. The datasets are public, the reasoning is published, and every conclusion is meant to be checkable by someone who thinks the starting text is simply an old letter with a sharp eye for human behaviour.
• It is not nostalgia. The passage does not describe a golden age that was lost. It describes a recurring human failure. Any honest reading of the record shows the same conduct in every generation, including the ones frequently held up as better.

Why a data project from an ancient letter

Because the letter got the diagnosis right and left the measurement to someone else. It names what corrosion looks like — greed dressed as ambition, cruelty dressed as strength, professed conviction that costs its holder nothing — and then stops. It offers no way to tell whether a society is drifting toward that description or away from it.

That is the gap this project works in. The conviction supplies the question. The evidence has to supply the answer, and it has to do so in a form that a sceptic can audit. If the numbers ever contradict the conviction, the numbers get published anyway — that is what the Editorial Standards and the corrections policy are for.

The publication is not affiliated with, funded by, or accountable to any church, denomination, ministry, or religious organisation. The passage above explains where the project came from. It does not determine what any score says.