... don't believe in nothing, but they will believe in anything. Here's evidence:
The Gallup Organization, under contract to Baylor's Institute for Studies of Religion, asked American adults a series of questions to gauge credulity. Do dreams foretell the future? Did ancient advanced civilizations such as Atlantis exist? Can places be haunted? Is it possible to communicate with the dead? Will creatures like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster someday be discovered by science?
The answers were added up to create an index of belief in occult and the paranormal. While 31% of people who never worship (sic- she means, "never attend church") expressed strong belief in these things, only 8% of people who attend a house of worship more than once a week did.
3 comments:
I think several of the index questions supposed to distinguish the superstitious from the worshipers of God are fatally ambiguous. As a regular church attender--a worshiper of Christ as God--I believe that some dreams do foretell the future, for example, Pharaoh's dream interpreted by Joseph and Nebuchadnezzar's dream interpreted by Daniel. Atlantis and Bigfoot never existed, but some places certainly are haunted. And while the spirits of the dead are not doing the haunting, demons who impersonate the dead do.
Since over half of Christians profess unbelief in Satan as a personal spiritual being, it may be that the poll reflects a loss of faith in the Bible as accurately describing the dark side of the spiritual realm because such beliefs are considered superstitious by the naturalistic elites who control most of our universities.
The questions are loaded. It's possible the study work is biased with religious backing. Consider if they asked questions like these;
1) Do you believe in a god(s)?
2) Do you believe in a demon(s)?
3) Do you think people can be brought back to life?
4) Do you believe in faith healing?
One could add aspects of every Christian bible story and other religious stories and come up with quite a list.
It's my opinion many humans are superstitious and religion or a professed belief in no religion does not insulate one from such that much.
Argent: I don't know who sponsored the survey, but I think we agree that it is not real strong evidence for the efficacy of religion in protecting one from superstition.
But a couple of sociologists approached the whole question differently. They researched the previous religious commitments of people who had become involved in objectively destructive religious cults like that of Jim Jones. The unexpected result was that "Christian Fundamentalism" was seldom in the background of members of such cults and thus seemed to confer an immunity to their lure.
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