When I wrote this a few years ago, I had not yet observed that the Pew Poll is all over the map when it comes to religious issues. So of course it sounded really bad: “49% of people who have left the church no longer believe in God or miracles.”
Which is another way of saying 51% still do.
But God is not running for office. He is still God whether we believe in him or not.
And believing in “science,” or government, or the innate goodness of human beings–well, heck, I’ve got a really nice bridge to sell you…
From what I read, their report said very little. Polls are all about how questions are worded and how the answers are interpreted.
It’s a strange poll to begin with, and the article further obscures what the report is about. Supposedly, the Pew survey was of “nones,” meaning people who don’t identify with a specific religion or who never had one. It doesn’t mean “people who have left their church.” Second, we don’t get to hear what percentage these “nones” are of the general public, so the headline “Pew: Americans give up on God, miracles” makes it appear that the survey was of all Americans, not just this small subset. Third, we don’t know how the sample was selected, or how extensive the “nones” category was supposed to be — e.g., did it include Christians who simply didn’t want to identify with a specific denomination? did it include Buddhists and Hindus who obviously don’t identify with Christian categories at all? — or how the questions were framed, so we can’t tell how accurate the survey was even before the article distorted it. So we have a probably slanted survey reported in a slanted manner, and we’re supposed to gasp and clutch our pearls about how irreligious Americans have become. Or maybe we’re supposed to stop believing in God ourselves in order to be cool and go along with the trend. I say pfui.
Polls make it easy to do “journalism.” That’s why we have so many of them.
And we must factor in the nooze media’s constant cheerleading for atheism.