Saturday, December 13, 2008

New Poll: Americans believe in God, UFOs



New poll results under the unintentionally hilarious headline: Belief in God, UFOs prevail
  • 80% believe in God (98% among regular churchgoers; not too many atheists in the pews)
  • 75% believe in miracles
  • 73% believe in heaven
  • 71% believe that Jesus is the Son of God
  • 71% believe in angels
  • 70% say Jesus Christ rose from the dead and that the Bible is, all or in part, the "Word of God."
  • 68% believe in the "survival of the soul after death"
  • 62% think that hell actually exists
  • 61% believe in the Virgin Birth
  • 59% believe that the devil exists.
Essentially, 60-75% of my fellow Americans are completely out of their gourd. I can see the God stuff - belief in God is relentlessly indoctrinated and also has the advantage of an (incorrect) association with goodness. But Hell and Satan? That's just plain crazy. People who truly believe that there's some horned demon prancing about, tricking poor souls into believing the great lie of evolution (a joint atheist-jewish-communist-nazi conspiracy, so I'm told) - that's insane.

Now we get to the bumpy part of the ride, the (unbelievably popular) fringe beliefs:
  • A third are evolution denialists (compared to 47% who aren't creationists and 22% who apparently haven't figured it out yet)
  • 40% believe in creationism, though the question did not elaborate on exactly what that term meant.
  • 44% believe in ghosts
  • 36% believe UFOs are real (trick question: UFOs are known to exist; alien spaceships aren't)
  • 31% believe in both witches and astrology.
  • About a quarter believe in reincarnation, or "that you were once another person,"
Wow. Witches and astrology? That's quite the combination. Great, so out of the aforementioned 65-70% crazy religious people, I have to deal with the ~30-40% crazy supernatural/superstitious people. I'm sure there's a substantial amount of overlap, but still, that doesn't leave many level-headed people left.

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