TruthBook Religious News Blog

The tiny ‘Religious views’ box has become a pit stop for philosophical inquiry
By William Wan
September 08, 2009

For the longest time, the question just sat there on his screen. Cursor blinking. Waiting quietly, like a patient priest in a confessor’s box.

Religious Views: ––––.

Creating a Facebook profile for the first time, Eric Heim hadn’t expected something so serious. He had whipped through the social network Web site’s questionnaire about his interests, favorite movies and relationship status, typing witty replies wherever possible. But when he reached the little blank box asking for his core beliefs, it stopped him short.

"It’s Facebook. The whole point is to keep it light and playful, you know?," said Heim, 27, a college student from Dumfries, Va. "But a question like that kind of makes you think."

Such public proclamations of beliefs used to require a baptism in water, or a circumcision, or learning the five pillars of Islam. Now Facebook users announce their spiritual identity with the stroke of a few keys. And what they are typing into the open-ended box offers a revealing peek into modern faith and what happens to that faith as it migrates online.

Of its 250 million users worldwide, Facebook says, more than 150 million people choose to write something in the religious views box.

Amid the endless trivialities of social networking sites –the quotes from Monty Python, the Stephen Colbert for Prez groups, the goofy-but-calculatingly-attractive profile pics –the tiny box has become a surprisingly meaningful pit stop for philosophical inquiry.

Millions have plumbed their innermost thoughts, struggling to sum up their beliefs in roughly 10 words or less. For many, it has led to age-old questions about purpose, the existence of the divine and the meaning of life itself.

Some emerge from the experience with serious answers. George Mason University student Travis Hammill, 19, spent several days distilling his beliefs into this sentence: "Love God, Love Others, Change the World."

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Labels: belief, Facebook, faith

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Thursday, September 03, 2009

Outside faith, a rising tide of 'nones'

Outside faith, a rising tide of 'nones'
by Jay Tokasz
NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Updated: September 03, 2009

A few years ago, Tyler Manley would have considered himself a Presbyterian.

If asked about his religion today, he will confess he doesn't have one. Nor does he believe in God.

The United States remains one of the most religious countries in the world, but Manley is part of one of the steadiest trends in the national landscape of faith … the growing number of Americans who profess no religious affiliation.

Social scientists often call them the "nones" … a broad category that includes atheists and agnostics, as well as those who believe in a higher power but don't cite a particular faith.

Studies indicate they make up as much as 16 percent of the U.S. population, and researchers expect that the numbers will continue to grow.

"You're just getting a lot of people drifting away," said Barry A. Kosmin, research professor in the Public Policy & Law Program at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.

For Manley, who studies philosophy at the University at Buffalo, the drifting was the result of understanding that "human conscience comes before religion."

"It's important that you critically examine your own beliefs," he said.

Kosmin's latest American Religious Identification Survey, published in March, estimated the population of U.S. "nones" at 34 million … roughly 15 percent of the total … up from 29 million in 2001 and 14 million in 1990.

"It was quite amazing. It went up in every state," Kosmin said. Fourteen percent of New Yorkers did not associate with a religion, up from 7 percent in 1990.

A survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that 16 percent of U.S. adults had no religious affiliation. Data from the General Social Surveys indicates that 16.4 percent of Americans are nonreligious, up from 5.1 percent in 1972.

Researchers once observed a familiar pattern of religious disaffiliation among young adults, who then would reaffiliate later on, said Darren E. Sherkat, a sociologist at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

But that pattern is breaking down, said Sherkat, who analyzes data from the General Social Surveys.

"We're seeing greater stability of non-affiliation, and we're also seeing greater numbers of parents raising their children without affiliation, which was really quite rare in earlier generations," he said.

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Labels: agnostic, belief, God, Jay Tokasz, Nones, religion

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Friday, August 14, 2009

Global survey: Kids doubt God but still put trust in parents

By James D. Davis
August 9, 2009

More teens in Malawi believe in ghosts than God.

Many youths in India make more money than their parents.

Nearly half of young Russians say they've tried to commit suicide.

These are just a few of the startling insights turned up by OneHope, a mission support organization in Pompano Beach. The organization, which distributes Bible portions to children, is conducting a massive survey of beliefs and behaviors of the world's 2 billion children younger than 18.

The survey results are on a new website, spiritualstateofthechildren.com, set up in observance of International Youth Day on Wednesday. Taking in 22 nations — from Armenia to Mexico to Uganda — the website includes photos, videos and documents. OneHope plans to add 38 more nations by 2011.

The goal of the study is simple, according to Chad Causey, OneHope's vice president for global ministry: Get adults to hear the young.

"You see a lot of demographic research on them, but when do you hear from them?" Causey says. "We want to make sure society, and especially the church within society, hears them."

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Labels: belief, Chad Causey, children, church, James D. Davis, OneHope, religion

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Friday, August 07, 2009

God on the brain at Penn’s Neuroscience Boot Camp

August 5th, 2009
Tom Heneghan

Neurotheology - the study of the link between belief and the brain - is a topic I’ve hesitated to write about for several years. There are all kinds of theories out there about how progress in neuroscience is changing our understanding of religion, spirituality and mystical experience. Some say the research proves religion is a natural product of the way the brain works, others that God made the brain that way to help us believe. I knew so little about the science behind these ideas that I felt I had to learn more about the brain first before I could comment.

If that was an excuse for procrastination, I don’t have it anymore. For all this week and half the next, I’m attending a "Neuroscience Boot Camp" at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. This innovative program, run by Penn’s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience Director Martha Farah (photo below), aims to explain the latest research in neuroscience to 34 non-experts from fields such as law, business, philosophy and religious studies (as well as to a few journalists). The focus is not only on religion, but faith and issues related to it are certainly part of the discussion.

After only two of 8-1/2 days of lectures, one takeaway message is already clear. You can forget about the "God spot" that headline writers love to highlight (as in "'God spot' is found in Brain" or "Scientists Locate 'God Spot' in Human Brain"). There is no one place in the brain responsible for religion, just as there is no single location in the brain for love or language or identity. Most popular articles these days actually say that, but the headline writers continue to speak of a single spot.

"There isn’t a separate religious area of the brain, from what we can tell from the data," said Dr. Andrew Newberg, an associate professor of radiology and psychiatry at the Penn university hospital and author of several books on neuroscience and religion. "It’s not like there’s a little spiritual spot that lights up every time somebody thinks of God. When you look at religious and spiritual experiences, they are incredibly rich and diverse. Sometimes people find them on the emotional level, sometimes on an ideological level, sometimes they perceive a oneness, sometimes they perceive a person. It depends a lot on what the actual experience is."

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Labels: belief, brain, God, neuroscience, neurotheology, religion, spirituality, Tom Heneghan

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Friday, July 24, 2009

Survey: 1 in 3 Scientists Believe in God

By Michelle A. Vu
Christian Post Reporter
Thu, Jul. 16 2009

About one out of every three scientists in the United States professed believing in God, a recent survey found.

That figure is strikingly lower than the proportion of the general American public that say they believe in God (83 percent), according to the report by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

However, a Christian biochemist after examining the report said the comparably small number of scientists who believe in God is nothing to be alarmed over.

Dr. Fazale Rana, vice president of research and apologetics at Reasons to Believe ministry, said the percentage of American scientists who believe in God has remained constant for more than three-quarters of a century.

In the early 1920s, he explained, there was a similar survey conducted that found a similar proportion of scientists who believe in God.

"I see a lot of reason to be very encouraged by these results," said Rana, who has a Ph.D. in chemistry with an emphasis in biochemistry and was a senior scientist in product development for Procter & Gamble, to The Christian Post on Wednesday.

"The take home message is that if science and religion are incompatible then there is no way we would still see 30-40 percent of scientists acknowledge there is a God or higher power behind everything," he contended.

Besides asking about belief in God, the survey also asked the public and scientists about their belief in a higher power. Eighteen percent of scientists said they believe in a higher power or universal spirit, while 12 percent of the public said so.

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Labels: belief, God, Michelle A. Vu, scientists, survey

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Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Easter: Sign of Our Faith in Renewal

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Please click on "external source" for complete article.

Polls over the recent decades have consistently shown that nine in 10 Americans believe in the existence of God. A Harris Poll in 2003 indicated that roughly 84 percent professed a belief in miracles, the same number as those who believed in the survival of the soul after death. (Nearly 70 percent also believed in the devil and hell.)

A Pew Forum survey in 2007 indicated 78 percent saw the Bible as being the word of God, either literally (35 percent) or not (43 percent).

A current poll conducted by Newsweek found basic religious beliefs have varied little in decades. According to Newsweek, 78 percent still found prayer to be “an important part of daily life,” and 85 percent said religion was “very important” or “fairly important” in their lives.

No matter our specific spiritual doctrines, humans do exhibit a need to maintain hope and a faith in revival. We say that it’s only natural, and we see the basis for that belief in the continual renewal of the natural world around us.

Change is a constant.

Newsweek also reported its latest poll found that only 48 percent of those surveyed thought faith would “help answer all or most of the country’s current problems.” That’s down from 64 percent in 1994. Presumably, that means we tend to see fewer possibilities for specific spiritual beliefs solving the convoluted problem of toxic assets, bundled mortgage securities and such.

Labels: belief, Bible, faith, God, Newsweek magazine, spirituality

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Friday, April 10, 2009

Youth Survey: Teens lose faith in droves

Youth Survey: Teens lose faith in droves

Islam and atheism are on the rise while Christianity fades

Teens lose faith in drovesEvery day, Mohamed Hadi wakes up before sunrise for morning prayer. The 19-year-old then boards a bus for the 90-minute ride from his home in Richmond, B.C., to the campus of Simon Fraser University, where he’s studying to become a physiotherapist. He’s involved in the Muslim Students’ Association, and with Rich in Faith, a Muslim youth group he founded that offers tutoring and mentoring services. Hadi’s a busy guy, yet he always finds time for his religion, including prayer five times a day. “It helps me stay composed,” he says, “and to maintain balance in my life.”

Such devotion is rare among teens these days—or at least, among those from Protestant and Catholic households. Just as the younger generation is abandoning the Christian faith, though, non-Western religions, such as Islam and Buddhism, are growing in Canada at a surprising speed. According to new data from Project Teen Canada, more teens now identify as Muslim than Anglican, United Church of Canada and Baptist combined. As a group, the percentage who adhere to so-called “other faiths”—including Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism—has grown fivefold since Project Teen began its surveys in 1984, while the percentage of teens who identify as Roman Catholic has declined by one third, and the percentage who identify as Protestant is down by almost two-thirds.

A side effect of this trend is a hollowing-out of the religious middle ground in Canada. Reginald Bibby, the University of Lethbridge sociologist who heads up Project Teen, says the grey zone of those who believe in God, but don’t regularly practise an established religion, is rapidly emptying out, leaving behind two distinct camps: teens who are very religious and actively practise their religion, and those who don’t believe in God at all. “For years I have been saying that, for all the problems of organized religion in Canada, God has continued to do well in the polls,” Bibby writes in The Emerging Millennials, a new book based on Project Teen’s latest findings. “That’s no longer the case.”

The growth in popularity of faiths such as Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism can largely be attributed to immigration, Bibby says. Indeed, there are more new Canadians than ever—immigrants made up 20 per cent of the population in 2006, according to Statistics Canada, up from 16 per cent in 1981. And the majority of new Canadians now hail from the Middle East and Asia, whereas most came from Europe a decade before.

Foreign-born teens are more likely to be religious when they arrive, but whether that faith will persist over the coming generations remains to be seen. “Because these faith groups are so small, they often can’t hang on to their kids,” Bibby explains. “They have this maddening tendency to socialize with Protestant, Catholic, and ‘no religion’ friends, and marry out of their parents’ groups.” But immigration will continue to supply fresh believers, so it’s likely that their community support will grow too. That’s been Hadi’s experience. Amongst his friends, many of whom are Muslim, “we all know when it’s time to pray. If we forget, we’ll remind each other,” he says. “Community is an integral part of the equation.”

For Canada’s Christian teens, meanwhile, the community is shrinking like never before. Since 1984, the percentage of teens who call themselves Christian has almost been cut in half while the number who call themselves atheist has grown to 16 per cent, up from just six per cent in the mid-1980s. Just as the boomers shifted toward agnosticism, teens are now going a step further and rejecting religion entirely. “Belief is learned, pretty much like the multiplication table,” Bibby writes. “So is non-belief.”

Labels: belief, Buddhism, Canada, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Project Teen, religion, teenagers

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New Television-Web Series "Global Spirit" Explores Spirituality, Religion and the Science of Belief as Practiced Worldwide, premiering April 12 on Lin

New Television-Web Series "Global Spirit" Explores Spirituality, Religion and the Science of Belief as Practiced Worldwide, premiering April 12 on Link TV

Link TV presents the premiere of "Global Spirit," a nationally broadcast, pan-cultural television and web series that explores spiritual, psychological and scientific belief systems from around the world. Episodes explore the relationships between mind and spirit, science and metaphysics, and mental and physical well-being as approached by the world's ancient wisdom traditions and by modern science. "Global Spirit" is a unique 'internal travel' series that brings to light spiritual, mental and physical practices that help us to define who we are as human beings, our relationships to others -- and to the world at large. From the ecstatic state of the Turkish Whirling Dervishes, to new scientific understandings of Oneness and the interconnectedness of the universe, to the personal journeys of American veterans who return to Vietnam in search of forgiveness, "Global Spirit" explores mankind's deepest existential questions, tracing the human quest for truth and wisdom. Watch online at LinkTV.org/GlobalSpirit.

New York, NY (Billboard Publicity Wire/PRWEB ) April 6, 2009 -- A rally cry for change has been heard from Americans and people around the globe. The intense environment of conflict, fear and cultural misunderstanding of recent years has generated a yearning for a more interconnected, just and compassionate way of co-existing with our global neighbors. At the same time, we are perhaps seeking a deeper understanding of ourselves -- both as individuals and as a nation. In the midst of this burgeoning, collective reassessment, Link TV presents "Global Spirit," a nationally broadcast, pan-cultural television and web series that explores spiritual, psychological and scientific belief systems from around the world.

"Global Spirit" premieres on Sunday, April 12 at 6:00pm PT/9:00pm ET with its first original program "The Spiritual Quest," featuring acclaimed comparative religion author Karen Armstrong and professor of Buddhist studies Dr. Robert Thurman. Each week through June 14, "Global Spirit" will present the U.S. television premiere of a new program probing the trans-cultural dynamics of human inquiry. Link TV is available on DIRECTV channel 375 and Dish Network channel 9410 and on select cable stations. Programs will also be streamed in their entirety at LinkTV.org/GlobalSpirit.

For full episode descriptions and air dates, please visit our website.

Episodes explore the relationships between mind and spirit, science and metaphysics, and mental and physical well-being as approached by the world's ancient wisdom traditions and by modern science. "Global Spirit" is a unique 'internal travel' series that brings to light spiritual, mental and physical practices that help us to define who we are as human beings, our relationships to others -- and to the world at large.

From the ecstatic state of the Turkish Whirling Dervishes, to new scientific understandings of Oneness and the interconnectedness of the universe, to the personal journeys of American veterans who return to Vietnam in search of forgiveness, "Global Spirit" explores mankind's deepest existential questions, tracing the human quest for truth and wisdom.

The belief systems of many of our global neighbors lie beyond the purview of formalized religion, yet they have guided mankind through many millennia with highly evolved principles and philosophies. In August of 2005, the cover of Newsweek magazine announced the rise of spirituality in America. The issue explores how and why many Americans choose to seek spiritual experiences outside the norms of traditional church, mosque or synagogue settings. A poll conducted by Newsweek and Beliefnet found that new forms of religious experience and expression attract many Americans each year. The poll also found that 79% of those polled described themselves as "spiritual," and 70% of those polled said it was very important to them to practice their religion in order to find happiness and peace of mind. "Global Spirit" explores the emerging longing in the American psyche to explore the depths of human consciousness and the many faces of spirituality.

Rather than approaching global traditions from a detached, voyeuristic perspective, "Global Spirit" invites the viewer to test and participate in traditions as practiced by a wide range of peoples and spiritual leaders. By connecting and cross-pollinating the core concepts from the world's wisdom traditions, "Global Spirit" offers the curious viewer an exploration of new and ancient approaches to healing, forgiveness and self-knowledge. From the mystical to the religious, and from the psychological to the spiritual, "Global Spirit" offers a rich and thoughtful exploration of the world's many approaches to personal and collective well-being.

Each "Global Spirit" episode offers compelling film segments with original, on-location footage shot by the "Global Spirit" crew, together with engaging, in-depth conversations between host Phil Cousineau and a diverse set of experts such as Karen Armstrong, Dr. Robert Thurman, Deepak Chopra, Sobonfu Somé, Chief Oren Lyons, Azim Khamisa, Rev. Alan Jones, Joanne Shenandoah, Lama Lhanang Rinpoche, Robert Bly, Hamza El Din and Jai Uttal. Each week, "Global Spirit" will present a spectrum of new insights for understanding ourselves, our families, our communities, our planet -- and ultimately our place in the Cosmos.

Support for this series has been generously provided by The Kalliopeia Foundation, The Fetzer Institute, The Attar Supporting Organization, The Compton Foundation and Dreamcatchers.

Journalists may screen programs in advance at this link, please email Julia Panely-Pacetti for login information: Link TV Press Screening Room.

To access full "Global Spirit" episode descriptions, air dates, photography and press materials visit the: Link TV Press Room.

ABOUT LINK TV

Link TV is the nation's largest independent broadcaster, devoted to providing diverse global perspectives on news, current events and world culture not typically available on other U.S. networks. Link TV regularly airs a robust selection of award-winning films and documentaries that explore the human condition from different multi-cultural perspectives. Through its "Cinemondo" series, Link supports the essential cultural role of world cinema by helping Americans better understand what is happening in the world.

A pioneer in news and current affairs programming, Link TV has been recognized domestically and internationally for its original news programs including the Peabody Award-winning daily broadcast "Mosaic: News from the Middle East," which monitors and airs unedited selections of news reports from more than 30 Middle-Eastern broadcasters, and "Global Pulse," which compares and contrasts news reports from around the world on critical issues. Link also offers its viewers original, innovative participatory programs promoting national and global citizen action. Most of Link's programs are available nowhere else on American television.

Link TV is a nationwide television network available in more than 31 million U.S. homes as a basic service on DIRECTV channel 375 and DISH Network channel 9410. Select programs are shown on more than 50 urban cable systems, including New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Link TV's original programs, music videos, documentary clips and artist interviews are streamed on the Internet at LinkTV.org.

For complete background information, program schedule, and internet streaming, go to LinkTV.org.

Labels: belief, Global Spirit, Kalliopeia Foundation, Karen Armstrong, Link TV, religion, spirituality, web TV

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Friday, March 27, 2009

America's faltering faith

March 20, 2009

By Ken Connor

Americans appear to be losing faith in God and in our cultural institutions. Is the loss of confidence in one related to a loss of confidence in the other? The answer is unequivocally yes.

How we view God inevitably determines how we view our fellow man. And how we view our fellow man, in turn, determines how we treat him. Created in God's image or creature of chance? The answer makes a difference because what we believe determines how we behave.

America's Founders recognized the important role that a shared belief in God contributed to the stability of our society. Our second President, John Adams, said, "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." Adams' son, John Quincy Adams (our sixth President), declared, "This form of government... is productive of everything which is great and excellent among men. But its principles are as easily destroyed, as human nature is corrupted.... A government is only to be supported by pure religion or austere morals. Private and public virtue is the only foundation of republics." Both presidents — father and son — understood that a shared belief in God is necessary to produce the shared values required for a stable society. Belief in God was the foundation of the republic. The very freedoms and republican form of government we embrace today require society's acknowledgment of "the laws of nature and of nature's God" acknowledged by the Founders in our Declaration of Independence.

Unfortunately, shared belief in a transcendent God — the cornerstone of our stable society — seems to be eroding in America today. The recently-released American Religious Identification Survey is an overview of religious demographics in America. Preliminary results show an America rapidly losing its religious faith. Since the survey began in 1990, the number of self-identified Christians has dropped from 86.2% to 76%, and the number of people claiming no religion has risen from 8.2% to 15%. People are losing faith in God at a rapid rate.

As our shared belief in a transcendent God disappears, our shared moral values inevitably give way to a pervasive relativism. We no longer believe in common moral values, so social norms begin to disappear. Every man is a law unto himself. Radical individualism reigns. We should, therefore, not be surprised when our cultural abandonment of shared values manifests itself in the caveat-emptor business practices which have produced our current financial crisis or the forked-tongued politicking of politicians who will spin any lie or reverse any position in order to pass the buck and keep their jobs. Without shared moral values, every person makes their own morality.

Likewise, we should not be surprised to find that Americans' faith in our cultural institutions is also faltering. Without shared belief in God, social values disappear, social norms are abandoned, and we no longer know what to expect from institutions like the family, church, or state. According to the General Social Survey of 2008, Americans have lost trust in nearly every single major American institution. The recent poll asked Americans whether or not they have confidence in several cultural and political institutions. The preliminary results have just been released, and the picture is not pretty. Since 1976, Americans have lost confidence in every major cultural institution except for the military. This list includes the scientific community, financial institutions, organized religion, the federal government, the media, medicine, education, and major companies. The percentage of Americans expressing a "great deal" of confidence in organized religion has dropped from 32% in 1976 to 20% in 2008. Over that same period, confidence in the media fell from 29% to 9%. Confidence in Congress fell from a dismal 14% to an even more dismal 11%. Clearly we Americans are losing faith in our cultural institutions.

A shared belief in a transcendent God produces shared moral values which provide people with social norms that give them confidence in their culture. Without this core belief, the structure of society is undermined by man-centered relativism. An increasingly unbelieving people also suffer from a loss of confidence in one another. Having replaced faith in a transcendent God with faith in flawed human beings, they inevitably set themselves for disappointment and abandon the only moral basis for a stable society.

Only by regaining our shared faith in a transcendent Law Giver will Americans be able to recover our faith in our society.

Labels: ARIS, belief, faith, God, Ken Connor, morality, relativism

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Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Religious Thoughts and Feelings Not Limited to One Part of Brain

By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: March 9, 2009

Brain researchers trying to understand the neural basis of religious belief have concluded that the brain has no special region or network for this task. Rather, it depends on general networks that exist for other purposes.

A team led by Dr. Jordan Grafman of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke questioned volunteers about their religious beliefs while monitoring the blood flow in their brains with a scanning machine. Extra blood flow is assumed to reflect the activity of neurons in a specific region of the brain.

Different networks of neurons sprang into action when subjects were asked their view of three sets of statements about the religious beliefs, Dr. Grafman and colleagues report in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In all three cases the neural activity in the subjects’ brains corresponded to brain networks known to have other, nonreligious functions. These include the theory of mind networks, used to predict other people’s intentions.

Dr. Andrew Newberg, director of the Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania, said Dr. Grafman’s findings were in line with other research that has so far failed to find any specific structure in the brain that is dedicated to religious belief. “Religion has so many different aspects that it would be very unlikely to find one spot in the brain where religion and God reside,” Dr. Newberg said.

But he expressed doubt as to whether the biological correlates of religious belief, as visualized in brain scans like those taken by Dr. Grafman, in fact captured all of what religion is. “There may be other elements that science is not capable of measuring,” Dr. Newberg said.

In his own work Dr. Newberg looks at subjects undergoing religious experiences, like speaking in tongues or meditating. In “How God Changes Your Brain,” a book being published later this month, Dr. Newberg reports that certain regions of subjects’ brains have enlarged areas of neural activation after many months of intensive meditation.

He questioned whether asking subjects questions about religion when they were not in a religious frame of mind would capture much of interest about religious belief.

Dr. Grafman said that religious cohesion for a common purpose, and the ability to infer what others are thinking, would each have been favored by evolution, along with the theory of mind networks that serves both systems.

Labels: belief, brain, God, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Nicholas Wade, religion, science

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Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Interfaith Couples More Common

02/11/2009

According to the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey from the Pew Forum, 27 percent of Americans are married or cohabitating with a spouse or partner who is of a different faith background.

If people of different Protestant denominations are included, such as a Lutheran married to a Methodist, the number swells to 37 percent.

Those most likely to marry or live with someone of a different belief are nonbelievers (65 percent) and Buddhists (55 percent). Those least likely are Hindus (10 percent), Mormons (17 percent) and Catholics (22 percent).

Labels: belief, faith, marriage, Pew survey, religion, spouse

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Thursday, December 18, 2008

After death: then what?

Goodbye Heaven and Hell: we now hold a host of quirky ideas about the afterlife

by John Naish

(This is page one of a three page article. It contains results of a survey exploring peoples' beliefs regarding life after death, and is very interesting. Please click on "external source at the bottom of this page to access the entire piece.)

Of the two certainties we face in life, death and taxes, we all tend to share similar thoughts on taxes. But what about death and whatever comes after it? Most of the time we go about our lives as though it will never happen. The afterlife has become taboo. Even during Easter, the great Christian story of death and resurrection, we prefer to think of chocolate eggs and fluffy bunnies. But Michael Irwin, a retired United Nations medical director, has created his own national opinion survey about life after death and unearthed an intriguing range of beliefs.

He wrote to 1,600 Britons picked at random from Who’s Who, where he is listed by dint of working for the UN and the World Bank. He is also a former secretary of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society and is on the council of a similar group, Friends At The End (Fate). I guess you could say he’s interested in the subject. So, it seems, are many others: of the 761 replies he received, more than half added extra comments and ideas to the questionnaire.

Nearly half of those questioned believe that nothing will survive their deaths other than their children, their writings, and the memories of friends. But significant numbers believe in the possibility of their souls surviving in an afterlife, or of their life force continuing in some form. Only one in five didn’t feel certain about what would happen.

And beyond these apparently simple positions lies a spectrum of quirk-filled personal credos, which Irwin has compiled into a booklet, What Survives? “I’m 74 and it’s natural that I’m thinking about what happens to me when I die,” says Irwin, of Cranleigh, Surrey. “I grew up in the Church of England and was a religious teenager. But later I grew sceptical and became a humanist. Now I’m more New Agey: I believe that there are life forces common to all living creatures which may survive our deaths in some way going back to the universal force of creation.”

Despite his spiritual shift, he has not lost his scepticism. “In my years as a clinical doctor, eight of my patients came around from comas or ‘died’ on the operating table and told me they saw flashes of light and other phenomena,” he recalls. “Whether it was genuine or the result of chemical changes in the brain, I can’t say.”

Michael Irwin will send copies of his booklet, What Survives? free to the first 50 readers who e-mail him on michael-hk.irwin@virgin.net

ANNABELLE BOND Mountaineer, 36 “I would like to think that I will go on another journey after I die. What form it will take I cannot possibly imagine. But I do believe in some kind of God, and I think that we will all report to it after we die, whatever our religion.

“I had Christianity shoved down my throat at school, but it hasn’t stopped me believing. Climbing has helped; it suits me to be optimistic about life after death. It helps me to come to terms with the chance that I won’t make it back from an expedition. You never know on the mountain; you can die however good or bad you are at climbing. It’s beyond your control.

“One person in 12 doesn’t make it to Everest’s summit. Last year, I saw two friends slip to their deaths on a peak in Alaska, and I’ve seen plenty of dead bodies on the way up mountains.

“Of course it makes you think about your own mortality; it’s important to acknowledge the obvious danger you are putting yourself in. But at some point, it’s comforting to pass the responsibility on to a higher force — otherwise you’d never climb.

“Being on a mountain is a powerful spiritual experience. You feel connected with this world and the next. The least religious person would pray if they found themselves in danger, I can guarantee. I never know who, or what, I’m praying to. It’s something up there, and I want it to protect me.

The closest I’ve ever been to my own end was climbing a peak in Argentina last year. It was the sixth mountain I’d done back-to-back in six months, including Everest.

I was going for the title of fastest woman in history to complete the Seven Peaks challenge — involving the highest mountains on each of the seven continents — which I got.

Labels: belief, death, life after death, Michael Irwin

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Friday, November 28, 2008

Children are born believers in God, academic claims

Children are "born believers" in God and do not simply acquire religious beliefs through indoctrination, according to an academic.

By Martin Beckford, Religious Affairs Correspondent

24 Nov 2008

Children are born believers in God

Dr Justin Barrett, a senior researcher at the University of Oxford's Centre for Anthropology and Mind, claims that young people have a predisposition to believe in a supreme being because they assume that everything in the world was created with a purpose.

He says that young children have faith even when they have not been taught about it by family or at school, and argues that even those raised alone on a desert island would come to believe in God.

"The preponderance of scientific evidence for the past 10 years or so has shown that a lot more seems to be built into the natural development of children's minds than we once thought, including a predisposition to see the natural world as designed and purposeful and that some kind of intelligent being is behind that purpose," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"If we threw a handful on an island and they raised themselves I think they would believe in God."

In a lecture to be given at the University of Cambridge's Faraday Institute on Tuesday, Dr Barrett will cite psychological experiments carried out on children that he says show they instinctively believe that almost everything has been designed with a specific purpose.

In one study, six and seven-year-olds who were asked why the first bird existed replied "to make nice music" and "because it makes the world look nice".

Dr Barrett said there is evidence that even by the age of four, children understand that although some objects are made by humans, the natural world is different.

He added that this means children are more likely to believe in creationism rather than evolution, despite what they may be told by parents or teachers.

Dr Barrett claimed anthropologists have found that in some cultures children believe in God even when religious teachings are withheld from them.

"Children's normally and naturally developing minds make them prone to believe in divine creation and intelligent design. In contrast, evolution is unnatural for human minds; relatively difficult to believe."

Labels: anthropology, belief, children, Dr Justin Barrett, faith, God, Martin Beckford

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Thursday, November 27, 2008

People Said to Believe in Aliens and Ghosts More Than God

By Robert Roy Britt, Editorial Director
24 November 2008

More people believe in aliens and ghosts than in God, a new survey finds, according to a British newspaper.

The survey, however, was done by a marketing firm in conjunction with the release of an X-Files DVD, and details of how the poll was conducted were not reported in the Daily Mail. Survey questions, depending on how they are written, can greatly skew results, along with how subjects are sampled.

That said, the poll of 3,000 people found that 58 percent believe in the supernatural, including paranormal encounters, while 54 percent believe God exists. Women were more likely than men to believe in the supernatural and were also more likely to visit a medium.

A survey of U.S. college students done in 2006 found 23 percent of freshmen had a general belief in paranormal concepts — from astrology to communicating with the dead. Interestingly, the number jumped to 31 percent among seniors and 34 percent among graduate students.

Researchers who have compared various human belief systems say our tendency to believe is deeply rooted.

Religion and belief in the paranormal are not linked as one might imagine. A handful of surveys show just the opposite, in fact.

Labels: aliens, belief, ghosts, God, paranormal, Robert Roy Britt

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Friday, November 21, 2008

Trying to measure faith, health link

Some scientific studies show religion and spirituality offers benefits

By JANUARY W. PAYNE
THE WASHINGTON POST

Published: Saturday, November 15, 2008

An integral part of many people's lives, religion defines patterns of worship and socialization, but its impact, if any, on health is unclear. Some studies show a benefit to religious practice, while others -- including much of the research into prayer -- fail to prove its health value.

The question of the role something as unquantifiable as religious belief might play in health troubles some scientists in an age when mainstream medicine is turning ever more toward epidemiological science to define research protocols and to determine the validity of treatments.

That said, it's not hard to understand why being religious might be good for the body, experts say. Religious people often attend regular services; this puts them in a socially supportive environment, which has widely acknowledged health advantages. And some religions promote healthful diets and discourage unhealthy behaviors such as drinking alcohol and smoking

Among that research is some evidence that religion and spirituality offer health benefits and even longer life spans. A national survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ...found that people who did not attend religious services were 1.87 times more likely to have died during an eight-year period than those who attended services more than weekly.

The life expectancy for infrequent attendees was age 75, and it was 83 for those who attended frequently.

A 1996 study looked at the association of Jewish religious observance with mortality by comparing secular and religious kibbutzim in Israel. Belonging to a religious group appeared to prolong life, and the lower mortality rates seen in the religious group were consistent for all causes of death, the authors wrote. And a 2003 study published in Psychosomatic Medicine found that meditation might alter brain and immune function in positive ways, an effect similarly seen in research involving Buddhist monks.

It's hard to show conclusively whether or how a belief system affects one's health; other life experiences might provide benefits to health so similar to religion and spirituality that it's hard to differentiate.

Despite the lack of scientific evidence, some common religious practices are widely thought to enhance health.

Power of prayer

It's not unusual for people to pray for their own health and for that of others. In a 2004 survey of more than 31,000 people, 45 percent said they'd prayed for health reasons, 43 percent prayed for their own health, and 25 percent reported that others had prayed for them. About 10 percent said they'd participated in a prayer group for their health, according to the results, released by the National Center for Health Statistics and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

But science says that prayer might not help a person who is ill. A 2003 update to an earlier systemic review of clinical trials on distant healing found that intercessory prayer, which involves someone praying for the healing of a person located elsewhere, with or without that person's knowledge, probably doesn't offer specific therapeutic healing effects.

Any benefit seen from prayer might come from the fact that "knowing that your friends and family are praying for you is part of social support, ... and (that is) probably really helpful to people, independent of if there is a higher being that answers those prayers," said David Schlundt, an associate professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University, who has researched the connection between faith and health.

Although religion might provide social support, purpose, a belief system, a moral code -- and even happiness -- these benefits can also come from other sources, notes a 2007 study by Eckersley published in the Medical Journal of Australia. Future examination of the health benefits of religion and spirituality should be done in a broader context, he said, especially with regard to how cultural influences affect faith and health.

Cultural context

That cultural context could be key to understanding how people's beliefs factor into their health outcomes, experts note, because religion and spirituality don't seem to produce a uniform effect on everyone. Differences are apparent between groups of varying socioeconomic and racial and ethnic backgrounds.

A dangerous aspect of the purported faith-health connection is fatalism, the belief that health is predetermined and is not within a person's control. Research shows that people who hold such beliefs are less likely than others to participate in health promotion programs and to seek health care.

Research shows that African Americans are more likely to endorse fatalism than whites. A 2007 study published in the American Journal of Health Behavior reported that such beliefs could be a reaction to chronic illness or poor health rather than something that inhibits beneficial health behavior from the outset.

FAITH HEALING

Research suggests that religion offers health benefits, including longer life spans. Is that because of the healing benefits of prayer or because people of faith enjoy supportive, healthful lifestyles? Some statistics:

83: The life expectancy of people who frequently attended religious services; for infrequent attendees, the estimate was 75.

70 percent: The percentage of churches that provide health-care services to their communities, according to a survey of 6,000 congregations.

40 to 60 percent: The percentage of hospital patients who want their doctors to pray with them. But fewer than 5 percent of doctors say they do so.

2,500: Number of Maryland kindergartners exempted from vaccine mandates on religious grounds, up from 1,300 in 2004.

Labels: belief, Buddhists, culture, faith healing, health, January W. Payne, Jewish, prayer, religion, spirituality

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Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Monsters, Ghosts and Gods: Why We Believe

Monday, 18 August 2008,

Monsters are everywhere these days, and belief in them is as strong as ever. What's harder to believe is why so many people buy into hazy evidence, shady schemes and downright false reports that perpetuate myths that often have just one ultimate truth: They put money in the pockets of their purveyors.

A related question: Does belief in the paranormal have anything to do with religious belief?

The answer to that question is decidedly nuanced, but studies point to an interesting conclusion: People who practice religion are typically encouraged not to believe in the paranormal, but rather to put their faith in one deity, whereas those who aren't particularly active in religion are more free to believe in Bigfoot or consult a psychic.

Tall tales

A tale last week by three men who said they have remains of Bigfoot in a freezer was reported by many Web sites as anywhere from final proof of the creature to at least a very compelling case to keep the fantasy ball rolling and cash registers ringing for Bigfoot trinkets and tourism (all three men involved make money off the belief in this creature). Even mainstream media treated a Friday press conference about the "finding" as news.

Reactions by the public ranged from skeptical curiosity to blind faith.

In a 2006 study, researchers found a surprising number of college students believe in psychics, witches, telepathy, channeling and a host of other questionable ideas. A full 40 percent said they believe houses can be haunted.

Why are people so eager to accept flimsy and fabricated evidence in support of unlikely and even outlandish creatures and ideas? Why is the paranormal realm, from psychic predictions to UFO sightings, so alluring to so many?

The gods must be crazy

Since people have been people, experts figure, they have believed in the supernatural, from gods to ghosts and now every sort of monster in between.

Figuring out why people are this way is a little trickier.

"It is an artifact of our brain's desire to find cause and effect," Cronk, the psychology professor, said in an email interview. "That ability to predict the future is what makes humans &39; but it also has side effects like superstitions [and] belief in the paranormal."

"Humans first started believing in the supernatural because they were trying to understand things they couldn't explain," says Benjamin Radford, a book author, paranormal investigator and managing editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine. "It's basically the same process as mythology: At one point people didn't understand why the sun rose and set each day, so they suggested that a chariot pulled the sun across the heavens."

Before modern scientific explanations of germ theory, explained Radford, who writes the "Bad Science" column for LiveScience, people didn't understand how diseases could travel from one person to another. "They didn't understand why a child was stillborn, or why a drought occurred, so they came to believe that such events had supernatural causes," he said.

"All societies have invoked the supernatural to explain things beyond their control and understanding, especially good and bad events," Radford said. "In many places - even today - people believe that disasters or bad luck is caused by witches or curses."

Which raises the bigger question: With science having answered so many questions in the past couple centuries, why do paranormal beliefs remain so strong?

Related to religion?

Sometimes the belief in curses crosses paths with religion, as was the case in 2005 when televangelist John Hagee (whose endorsement was solicited and received by presidential hopeful John McCain) blamed Hurricane Katrina on God's wrath for a gay parade that had been scheduled for the Monday of the storm's arrival.

That might lead one to assume religion and paranormal beliefs are intertwined.

But in a 2004 survey, at the researchers at Baylor found just the opposite.

"Paranormal beliefs are very strongly negatively related to religious belief," study team member Rod Stark said this week.

Another study, of 391 U.S. college students done in 2000, found that participants who did not believe in Protestant doctrine were most likely to believe in reincarnation, contact with the dead, UFOs, telepathy, prophecy, psychokinesis, or healing. Believers were the least likely to buy into the paranormal. "This may partly reflect opinions of Christians in the samples who take biblical sanctions against many &39; activities seriously," the Wheaton College researchers wrote.

Cronk, the psychologist, did a small survey of 80 college students and found no connection between religiosity and paranormal belief.

But a 2002 study in Canada did find a correlation between religious beliefs and paranormal beliefs, Cronk notes. He figures that among other explanations, Canadians may not have the same belief systems as U.S. residents.

Religion vs. paranormal

Mencken, the Baylor sociologist, says sacrifice and stigma (for holding ideas outside the group norm) keep the paranormal at bay among the highly religious. He has two papers forthcoming that are based on a national survey of 1,700 people.

The first, to be published in the journal Sociology of Religion in 2009, reveals this:

"Among Christians, those who attend church very often (and are exposed to stigma and sacrifice within their congregations) are least likely to believe in the paranormal," Mencken told LiveScience. "Conversely, those Christians who do not attend church very often (maybe once or twice a year) are the most likely to hold paranormal beliefs."

A third group, which he calls naturalists, do not hold supernatural views, Christian or paranormal.

Another study to published in December in the Review of Religious Research, shows that those who go to church "are much less likely to consult horoscopes, visit psychics, purchase New Age items," and so on, Mencken said. "However, among those Christians who do not attend church, there is a much higher level of participation in these phenomena."

Educated to believe

Belief in the paranormal - from astrology to communicating with the dead - increases during college, rising from 23 percent among freshmen to 31 percent in seniors and 34 percent among graduate students.

Bader, the sociologist at Baylor, and his colleagues teamed up with the Gallup organization to conduct a national survey of 1,721 people in 2005 and found nearly 30 percent think it is possible to influence the physical world through the mind alone (another 30 percent were undecided on that point). More than 20 percent figure it's possible to communicate with the dead. Nearly 40 percent believe in haunted houses.

Media madness

Today's ubiquitous and often one-sided, promotional coverage of the paranormal, both on the Internet and TV, perpetuate myths and folklore as well or better than any ancient storyteller. Fiction and belief masquerade as fact and news, feeding the 24/7 appetite of the easily swayed.

Scientists are left with an impossible task: proving something does not exist. You can prove a rock is there. You can't prove that Bigfoot or a ghost or the god of thunder is not there. Bigfoot paraphernalia purveyors and cash-cow psychics know this well.

"Many paranormalists claim that their powers only work sometimes, or that they don't work if there is a &39; in the room," Cronk points out.

Or, in the case of the unsupportive DNA testing on Bigfoot last week, the top proponent, Tom Biscardi (who recently produced a film about Bigfoot and might be said to have an interest in garnering press coverage), simply dodged the mythbusting bullet by claiming the DNA samples might have been contaminated.

Labels: belief, Bigfoot, faith, paranormal, religion, supernatural

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Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Is there life on other planets?

Poll probes Americans' belief in UFOs and life on other planets

Scripps Howard News Service
Originally published 08:00 a.m., July 18, 2008
Updated 08:00 a.m., July 18, 2008

A survey conducted by the Scripps Howard News Service and the University of Ohio found that about eight percent of Americans say they have seen a mysterious object in the sky that might have been a visitor from another world.

Earlier this year, Marshall Franks of Gulf Breeze, Fla. was at a neighbor's house when he took pictures of an unusual rain cloud passing overhead. When Franks, a 52-year-old musician, uploaded pictures of the clouds to his computer, he noticed three orange, pill-shaped objects in a V formation.

Survey respondents said they saw objects in the shape of lighted orbs, hovering without making any noise, either alone or in V formations.

"I just know I got a picture of something strange," Franks said. "I'm not going to say it's anything, but I'd like to have some professional's opinion."

Some respondents, like 53-year-old Mai-Janne Merklein, feel uncomfortable sharing their stories with others, fearing they'll think they're crazy.

The school bus driver from Springfield, Mass. said she twice saw floating orbs, the first in 1980 outside Dover, Del. when she and three friends pulled their car over to switch drivers. They noticed a vaguely spherical orb of light moving overhead; it hovered silently then quickly flew away.

"When I told my father, he said it was probably a military something or other. I didn't argue," she said.

On another occasion, while hiking with a friend in Holyoke, Mass., Merklein saw a similar object.

Rhine said she didn't tell anyone her story until nearly forty years later, when her half-brother said he also had an experience he believes was extraterrestrial.

He was in Amarillo when an extremely bright white light began pouring into his friend's home. Peering out a picture window to investigate, Rhine's half-brother and his friend saw the silhouette of a humanoid creature, just over four feet tall with a large cranium out of proportion with its small frame. Before summoning enough courage to open the door, Rhine said, the light had disappeared.

The survey revealed that people living in rural areas of the country or in suburbs were twice as likely than urban dwellers to report UFOs. Some respondents said this might be due to light pollution in urban centers blocking the night sky.

Still, seeing isn't necessarily believing.

Respondents like 69-year-old Lindsey Ivey of Ellijay, Ga. aren't convinced their sightings are actually extraterrestrial.

Ivey said on two occasions he saw four mysterious lights hovering in a T shape near his former home in Daytona Beach, Fla.

Despite this, Ivey does not believe intelligent life exists beyond earth, partly because of his Christian faith and also since he believes there are too many circumstances needed for a planet to support life.

The survey revealed that people who have attended church recently are also about a third less likely to report having seen a UFO.

Ivey said he believes students at nearby Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University caused the lights.

Robert Garner, a 62-year-old safety-training supervisor in Nesbit, Miss., isn't sure if his experience was extraterrestrial or divine.

He was deer hunting before sunrise one December morning in 1995 when the wooded area around him suddenly became brightly illuminated for about seven seconds before returning to normal. He said he never saw any object or source of the light.

"There was no sound, no shaking, no movement; all of a sudden, it was as if someone just turned on a light, this beautiful green, golden color," he said. "It was either an angel, or a UFO came down and took a picture of us."

Garner said for weeks after the incident he no longer needed his glasses to see.

On March 13, 1997, Fran Chodacki, a 62-year-old Page, Ariz. resident was one of thousands who witnessed the "Phoenix Lights," a mile-wide V-shaped formation of lights visible over Phoenix. The lights reportedly moved slowly across the city's skyline for about three hours. Chodacki was living in nearby Scottsdale, Ariz. at the time.

She said she does believe aliens exist and have visited the Earth. But she's not sure if her sighting was extraterrestrial.

"Maybe it was a military thing; I don't know. Everything is mysterious in this world," she said. "It's a possibility."

Poll results

Most Americans say it is very likely or somewhat likely that humans are not alone in the universe and that intelligent life exists on other planets.

Only a third of adults, however, believe it's either very likely or somewhat likely that intelligent aliens from space have visited our planet, according to a survey of 1,003 adults conducted by Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University.

The poll revealed that one in every 12 Americans has seen a mysterious object in the sky that might have been a visitor from another world, while nearly one in every five personally knows someone who has seen an unidentified flying object.

America's fascination with UFO sightings has been robust, dating at least back to 1947 with the discovery of unusual objects near Roswell, N.M., that many claimed were the remnants of an extraterrestrial craft that crashed.

Among the ranks who have seen something strange in the sky are former President Jimmy Carter, the late Beatle John Lennon and the late comedian Jackie Gleason.

One of the largest mass sightings on record -- the so-called "Phoenix Lights" that hovered for several hours over two or three Southwestern states on March 13, 1997 -- was even seen by then-Arizona Gov. Fife Symington. The governor at first made jokes about the incident, but later apologized for making light of something that thousands of people saw.

"The universe is a big place," Symington told reporters last year. "We're conceited to think we're alone."

Men, young adults and college-educated Americans are more likely than most to believe that humans are not alone in the universe.

The survey found some patterns in the kinds of people who have reported having seen UFOs.

Men are almost twice as likely to have seen something peculiar in the sky than are women. Older Americans are much more likely than younger people to have seen something, as are residents of rural areas or suburbs rather than those living in major cities. People living in Western states are three times more likely to have seen a UFO than are residents of the Northeast, Midwest or South.

UFO experts agree that these trends all make sense. Men are more likely than women to be outdoors on a dark night. Older Americans have had more opportunities simply by virtue of a longer life to see something unusual in the sky.

It is also logical, they say, for people in Western states to have seen more UFOs than people in other regions. Most of the nation's largest and most expensive observatories are located in the West, which provides optimal views of the sky.

"These people have had more opportunities than others to see things in a darkened sky. That makes sense," said Mark Rodeghier, director of the Chicago-based J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies.

Peter Davenport, director of the National UFO Reporting Center in Seattle, Wash., agreed.

"Of course, we get lots of reports from major cities," Davenport said. "But it could be that people in rural areas have a better view of the sky. People in cities are blinded by all of the bright lights."

But the experts were quite surprised by other trends found among the UFO witnesses.

People who have attended church recently and who identify themselves as born-again Evangelical Protestants are much less likely to have seen UFOs or to believe in the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence than people with little or no involvement with organized religion.

People with strong political and ideological convictions -- self-identified "strong Republicans" and "very conservative" people as well as "strong Democrats" and "very liberal" persons -- are much less likely to report having seen a UFO than are politically moderate persons.

"There are just so many variables when addressing this issue," said Davenport. "But the religious trend is very, very interesting. Maybe you are more open to having seen things outside your experience if you don't have very tightly held religious beliefs."

But why are people with strong political beliefs less likely to see UFOs?

"They are more attuned to the establishment," said Rodeghier. "People who are in the establishment are more likely to have distain for the whole UFO issue. That's something those of us in the field of UFO study have seen over and over again. But people who are independent are more open to the issue."

The survey was conducted by telephone at Ohio University's Scripps Survey Research Center from May 11-28. The poll was funded through a grant from the Scripps Howard Foundation.

The overall survey has a margin of error of about 3 percentage points.

Chart 1 detailing Scripps UFO poll findings

The following are selected findings from a survey of 1,003 adults conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University from May 11-28. The project was funded by a grant from the Scripps Howard Foundation.

Here are some questions about life on other planets. Do you think it is very likely, somewhat likely or unlikely that there is intelligent life on other planets?

* Very Likely .................... 26
* Somewhat Likely ................ 30
* Unlikely ....................... 35
* Don't Know/Other Response ....... 9

Do you think it is very likely, somewhat likely or unlikely that intelligent life from other planets has visited our Earth?

* Very Likely .................... 12
* Somewhat Likely ................ 21
* Unlikely ....................... 54
* Don't Know/Other Response ...... 13

Do you know anyone who has seen a mysterious object in the sky that might have been a visitor from another world?

* Yes ............................ 19
* No ............................. 80
* Other Response .................. 1

Have you, personally, ever seen a mysterious object in the sky that might have been a visitor from another world?

* Yes ............................. 8
* No ............................. 91
* Other Response .................. 1

Chart 2 detailing Scripps UFO poll findings

A survey of 1,003 adults conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University found that 8 percent said they, personally, have seen a mysterious object in the sky that might be a visitor from another world. Here is how different groups responded to the question.

* Entire nation ................... 8
* Men ............................ 10
* Women ........................... 6
* 18-24 years old.................. 7
* 25-44 ........................... 5
* 45-64 .......................... 10
* 65 or older .................... 10
* Lives in major city ............. 4
* Smaller city .................... 5
* Suburb ......................... 12
* Rural area ..................... 10
* Northeast ....................... 4
* South ........................... 6
* Midwest ......................... 5
* West ........................... 15
* White ........................... 8
* African-American ................ 6
* Hispanic ....................... 10
* Asian-American/Other ............ 0
* Strong Democrat ................. 5
* Lean Toward the Democrats ....... 9
* Independent .................... 11
* Lean Toward the Republicans ..... 7
* Strong Republican ............... 3
* Very Conservative ............... 5
* Somewhat Conservative ........... 6
* Middle of the Road ............. 10
* Somewhat Liberal ................ 8
* Very Liberal .................... 6
* Not A High School Graduate ..... 15
* Graduated High School ........... 9
* Attended Some College .......... 10
* College Graduate ................ 5
* Post Graduate Studies ........... 4
* Income Below $25,000 ........... 11
* 25,000 to $40,000 .............. 13
* 40,000 to $60,000 ............... 9
* 60,000 to $80,000 ............... 6
* 80,000 to $100,000 .............. 4
* Above $100,000 .................. 6
* Attended Church Recently ........ 6
* Not Attended Church Recently .... 9
* Evangelical Protestant .......... 4
* Other Protestant ................ 8
* Roman Catholic .................. 8
* No Religious Preference ......... 9

Chart 3 detailing Scripps UFO poll findings

A survey of 1,003 adults conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University found that 56 percent say it is either "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that intelligent life exists on other planets. Here is how different groups responded to the question.

* Entire nation .................. 56
* Men ............................ 62
* Women .......................... 50
* 18-24 years old................. 74
* 25-44 .......................... 56
* 45-64 .......................... 60
* 65 or older .................... 46
* Lives in major city ............ 54
* Smaller city ................... 57
* Suburb ......................... 61
* Rural area ..................... 53
* Northeast ...................... 52
* South .......................... 56
* Midwest ........................ 48
* West ........................... 65
* White .......................... 54
* African-American ............... 54
* Hispanic ....................... 61
* Asian-American/Other ........... 67
* Strong Democrat ................ 61
* Lean Toward the Democrats ...... 60
* Independent .................... 60
* Lean Toward the Republicans .... 56
* Strong Republican .............. 40
* Very Conservative .............. 42
* Somewhat Conservative .......... 53
* Middle of the Road ............. 64
* Somewhat Liberal ............... 58
* Very Liberal ................... 65
* Not A High School Graduate ..... 80
* Graduated High School .......... 54
* Attended Some College .......... 49
* College Graduate ............... 60
* Post Graduate Studies .......... 58
* Income Below $25,000 ........... 56
* 25,000 to $40,000 .............. 48
* 40,000 to $60,000 .............. 53
* 60,000 to $80,000 .............. 64
* 80,000 to $100,000 ............. 64
* Above $100,000 ................. 62
* Attended Church Recently ....... 51
* Not Attended Church Recently ... 63
* Evangelical Protestant ......... 38
* Other Protestant ............... 62
* Roman Catholic ................. 60
* No Religious Preference ........ 66

Labels: belief, evangelicals, religion, Scripps Howard News Service., UFO

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Friday, July 11, 2008

German Study: Religion Stronger Than Ever Among Global Youth

10.07.2008

A worldwide survey by Germany's Bertelsmann Foundation has found religion is as strong as ever among most of the globe's young people, with Europe the main enclave where religion is on the decline.

Releasing details Thursday, July 10, the respected social-science foundation said the findings would surprise Europeans. It said the notion that young people were less religious than their parents was a typically European perception, not a global reality.

"Young people in developing countries and Islamic states are just as religious as adults," the study's authors said. "In Morocco, about 99 percent believe in God and life after death. Among Brazilians, Turks and Nigerians, 90 percent are believers and even in Israel, Indonesia and Italy, the rate is 80 percent."

Martin Rieger, who heads the Religion Monitor, a Bertelsmann project to track faith, said: "The notion that religion continuously declines from generation to generation can be clearly disproved, even in some of the industrialized nations."

Religious Brits

The study found religious belief was stronger among young people in Britain and Israel than among their parents.

The first findings of the Bertelsmann Monitor of Religion, which will be continuously updated in future, were issued to mark World Youth Day, a Catholic youth festival being celebrated with Pope Benedict XVI in Sydney, Australia on July 20.

Globally, 85 percent of young people aged 18 to 29 are religious believers, with 44 percent defined as deeply religious in the sense that they often pray, discuss religious issues and are guided in day to day behavior by religion.

In non-religious nations such as France, Russia and Austria, daily prayer is a fixture for only 9, 8 and 7 percent of young adults respectively. The United States is quite different, with 57 percent of young adults praying daily, the survey found.

Labels: belief, Bertelsmann Foundation, Europe, religion, youth

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Friday, May 30, 2008

Putting Faith Under the Microscope

By Christy Hall Robinson Thursday, May 29, 2008

Has science made belief in God obsolete? Two scholars debate the Templeton Foundation’s latest ‘Big Question.’

When confronted with the inexplicable and uncontrollable, people often invoke a higher power to make sense of the world around them. But at a time of staggering advances in areas such as genetics and reproductive technology, has science made belief in God obsolete?

The Templeton Foundation posed that question as the third in its series of “Big Questions.” It asked 13 leading scientists, scholars, and commentators—from across the religious and political spectrum—to respond in essay form. At a recent American Enterprise Institute event, two of the essayists, Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine and a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and William D. Phillips, a professor at the University of Maryland and a Nobel Laureate in physics, squared off in person.

Shermer, who wrote in his essay that the “veracity of a proposition is independent of the number of people who believe it,” said that, while science probably makes God obsolete, it certainly has not made belief in Him obsolete. According to a 2007 Harris Poll, 82 percent of adult Americans believe that there is a God. In 1916, Shermer noted, a survey found that 40 percent of practicing scientists believed in God. That figure is roughly commensurate with the percentage of scientists today who affirm faith in God.

Phillips, himself a scientist and a practicing Christian who talks openly about his faith, wrote in his essay that “a scientist can believe in God because such belief is not a scientific matter.” At the AEI conference, he was eager to find common ground with Shermer, particularly on the lack of empirical proof of God’s existence. Phillips said that examining belief in God from a scientific vantage point was the wrong approach, since one cannot measure God scientifically. “I do not believe that science is ever going to prove the existence of God,” he explained, “nor do I believe that science is ever going to disprove the existence of God.” The real question, Phillips said, is not a scientific one, and it should not be dealt with in a scientific paradigm. He maintained that people want to experience religion the way they do art, music, or love.

Shermer, however, insisted that religion cannot be separated wholly from science, because “at some point, if you believe in God, you just have to believe that he’s…entering our world. And if he’s entering our world, isn’t he doing it in some measurable way? And now we’re back to the natural world.” Phillips, while assuring Shermer that he believes God does work in the world—he is a theist, not a deist—said that he “has a hunch” that God does so in “undetectable” ways.

If one cannot trace God’s actions or presence in the world, “what’s the difference between an invisible God and a nonexistent God?” asked Shermer.

“For you, none,” Phillips replied. “But for me, I claim that I can feel God’s presence in my life.”

He continued: “The problem here is that you’re thinking . . . the whole question is about whether or not God exists. I already have an answer to that. It’s not a scientific answer. My question is: what does God want me to do?” Shermer, recognizing that Phillips’s insistence about the question not being a scientific one was a refusal to engage the issue on the given terms—whether science makes belief in God obsolete—suggested that the conversation was at an end.

Shermer said that he understands the draw of transcendence, of finding “something grander than me.” Religion is the ultimate source of explanation, Shermer added, and while he may not need it, he understands why other people do. Phillips was unflappable. “It’s not like I’m without my doubts, but I’m comfortable with those doubts,” he said.

Christy Hall Robinson is an associate editor at the American Enterprise Institute.

Labels: belief, Christy Hall Robinson, faith, God, Michael Shermer, science, Templeton Foundation, William D. Phillips

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Monday, March 10, 2008

Journeys of faith can take different paths

March 8, 2008

By Rosa Salter Rodriguez

...many Fort Wayne-area residents who responded to a request from The Journal Gazette last week to discuss changing faiths say they’ve gone on journeys that led them away from their religious roots. Residents were asked for their stories in light of the findings of the Religious Landscape Survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, one of the largest studies of its kind.

Several said they pursued their decision to switch although it was upsetting to family members or friends.

Some of those who switched faiths said they were prompted by unpleasant experiences in their former churches.

Others say they switched because they no longer believed what their previous church taught.

Experts say economic, social and geographic mobility, marriage among members of different religions, the rise of minority religions in America such as Buddhism and Islam, and individualized faith styles are key reasons for the religious turnover. About 16 percent of Pew respondents said they were unaffiliated with any tradition, although many of those said personal spirituality was part of their life.

Regardless of where local faith changers have landed, most say they respect and learned a great deal from their former faiths.

Please click on "external source" to access the complete article.

Labels: affiliation, belief, church, faith, Fort wayne, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, religion, Rosa Salter Rodriguez

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Friday, March 07, 2008

I'll have a side of Christianity with that

Amy Baack
Issue date: 3/7/08

We live in an era of freedom of choice. Everything in our society is designed to provide us with options; we like feeling we are in control of our own lives. Don't tell me what to watch on TV - let me choose from 100-plus cable channels. Burger King's slogan sums up our choice-driven culture, as it encourages Americans to "Have it your way."

A recent study conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life shows Americans are beginning to shop around more when it comes to selecting their spiritual beliefs. Based on interviews with more than 35,000 Americans 18 and older, the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey found that more than 40 percent of the survey respondents said they changed their religious affiliation since childhood.

In addition, 16 percent of those surveyed call themselves "unaffiliated," meaning they do not identify with one particular religion or do not have any definitive spiritual beliefs. This number is startling - it is twice as large as figures from past surveys.

Americans today are simply not willing to mindlessly absorb information thrown at them about what to believe. People no longer stick to one religion, and some are not committing to any religion at all.

The survey results indicate an important trend: Americans are challenging authorities and not accepting ideas as truth simply because they were raised with them, instead they first explore multiple sides of the issue.

The survey also found that among Americans aged 18 to 29, one in four respondents are not currently affiliated with any particular religion.

An additional study by Pew conducted in February examined the spirituality of college students during their undergraduate careers, with spirituality defined as "the students' search for meaning and purpose, … their values … and their self-understanding."

College is supposedly a monumental stage in one's life, when one's values and beliefs are solidified; the fact that students gain spiritual maturity throughout their college years is no surprise.

Our generation has been raised to demand choices, and it makes sense that in our pivotal 20s, we are exploring multiple religions and questioning our faith. What is unusual is that the rest of America seems to be following our lead in this collegiate route of self-discovery.

One of the strongest American values is freedom, and Americans are now applying it to their spiritual pursuits, exploring multiple religions to try to figure out what they really believe.

The survey also found that Protestantism, the leading religion in America for generations, is actually on its way to becoming a minority faith. In the 1980s, 65 percent of Americans called themselves Protestants, but the results of Pew's survey indicate this number is now down to 51 percent.

America is becoming more of a nondenominational country, freed from the boundaries of religious institutions. People are exercising their First Amendment rights and exploring whatever religions strike their fancy. As a result, religion is being shaken out of its traditional cut-and-dry mold as Americans begin to piece together their own individual beliefs, creating a sort of custom religion derived from a sampling of sources.

Spiritual beliefs are not one-size-fits-all; they are intensely personal, and we are beginning to treat them as such. No one can tell me what to put on my iPod playlists, and I can certainly practice whatever religion I choose. I don't need to settle on one religion at all; I can create my own. People are free to believe whatever they want; this is the beauty of modern America.

Religion is just the latest part of our culture to receive the choice-filled menu treatment. So what will it be today? Would you like to try some Judaism, or perhaps a bit of Scientology? I hear the Buddhism is fantastic.

Labels: America, Amy Baack, belief, choice, college, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, religion, spirituality, students

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Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Choice: A Healthy Trend Indeed!

by Lauren Artress

The fact that many people change their religious affiliation nowadays is a healthy trend. Changing dominations shows that people are thinking about their beliefs. People are paying attention to what nourishes them spiritually and what leaves them dry, empty and uninspired. No longer are they satisfied with the beliefs that were passed down to them through their families. They want first hand experience of the Divine. The shift to a new religious paradigm relies on tuning into themselves and taking more responsibility for their spiritual lives. And that is what the Pew survey is identifying.

Often having many spiritual choices is demeaned by the phrase “the shopping mall mentality” of religion. This spiritual smorgasbord is a threat to the mainline churches that are struggling with declining membership. These churches, for the most part, are established to articulate and inculcate beliefs. But the spiritual hunger lies in establishing a relationship with the Divine, not “believing” in a masculine God who lives disembodied in the sky. The anonymous quote “Religion is for people who believe in hell; spirituality is for people who have been there” still holds true.

Underneath all the searching, we are hungry for spiritual sustenance. We long to live a symbolic life that has meaning beyond our everyday activities. We long for a safe place to express our devotion and to light a candle for our deepest hopes and longings to be manifest in the outer world. Or, we may need to support our creativity by igniting the creative spirit through insight and awakening the imagination through new experiences. Other times—as Mary Oliver says “if it all we can do to keep on trudging” then we need to find a place that will deepen our faith as we white knuckle it through.

Labels: belief, change, Lauren Artress, religion, spirituality

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Saturday, March 01, 2008

Origins of belief

Sat March 1, 2008

Researchers at Oxford University have been given nearly $4 million to investigate the origins of belief in God.

The three-year project titled "Empirical Expansion in Cognitive Science of Religion and Theology” is designed to determine whether belief in a deity is instinctive or learned. It will be funded by the Pennsylvania-based John Templeton Foundation.

Justin Barrett of Oxford University's Center for Anthropology and Mind and Roger Trigg of Oxford's Ian Ramsey Center for Science and Religion will lead the investigation.

Barrett said developmental psychology has determined that faith in God is a universal human impulse, found in all cultures and grasped from a young age. Researchers will use various methods to try to determine whether faith in a deity is inherent to cultures worldwide and throughout history.

Religious believers and nonbelievers will make up the research team, Barrett said.

Labels: belief, Empirical Expansion in Cognitive Science of Religion and Theology, God, John Templeton Foundation

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Saturday, February 23, 2008

$4 million study to understand why people believe in God

Washington DC, Feb 22, 2008

A group of researchers from the University of Oxford will spend $3.9 million on a three-year study to “explain” why humanity believes in God.

The Ian Ramsey Center for Science and Religion has decided to bring together anthropologists, theologians, philosophers and other scholars to academically define if belief in a “supreme being” is a basic component of humanity.

Roger Trigg, a senior research fellow at the Center, said the almost $4 million would be used to respond to the question, “What is it that is innate in human nature to believe in God, whether it is gods or something superhuman or supernatural?"

Trigg admitted that anthropological and philosophical research carried out up to now suggests that “faith in God is a universal human impulse found in most cultures around the world, even though it has been waning in Britain and western Europe.

"One implication that comes from this is that religion is the default position, and atheism is perhaps more in need of explanation," he said.

Funding for the study will come from the John Templeton Foundation, a U.S.-based philanthropic organization.

Labels: belief, faith, God, Ian Ramsey Center for Science and Religion, John Templeton Foundation, Roger Trigg, University of Oxford

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Thursday, January 24, 2008

A Personal Belief System Correlates with Happiness

January 23 2008

Work life Balance is examined in American Dream Project’s Dream Life Assessment. The survey indicates that in the area of spirituality, Americans stand strong by incorporating a personal belief system in their lives and thus becoming one step closer to work life balance.

Work life Balance brings forth the question, is a personal belief system important in today’s world? According to Will Marre, founder of American Dream Project and acclaimed speaker, it is—very. “Studies across 46 countries,” states Marre, “show that people who embrace spiritual beliefs and regularly attend some type of worship service are happier, more content, more optimistic, healthier and longer living than those who don’t. Believers simply have higher life satisfaction and work life balance than those who don’t have a spiritual belief system.”

For over 3 years the American Dream Project has been conducting an online survey and has accumulated over 10,000 participants to get clarity on how people rate themselves in work life balance, spirituality being a part of the focus.

The results of the survey are actually surprising in a world that seems more and more cynical and disillusioned every day. 41% of teens, 44% of single, and 44% of married participants say they experience a constant connection to a divine source of wisdom, love and peace, are primarily motivated by love, live to a high standard of personal morality, and are tolerant and open minded to new learning, ideas and truth.

Marre explains the importance of a belief system to work life balance stating, “Cynics would argue that belief in God is simply a placebo that creates an emotional feeling of well being. Believers would say that spiritual beliefs give you a sense of meaning, call you to a moral life and motivate you to be more loving because that is what God desires of us.” Furthermore, in The Magic of Forgiveness (2003) Dr. Tian Dayton states, “Whether your faith is in God, Higher Power or nature, some sort of spiritually organizing principles help to give moral structure, spiritual purpose and meaning to our lives. They also provide us with like-minded communities to belong to.”

“Whether as part of our beliefs we choose to believe in God or not,” states Marre, “having a core belief system gives our lives meaning and purpose and does indeed make us happier. It holds us accountable to something/someone more than ourselves and helps us achieve work life balance.”

Labels: American Dream Project, Americans, belief, Dream Life Assessment, God, happiness, love, spirituality, Will Marre

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Thursday, September 06, 2007

Women More Spiritual Than Men

Poll Finds Gender Gap In Beliefs, In Church Attendance And In Practice

By Lynn Doan
September 5, 2007

Kay Bartel and her husband, Fred, went to church every Sunday after they married.

She joined church groups, organized church events and volunteered for church projects.

He put $5 in the offering plate.

"That was the extent of his religion," said Rocky Hill resident Kay Bartel, a 70-year-old Protestant whose husband died in 2000. "He never did do anything else."

Bartel and her husband reflect a persistent, nationwide difference in how women and men view the role of religion in their lives - a difference confirmed in a recent poll of Connecticut residents for The Courant. Thirty percent of women, including Kay Bartel, ranked their religious beliefs as "extremely" important in their lives compared with 22 percent of men in the telephone survey conducted last month by the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut.

A significantly larger percentage of women than men also reported attending religious services at least once a week and praying every day, according to the poll, which included the responses of 225 men and 263 women. The margin of sampling error is 4.4 percentage points.

"It's a nationwide phenomenon that women tend to be more spiritual than men," said Monika McDermott, research director of the center.

This "religion gender gap" has baffled experts for decades.

David A. Roozen, director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research at Hartford Seminary, has been studying the gender phenomenon for 40 years, "and I'm still not fully sure why it exists," he said.

"It's just been one of those persistent characteristics of religion in the U.S. that nobody has ever been able to empirically explain," he said. "There have been lots of theories. Back in the '50s, it was because men were in the workplace and women were at home. The workplace was a hard, rash place. Home was a place of nurture."

Then, he said, women joined the workforce and the gender gap remained. Experts began instead attributing the gap to the psychological makeup of men and women but nothing has been scientifically proved, Roozen said.

Manisha Desai, director of the women's studies program at UConn, said women's traditional role as caretakers and "culture-bearers" is what brings them closer to their faiths.

"Women are traditionally the ones who pass down the values of culture and religion," she said, "so they'd of course be more likely to consider their religion more influential in their daily activities, whether it be going to church or watching television."

Thirty percent of women polled said their religious beliefs play a major role in deciding which movies or television programs their families watch compared with 19 percent of men.

Elinor Greenblatt, a poll participant from Norwalk, said she was surprised that the percentages of men who reported attending religious services and praying daily weren't lower. Forty-two percent of men said they pray every day compared with 64 percent of women, and 27.2 percent of men said they attend religious services at least once a week compared with 36.7 percent of women.

"I didn't think there could be that many men [going to religious services]," said Greenblatt, 68, who continued taking her ailing husband to Jewish services in the last years of his life. "If I hadn't pushed it, it wouldn't have happened."

Greenblatt said she even drove her husband every Friday to an Orthodox synagogue, where her presence "didn't count" because she was a woman.

This irony, of some women's fierce loyalty to patriarchal religions, has been the subject of many studies by women's studies experts.

"What we've found is that women can differentiate between the patriarchal religion and the need of all human beings to have a set of beliefs and values as a basis on how to live their lives," Desai said. "We all need music and poetry in our lives, and religion provides the poetry, the music, the companionship, the sharing and the socializing with others."

The Rev. John Gatzak, spokesman for the Hartford Archdiocese, said parishioners also understand that "while we are a church with a male clergy, women have always been the spark of faith that has ignited the hearts of both men and women to take a greater look at God's presence in our lives."

Gatzak said he wasn't surprised at the poll results.

"God speaks to our hearts," he said, "but he takes a lot longer to get through to the heart of a man."

Labels: belief, Center for Survey Research and Analysis, church, Connecticut, gender, God, Lynn Doan, religion, spirituality

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Monday, June 11, 2007

Back of the Book

Back of the Book
by Dr. George Barna

Barna's Annual Tracking Study Shows Americans Stay Spiritually Active, But Biblical Views Wane

It is hard to miss Americans’ comfort with and interest in spirituality. Most adults say that their religious faith is very important in their life. Two-thirds of the nation’s adult population firmly embraces the idea that their most important purpose is to love God with all their heart, mind, soul and strength. However, a deeper look at people’s full array of spiritual beliefs and behavior calls into question the sincerity of their commitment.

Every year, The Barna Group explores the state of America’s faith, examining various facets of people’s spiritual activity, faith identity, commitment and religious perspective. According to the 2007 survey, while their spiritual activities and religious identity have changed little compared to recent years, the area undergoing the most change is what Americans believe.

How Beliefs Have Changed

The 2007 study of the nation’s core beliefs found that five out of six theological perspectives have shifted in recent years away from traditional biblical views. This includes perspectives about three spiritual figures: God, Jesus, and Satan.

Most Americans still embrace a traditional view of God. Currently two-thirds of Americans believe that God is best described as the all-powerful, all-knowing perfect creator of the universe who rules the world today (66 percent). However, this proportion is lower than it was a year ago (71 percent) and represents the lowest percentage in more than twenty years of similar surveys.

Few adults possess orthodox views about Jesus and the Devil. Currently, just one-third of Americans strongly disagree that Jesus sinned (37 percent) and just one-quarter strongly reject the idea that Satan is not a real spiritual being (24 percent). Each of these beliefs is lower than last year and among the lowest points in nearly two decades of tracking these views.

The other changes in beliefs include greater reluctance to explain their faith to other people (just 29 percent strongly endorse this view) and the willingness to reject good works as a means to personal salvation (down to 27 percent from 31 percent).

Given these shifts, it is ironic that the only religious belief that was unchanged from previous years was the belief that the Bible is accurate in all the principles it teaches. Not quite half of Americans (45 percent) strongly assert this perspective.

The 2007 study showed that among the ten activities studied, Americans are most likely to pray. More than four out of every five Americans (83 percent) said they had prayed in the last week. This was followed by attending a church service (43 percent) and reading the Bible outside of church worship services (41 percent). Notably, just one-quarter of adults possess an active faith, meaning they engage in all three of these activities (pray, attend church, and read the Bible) in a typical week.

Perspectives on the Research

David Kinnaman, who directed the study, indicated that "most Americans do not have strong and clear beliefs, largely because they do not possess a coherent biblical worldview."

This report is based upon telephone interviews with a nationwide survey by The Barna Group with a random sample of 1006 adults, age 18 and older, conducted in January 2007. The maximum margin of sampling error associated with the aggregate sample is ±3.2 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level. Statistical weighting was used to calibrate the sample to known population percentages in relation to demographic variables.

George Barna is an author, pastor and the founder of The Barna Group in Ventura, Calif., a firm specializing in conducting research for Christian ministries and non-profits

Labels: Americans, Barna Group, belief, Bible, faith, God, Jesus, prayer, religion, Satan