Religious landscape survey

Posted at 2:49 PM on April 8, 2009 by Bob Collins (8 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

Can you believe in Christ and not believe in God? The Pew Research Center is out with a survey that says 5 percent of Americans do not believe in God, but only 24 percent of those people call themselves atheists.

Fourteen percent of those who say they do not believe in the existence of God identify themselves as Christians, the survey said.

For the most part, Minnesotans responding to the survey tracked along the same lines as the national results. One of the exceptions was "frequency of answers to prayers." Thirty-one percent of Americans surveyed say they pray and receive answer to those prayers. But in Minnesota, that percentage is only 23 percent.

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Comments (8)

The movie Religulous was the first thought when I saw these stat's. I do consider it a must see. Maybe you could blog about it Bob.
:)

Posted by Nissa | April 8, 2009 4:31 PM

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I haven't seen it and I'm not likely to do anything to put money in Bill Maher's pocket. He's not a very nice guy.

Posted by Bob Collins | April 8, 2009 4:35 PM

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Just out of curiosity, what do you have against Bill Maher? I don't know him personally but from what I've seen of him he seems to be a funny guy with a knack for producing biting critique.

Nissa, I also very much enjoyed Religulous.

Posted by Ryan | April 8, 2009 6:04 PM

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He is a funny guy. I remember 12 or so years ago he acted like a jerk to one of my reporters. I've just not been a real fan of talented people who feel a little too full of themselves when dealing with others.

Posted by Bob Collins | April 8, 2009 7:06 PM

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I wonder if it's the colder weather that slows down the answer to people's prayers or if it's the fact that nobody is listening in the first place?

Posted by David | April 8, 2009 10:02 PM

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I'm an agnostic with atheist leanings, and I wonder if some people in the survey might have been reluctant to call themselves atheists, given that large segments of our society get so twitted about/are so fearful of the concept.

Posted by Bob | April 9, 2009 7:54 AM

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Is there such thing as a "cultural Christian"? It would seem that's what those 14% are - or maybe they're just confused. What was the question?

Many Christians don't really know what it is they say they believe in. Christianity itself is a mishmash of incoherent claims glommed together by medieval clerics, so deciding which tenants to call gospel is a real challenge. Religion is humankind's pre-science way to explain things that are hard to understand. It will hopefully continue to be eroded by rationality.

Posted by Jim!!! | April 9, 2009 9:38 AM

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Is science a faith?

Scientists do not agree on string theory. What we have is a mishmash of very complicated equations glommed together by mathematicians in an attempt to explain something hard to understand (unified field theory). There are even factions that argue passionately that they are right and others are wrong.

Before you dismiss Christianity, do some research.
Disbelief is also a faith.

Posted by kennedy | April 28, 2009 2:15 PM

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