Posted on 03/17/2013 2:47:03 PM PDT by CHRISTIAN DIARIST
Frank Newport, author of the recently published book, “God is Alive and Well,” made a timely appearance this past week at a forum hosted by Concordia University in Southern California.
It followed the much-hyped release of a new survey by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley and Duke University that stated, “Americans and religion increasingly parting ways.”
Deliberately misinterpreting data culled from the General Social Survey, which is funded by the National Science Foundation, the researchers claimed that the percentage of Americans “preferring no religion” had risen to 20 percent in 2012, down 12 percentage points from 1990.
“We find no evidence of a slowdown,” the researchers declared. Their suggestion is that it is only a matter of time – by the time today’s newborns are 30 years old – before half of Americans are non-religious.
The survey by the Berkeley and Duke researchers jibes with a poll published last fall by the left-leaning Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life.
It dubiously claimed that 20 percent of Americans “do not identify with any religion.” And it labeled that supposed faithless fifth “nones,” a moniker that, thanks to the mainstream media, has almost instantly become part of the popular lexicon.
Newport, the Gallup Poll’s editor-in-chief, warned the audience at Concordia, “Don’t be confused by all this talk about ‘nones.’” That 20 percent identified by the Pew poll and the survey released by the Berkeley and Duke researchers “are not necessarily non-religious,” said Newport. “They just don’t have an explicit religion.”
Indeed, like last fall’s Pew poll, the survey by the Berkeley and Duke researchers, suggests an exponential growth in the ranks of those who do not believe in God. But nothing could be further from the truth.
The fact is that a mere 3 percent of Americans do not believe in God, according to the General Social Survey. And Newport notes that, based on Gallup polling (which boasts a far larger sample size than either Pew or GSS, and is, thus, far more authoritative than either), “America is still a very Christian nation.”
So why would the researchers at Berkeley and Duke deliberately misinterpret the GSS data? Why would Pew play fast and loose with its own polling data?
Because both had hidden political agendas – to make America’s non-religious minority appear much larger than it truly is. To promulgate the fiction that America has become a post-religious nation.
Their ultimate aim is to get God out of public policy. To ignore His Word with respect to such public policy issues as abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, stem-cell research, public prayer, etc.
The researchers at Berkeley and Duke, the pollsters at Pew, appear to have learned the art of disinformation from Vladimir Lenin, one of history’s most notable “nones.”
“A lie told often enough become truth,” he advised.
**“We find no evidence of a slowdown,” the researchers declared. Their suggestion is that it is only a matter of time – by the time today’s newborns are 30 years old – before half of Americans are non-religious.**
Hmmm.
Even if the current numbers are accurate, they have no way of taking into account the number of people who may embrace faith as they age and approach death.
I would actually argue that the poll data is accurate in a twisted way. Those who usually identify themselves as ‘believing in a god, but not in any kind of religious teaching’, are usually just selfish, greedy atheists. They don’t want to follow any commands from a higher power, but they also can’t face the logical conclusion of the no-God philosophy, that when they die, it’s all over. They’re scared of that. In short, they want all the nice things about faith, but are not willing to sacrifice anything as companion to that belief, not time, charity, or immorality. The world revolves around these people. They are the center of the universe.
I hate to sound pessimistic about the current state of faith in America and the Western World in general, but counting followers of the Biden/Pelosi version of religious adherence as people of faith, is delusional.
Our aims are not merely to convince people that there is a god, and he is the Lord. That’s meaningless in the long run. After all, Satan believes in God. The ultimate aim is to convince people that salvation lies in His teachings, and His laws. Those who work against his commands here on Earth, no matter how much they fear death, will not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.
It’s a heavy, politically correct leftist message for young people to say they don’t belong to a Christian religion. You are supposed to claim you are “spiritual”, but not say the C-word and God forbid, you say you are a Baptist when they reject homosexuals social engineering marriage and family!
Young people fall for it, but it won’t last because politically correct slogans don’t run deep in the human Spirit. Jesus does. P.C. anti-god prayers are anchored in denial out of shame and fear of a fleeting political party’s popularity and authority. The Left tried to do this to Christians in the 60’s and 70’s, too.
Young people are going to see what the Left’s evil has produced for them and reject it for the faith, morals and culture of their roots. Americans are rooted in Christianity, but with the massive immigration, they are not so rooted in our constitutional liberty which was born of Christianity.
To me it shows the longing of the human heart, coming up against the popular notion that being 'religious' means being uptight and bigoted, which is, of course, very uncool!
A rather startling number of self described athiests claim to believe in God...... A fact which speaks of the level to which education has fallen that they fail to grasp the irony...
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/06/23/new-pew-survey-21-of-atheists-believe-in-god/
What’s happening is that children of the religiously unattached aren’t describing themselves as Christian.
Contrarily, nineteensixty-four.blogspot.com, the blog of CARA, which studies Catholic affiliation was puzzling over the lack of baptisms, since unaffiliated Irish and Italian folk are STILL calling themselves Catholic,even though they are unaffiiated with the church in any way, and are NOT getting their children baptized.
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