Look Who's Irrational Now

Wall Street Journal ^ | September 19, 2008 | Mollie Ziegler Hemingway

[reaganaut1]

"What Americans Really Believe," a comprehensive new study released by Baylor University yesterday, shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness of astrology. It also shows that the irreligious and the members of more liberal Protestant denominations, far from being resistant to superstition, tend to be much more likely to believe in the paranormal and in pseudoscience than evangelical Christians.

The Gallup Organization, under contract to Baylor's Institute for Studies of Religion, asked American adults a series of questions to gauge credulity. Do dreams foretell the future? Did ancient advanced civilizations such as Atlantis exist? Can places be haunted? Is it possible to communicate with the dead? Will creatures like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster someday be discovered by science?

The answers were added up to create an index of belief in occult and the paranormal. While 31% of people who never worship expressed strong belief in these things, only 8% of people who attend a house of worship more than once a week did.

Even among Christians, there were disparities. While 36% of those belonging to the United Church of Christ, Sen. Barack Obama's former denomination, expressed strong beliefs in the paranormal, only 14% of those belonging to the Assemblies of God, Sarah Palin's former denomination, did. In fact, the more traditional and evangelical the respondent, the less likely he was to believe in, for instance, the possibility of communicating with people who are dead.

...

Surprisingly, while increased church attendance and membership in a conservative denomination has a powerful negative effect on paranormal beliefs, higher education doesn't.

[MrB]

Worldview studies, in my opinion, might be the most important focus that one can have these days. It “armors up” your kids to face the world and all the nonsense that they are bombarded with.

Thanks for the rec on the “Universe Next Door”.

I recommend Summit Ministries’ “Understanding the Times” book. Noebel (author) also has a shorter version of the material in a book called “Thinking Like a Christian”.

[wizr]

If Obama’s hate filled rhetoric is God inspired, I’m a duck.

IMHO, he is one of those claiming divinity, while being led satanically.

[chesley]

True enough. But they would be fakes. The ladly was talking, as was I, about real ghosts, the spirits of dead people.

I hadn't advanced far enough in my understanding of either theology or the occult to know about demons. The Devil, sure, but not his legions.

[Red Boots]

I'll look for those - especially if they're on cd. He seems to retain things he's listened to longer than those he reads. ALthough, I did get him to read Basic Economics this summer.

One thing about the Universe Next Door - he doesn't include the Islamic worldview, though he is working on that, and will include it in the next revision.

I don't know how old your children are, but a neat college I just heard of is George Wyeth University. They teach American statesmenship, which they describe as the type of education the founding fathers had. It looks interesting. They have a website: http://www.gw.edu/

[-YYZ-]

I guess I’m an outlier - an atheist who doesn’t buy into pseudo-science, the occult, the paranormal or any of the test of that bunk. I have a lot more respect for traditional religious belief, particularly Judeo-Christianity, than I do for any of that other crap though. Of course, I also don’t have an unquestioning faith in Objectivisism, Liassez-Faire economics, or Libertarianism, either. Question everything and draw your own conclusions, I say. Ideologies are for people who can’t think for themselves.