How much do believers believe in what?

Great Debates
1

Sorry if the title is a little confusing. Let me try to clear up my question. I often hear statistics that x% of the US population believes in God. I seem to recall figures as high a 90% or even more. Or I hear statistics documenting a decrease in church attendance in certain European nations interpreted as suggesting a corresponding decrease in religious belief.

I often fall back upon my definition of God as omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. But I suspect that a good percentage of the 90% (if that is an accurate figure) do not believe in a big-triple-O God.

And I frequently encounter people who disavow specific tenets of their chosen style of worship, while maintaining a belief in “some” deity. Some of these strike me as ludicrous, such as a Lutheran who claims she “doesn’t really” believe Christ was divine.

And I suspect many non-churchgoers would nevertheless consider themselves “religious.”

Also, I believe people’s beliefs may change situationally. For example, a relatively passive believer may form more certain beliefs under stress (the old atheists in foxholes line.)

I feel these issues make the very discussion of the existence/nonexistence of God extremely different, because there are so many differing versions of belief, and many individuals’ personal beliefs may change situationally or over time, or may even be internally inconsistent.

I feel that data is skewed by the fact that the loudest “spokesmen” tend to hold beliefs that are considerably stronger and more clearly formulated than a good percentage of their followers.

Wondering if any of you had any data, experiences, or opinions concerning the strength of belief held within western society.

So, for the sake of clearly stating an OP, I’ll say that I believe far fewer westerners believe in a traditional omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God than suggested by statistics suggesting overwhelming belief.

Dinsdale slinks off to seek the inevitably requested cites.

2

Hey, don’t everybody post at once!

Despite the deafening silence and for the benefit of the crickets, here are a couple of links. The 1st is an article discussing a recent Gallup poll, and the second presents stats from a Christian consulting group.

http://www.intrust.org/magazine/spring2000/spring00_field.htm

http://www.barna.org/cgi-bin/PageCategory.asp?CategoryID=5

3

Assuming you’re talking abot the USA, there’s some interesting info in this thread http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=90598 (How common is creationism outside the US?) about halfway down the page MEBuckner provides the following info: Gallup poll figures indicate that (as of February 2001), about 45% of Americans were “hard creationists” (agreeing with the statement “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so”, which would still include “day-age” and other “Old Earth Creationists”); 37% were theistic evolutionists (“Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process”); 12% were atheistic or weak Deistic evolutionists (“Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process”, which I guess could still include a clockmaker God who created the Universe but then stood back and let it run its own way); and 6% were other or no opinion.

And in the same thread Wiwaxia says “I just read an article from New scientist, Unnatural selection, MacKenzie, 22 Apr 00, and according to this article, 47% of Amercians believe ‘humans did not evolve but were created by god a few thousand years ago’.”

Now, I personally find it a lot more difficult to believe that God and his angels worked overtime in the first six days to get all the dinosaur bones buried than in an “omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent” god. But apparently I’m out of synch with the rest of America.

4

A majority of Americans also believe in horoscopes too, arara123.

5

I read, and doubted, those stats too. So I asked around. I especially asked people who were obvious ‘sinners’.
My conclusion? A lot of folks are afraid to say “No, I don’t believe in god”. Hedging their bets, I suspect.
Peace,
mangeorge

6

Dinsdale, I think this current thread has some relevance:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=90176

IMO, many people do not tell the truth to pollsters about what brand of soft drink they prefer or what tv shows they watch, let alone about religious beliefs. When a pollster asks about religious beliefs, I think some people claim to believe whatever they think are the proper, acceptable things to believe. Some claim to hold the beliefs they’re pretty sure are held by people of the sort they want to seem to others to be. Some claim to really believe things they’ve always kinda wished they believed, or thought they ought to believe.

I also suspect some people are completely indifferent to matters of religious belief. They’ve never devoted even a minute’s thought to such things. Realizing that others attach a lot of importance to religion, and not wanting to seem like some sort of weirdo, they play along. When asked about their beliefs, they say “yes” to whatever they’ve gathered are the standard things to believe.