Monday, September 20

Religion

Wow... This is a big one. Well I'm going to go into greater depth on Friday, but for today, I thought I'd just share some statistics (for shock and awe).
45% of Americans believe in creationism and discount evolution entirely.
75% of all home schooled kids are evangelical Christians
82% of Americans claim to be "Christian"
40% of Americans believe the world will end in a battle between Jesus and the Antichrist
And half of those people believe it will happen in their lifetime.
My opinion? I think the world will end, not because of some mythical battle of good and evil, but in a Jihad, a holy war between the faiths and religions of the world. Come back on Friday for a more in-depth look at religion

Sources
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-56877162.html (actually it was originally an article in Newsweek)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_US#Main_religious_preferences_of_Americans

9 comments:

  1. you do realize that in the world of political blogging, information from wikipedia is not considered a viable source. other than that, great conveyance of a lot of food for thought in a short paragraph.

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  2. Well, in the world of blogging I would argue that it's more acceptable than, say, a credible research paper. Plus all the statistics in that Wikipedia article are backed up with footnotes, all of which are reputable, so I think it's fairly safe to say those statistics are accurate ;)

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  3. Are you saying that blogging is less academic and less dependent on accurate research than traditional media?

    If so, you would be right. But should it be? Look at some of the big blogs. Boingboing springs to mind. One of the most successful and widespread blogs. Do they use Wikipedia as a citation? Only when they write something with Wikipedia as the subject matter. Doesn't that imply that, as Savage pointed out, Wikipedia is NOT a more acceptable source than a well-researched and thought out paper not written by, say, a twelve-year-old with a used copy of the Encyclopedia Brittanica and an internet connection?

    Which is not to say that Wikipedia is bad. It's oft right, and very extensive simply because of the amount of dedicated input. But still, you have to consider that it is subject to user bias, not in the way that abortion often is, but just the untrained quasi-academics penchant for interpreting data the way they want it to.

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  4. I would just like to clarify something I wrote. When I wrote "not in the way that abortion often is" I meant to write "not necessarily bias in the way that an article on abortion might contain".

    My apologies for the error.

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  5. Well I only used the Wikipedia for statistics. That number (83%) was the only thing from Wikipedia. I'm not citing any statistics or anything subject to user bias. Here, I'll post the actual source for that statistic: http://www.thearda.com/mapsReports/reports/US_2000.asp

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  6. I have an extremely difficult time believing that the 4th statistic you listed was actually surveyed.

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  7. Isn't this about religion topic instead of stats and Wikipedia?

    Besides, Wikipedia is a good source of "reference" to start from, with template structure. Anyone has doubts, which we all should, can always do more in depth research. To be honest, I will keep in doubts with any stats even from any "official" source.

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  8. Okay, the point of this post was just to list some statistics which I found interesting. I actually did write a whole "article" on this topic here. And as for your point about statistics, you are right, Wikipedia is just a starting point, but those statistics are not; they are from reputable sources. If that doesn't convince you I don't think anything will.

    One last thing, and I should have brought this up sooner. Let's keep all comments about the topic and not about the writing; in other words, criticizing sources and writing styles is not productive to the conversation. Please keep them to yourself. Further such comments will be removed.

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