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Thursday, December 11, 2008

Belief in Astrology Falls to Second Last Place!

 
According to the latest Harris Poll only 31% of Americans believe in astrology and only 24% believe that they were once another person.

Other interesting facts are that a substantial majority of Americans believe in multiple supernatural beings (polytheism). Besides the regular God, they believe in angels and the devil.

 Believe InDon't
Believe In
Not Sure
     %    %    %
God   80   10   9
Miracles   75   14   12
Heaven   73   14   13
Jesus is God or the Son of God   71   17   12
Angels   71   17   12
The resurrection of Jesus Christ   70   18   13
Survival of the soul after death   68   15   17
Hell   62   24   13
The Virgin birth   61   24   15
The devil   59   27   14
Darwin’s theory of evolution   47   32   22
Ghosts   44   39   17
Creationism   40   31   29
UFOs   36   39   25
Witches   31   54   14
Astrology   31   51   18
Reincarnation–that you were once another person   24   53   23

In other news, 37% believe that the Old Testament is the word of God but only 14% believe The Torah is the word of God.

15% say they are not at all religious and 10% don't beleive in God.


11 comments :

Mike said...

At least reason is ahead of belief in ghosts. That's good, right?

Scary...

Anonymous said...

Astrology may not really be that bad off due to the high undecideds.

Pretty much what I would expect, but what's most interesting to me in these numbers are the high undecideds, which apart from Evolution/creation are UFO's and Reincarnation - significantly higher than the undecideds for other beliefs.

esaul17 said...

How can more people believe in heaven than the soul surviving death? You need the soul to survive death for heaven...

Also, polytheism is the believe in multiple gods, not multiple supernatural beings. Angels and the devil are not deities, so it doesn't make Christians polytheistic. The holy trinity comes closest to that, and that is a primarily Catholic thing.

Anonymous said...

What's "Darwin's theory of evolution" doing among ghosts, witches and devils? And if they mention Darwin's theory, why not Lamarck's?

Larry Moran said...

esaul17 says,

Also, polytheism is the believe in multiple gods, not multiple supernatural beings. Angels and the devil are not deities, so it doesn't make Christians polytheistic.

There are all kinds of gods ranging from very powerful ones (King of Gods) to lesser ones such as angels. Then there's the evil god called Satan.

It's a bit silly to say that powerful supernatural beings that can perform miracles and are worshiped (i.e. angels) are not gods.

Similarly, it's silly to say that Satan is the big guy's rival—and a serious one at that—but he (Satan) isn't a god.

The holy trinity comes closest to that, and that is a primarily Catholic thing.

Really? Protestants don't believe that Jesus is a God and they don't believe in the Holey Spirit?

Mark said...

So of the 73 percent who believe in Heaven, 3 percent believe that Jesus wasn't good enough to get in?

esaul17 said...

Larry, Satan is not God's rival. God has complete power over him. God created Satan and when he rebelled he cast him down to Hell. Satan is the product of the consequences of allowing Free Will, and is the source of evil and temptation. God could stop this, but does not, because he does not want to circumvent Free Will.

I agree this is a stupid story, and the Free Will excuse to avoid The Problem of Evil is an invalid one. But that is still the general Christian understanding.

When you ask a Christian to define God, they usually will mention the properties like:
1) Omnipotent
2) Omniscient
3) Omnibenevolant
4) Creator of all

Angels and Gods do not begin to match this. Just because you are supernatural doesn't mean you are deity.

esaul17 said...

I mean to say "Angels and Demons", not "Angels and Gods".

esaul17 said...

And let me apologize, Protestants do believe in the Trinity. For some reason I took my ex gf's word that only Catholics do, despite her being wrong about 90% of what she said about her religion.

So yeah, negligence on my part there, I must apologize.

Anonymous said...

Satan is not God's rival. God has complete power over him.

Well, that's according to "God" anyway. Also according to God, a substantial host of heaven sided with Lucifer, the most powerful of angels.

If angels are the next notch up after man in the chain of being, and they operate in a "transcendent" realm (perhaps the implicate order as QM physicist Boehm would have put it), then they must also be Gods IMO. Possibly the same for demons.

esaul17 said...

Yes, 1/3 of the angels rebelled and were cast down. But the point is they all LOST. Satan may be God's rival for "followers" or "support"...but he surely isn't in power, as God is all powerful and Satan can do nothing to harm him (only hurt his feelings when we tempts humans to sin).

If you want to define God as some supernatural being with some level of power, then sure, but that is not what God is defined as in a Christian sense so it is just a bad case of equivocation to act like Christianity is polytheistic because you redefined God to include angels and Satan.