these people have 10,000 nuclear weapons
This Newsweek poll (full results here) of Americans contains the following statistics about religion:
- 48% of Americans believe that mankind was ‘created in its present form’, with only 13% believing that humans evolved in a process not guided by god
- 48% believe that the theory of evolution is ‘well-supported’
- 91% identify themselves as religious, with 3% identifying themselves as atheists, and 82% as Christians
- 62% said they would not vote for a political candidate who identified him or herself as an atheist
- 26% said that an atheist cannot be a moral person
- 32% said that religion has too much influence on US politics
We are reminded often of the dangers that face the world if religious fundamentalists gain control of nuclear weapons. At some point perhaps this rhetoric will need to become more honest, and we will need to start admitting that what we’re worried about is the danger of the wrong kind of religious fundamentalists controlling nuclear weapons. Because a society where only religious individuals may hold power, and where more people believe in irrational superstition than in reality, doesn’t sound all that different to the society that the scary men with turbans and robes we’re battling to contain in the Middle East, Africa and South-East Asia seek to impose on us. Heavens, if the terrorists win they might even ban science and force us to teach ridiculous fundamentalist myths in our schools instead. Oh, wait…
The US currently has over 10,000 nuclear warheads, presumably built using the detailed instructions contained in the Bible. You know, in the part right after the bit about an all-powerful God taking the time to bury dinosaur bones all over the place.
Meanwhile, why not arm yourself with Carl Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit.
the US = awesomes.
Succinct but trues.
I don’t know what else needs to be said… it seems pretty obvious the US is full of, and controlled by, religious nuts who think they’re not nuts.
What I find so hard to understand is why it’s like that, and why they’re so prejudiced against atheists. Oh wait… brainwashing from an early age… that’ll do it. But seriously – why don’t more of them wake up? Ever?
So with my constructive bent, I turn my mind to trying to find solutions – my aim wouldn’t be to remove religion, but rather to make it more of a balanced choice for people. Cos I do think it does some real good for some people. But instead of bashing god into kids’ heads, tell them that some people do & some people don’t believe in God, and present them the information on both sides. Not “God is real johnny, and if you don’t believe me you’ll burn in hell.”
It’s so institutionalised… I’m so frustrated that in this day and age – the freaking INFORMATION AGE – that something which is based on so little actual FACT is so widely BELIEVED. Maybe it should be called the MISINFORMATION age. Doesn’t reason dictate that we should only believe in something to the extent to which it can be proven??? Jeez I hope the next age is the RATIONAL age.
im still not convinced this so-called ‘poll’ is in any way a true indication of the mind set of ‘everyone’ in the US. I’d like to suggest it’s about as reliable as the daily ninemsn poll, but i take your point all the same.
As Joe has so eloquently postulated: “the US = awesomes”
Not a new point, but perhaps the growing politicisation of religion speaks to a general human insecurity in the purpose of our being. Correct me if I’m wrong, I have always understood that was a major reason religion got started in the first place?
Psychologically it is certainly harder to deal with the idea that the human race is the result of an unlikley evolutionary chance, that your life really doesn’t “matter” in the grand scheme (what grand scheme?), and that when you die, you… are dead – than it is to believe in some greater purpose for your being, and of course the seraphic afterlife you will inevitably reach after enduring life’s trials.
I say this because, I am sceptical about religion as a solution that should be offer/supported for many people. I think religion is little more than a crutch to offer to troubled souls. But I am not certain that offering them a lie as a bandaid to their difficulties is the right way to approach things.
But that just doesn’t work. Because “presenting the information on both sides” and allowing someone to work out what they think is functionally the same thing as taking a rationalist approach and therefore there is not choice to make. Which is why most highly religious parents will never take this approach with their offspring. This hits on the classic problem with the religion issue, which is that religion plays the get-out-of-jail-free card of stating that it is not something which can rationally be understood.
More fundamentally, it suggests the problem faced by secular or rationalist people, whether religious or not, in this type of debate – rationalists will consider other possibilities, fundamentalists will not.
I think Newsweek is a tad more respectable, and they actually employed a polling methodology which I think was described in the second link – margin of error /-4%.
I am always a little dubious about these types of polls for another reason though – I think a lot of people think the should say that they’re Christian, or religious, or whatever, and the work done to make ‘atheism’ a dirty word means that there is probably a tendency for self-identification to overstate the levels of actual religious belief.
One does wonder though whether we are capable as a species of operating without some sort of ‘lie’, as you put it, to sustain us. It could be just a mechanism to simplify things too – when something is too complex, it can be convenient to slap a label on it (such as “God”) and shove it in a box and never think about it again.
As for the integration of politics and religion – this is the real worry. Thinking people in the western world fought a long and bitter battle to get religion out of politics, and the foundation of our modern systems of government was the zenith of the separation of church and state in some ways. For instance, James Madison (one of the framers of the US Constitution) said:
That kind of sentiment is almost entirely missing from modern politics, especially in the United States.
The Russians have almost twice as many as we do. Feel safer?
Have you ever actually been to the United States? Creationism is not being taught in the schools, though there are local efforts to introduce this every so often (which don’t last even where they succeed). The figure of 82% Christian sounds about right, but that covers a vast range of different beliefs and attitudes. The serious fundamentalist nutjobs are a large minority and too dominant in the Republican party, but they are a minority, and the majority is getting pretty tired of them.
Take a look at section 4 of this for what I think is a more accurate picture.
I couldn’t let this go by without one more comment.
Right now, among Republicans, by far the most popular contender for the nomination for President in next year’s election is Rudy Giuliani, who has liberal views on abortion and homosexuals.
During the period 2000-2006, when the Republican party completely dominated the federal government, there were several major developments in the area of the “social issues” which are of such concern to the Christian fundamentalists:
(1) Full, legal gay marriage became an established reality in the state of Massachusetts (can homosexuals marry in any state in Australia yet?);
(2) The Supreme Court, in the Lawrence vs. Texas decision, essentially declared buggery to be a Constitutional right;
(3) In the 2006 election, voters in the fairly conservative state of Missouri approved an initiative supporting stem-cell research there;
(4) In the same election, voters in the highly conservative state of South Dakota struck down a draconian anti-abortion law, 55%-45%.
The fundamentalists raged and fulminated against all of these developments, but were powerless to stop them.
If you think there is any comparison at all between the United States and Islamic theocracies like Saudi Arabia or Iran, you are simply not living in the real world.
The comparison is not that they are “the same” in the sense that “one is as bad as the other”. The similarity arises because, in both countries, irrational fundamentalist attitudes are a significant factor in the political process. In the Kansas school board fiasco, for instance, representatives of the political system did not say “creationism has no place in a science classroom”, they said that it was a legitimate alternative “point of view”. That accommodation, or even adoption, of superstition in a previously evidence-based system is a great concern.
I accept that evangelical Christianity is not dominant across the United States, but there is no doubt whatsoever that it is extremely influential. It’s interesting that you note Giuliani’s candidacy, considering that his lack of evangelical credentials is one of the biggest obstacles he’s going to have to overcome to win the support of conservative Republicans (I also think that, once the rest of the field coalesces around a more conservative candidate his apparent lead with be much smaller than it looks at the moment).
Whatever the precise extent of the problem (if you consider it a problem), there’s certainly a strong perception in the rest of the Western world that fundamentalist Christians are exerting growing, and alarming, influence on US policy.
Whatever the precise extent of the problem (if you consider it a problem), there’s certainly a strong perception in the rest of the Western world that fundamentalist Christians are exerting growing, and alarming, influence on US policy.
Oh, that influence is certainly there, and it’s legitimate to be alarmed about it. It isn’t currently growing, however. It probably peaked in the late 1990s / early 2000s. It certainly isn’t as strong now as it was earlier in the Bush administration. My point about Giuliani is that he’s overwhelmingly supported by rank-and-file Republicans who, a few years ago, would never even have considered a candidate whose views were so far at odds with the Christian Right agenda. And as I pointed out above, despite their apparent ascendancy over the last six years, the fundamentalists haven’t been able to implement a single item on their agenda — all the major movement has gone against them.
On a scale of religious influence in politics and society from fully secular to fully theocratic, with Australia at 0 and Saudi Arabia at 100, the US would be around 10 or 12 at the most. It’s a really misleading comparison.
I also think that, once the rest of the field coalesces around a more conservative candidate his apparent lead with be much smaller than it looks at the moment
We may soon get a chance to see. Fred Thompson, who is much more to the liking of the fundamentalists, will probably soon get into the race. He’s pulling some support from Giuliani, but so far, not nearly enough to be a serious contender (it’s something like 12% vs. 40%).