December 13, 2009

Why believe in a religion? Why not believe in 2 or 3 or more?

And throw in astrology and ghosts while you're at it.
The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released a report [that]... points out that many Americans are now choosing to “blend Christianity with Eastern or New Age beliefs” and that “sizable minorities of all major U.S. religious groups” said that they have had supernatural experiences, like encountering ghosts....

Twenty percent of Protestants and 28 percent of Catholics said they believe in reincarnation... [A]bout the same percentages said they believe in astrology, yoga as a spiritual practice and the idea that there is “spiritual energy” pulsing from things like “mountains, trees or crystals.”...

[T]hose who identified themselves as Christian were more likely to believe these things than those who were unaffiliated....

Furthermore, 16 percent of Protestants and 17 percent of Catholics said that they believe that some people can use the “evil eye” to “cast curses or spells that cause bad things to happen.”...

... Democrats were almost twice as likely to believe in ghosts and to consult fortune-tellers than were Republicans, and the Democrats were 71 percent more likely to believe that they were in touch with the dead....
Religion is the snack food of the people.

203 comments:

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reader_iam said...

Synova: I bet you wouldn't approve of the type of jammies (footie or not, but especially if they're footies) that the Obama girls wear--or wore--either, whatever which they happen to be.

It's a heart-break. Don't understand how a mere election could break so many things--so many transcending-of-mere-elections principles, so many cool analyses--into bits, sometimes even shards of a mirror-image once eschewed.

I mourn.

(Make no mistake: I don't let myself off of that hook, either.

Good mourning!)

***

I see what I see. And that's that. So it goes.

amba said...

Allen S: Pretty good, pretty good!

peter hoh: a religion built around Hitchens.

I think that would be far superior to the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

You could call it Hitchcraft.

The Crack Emcee said...

"Even if he did [go to church] and was considered 'observant' there is still no way to know if he is a Christian or not."

You guys crack me up:

He's a skank, and the average skank is a Christian. But the above-average skank (like he and his whores) is NewAge.

I'm kidding. They're all just skanky-assed skanks.

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