Neo-Scholastic Wrote:Just thought to share fairly recent Pew Research on religious belief in the United States: HERE
What are your take aways?
What interests me, is the 9% who do NOT believe in God but still DO believe in some kind of higher spiritual force. Not sure what to make of that whether it includes deists, Wicca, or Platonists. This quote seems not to illuminate that statistic much:
Quote:...it is clear from questions elsewhere in the survey that Americans who say they believe in God “as described in the Bible” generally envision an all-powerful, all-knowing, loving deity who determines most or all of what happens in their lives. By contrast, people who say they believe in a “higher power or spiritual force” – but not in God as described in the Bible – are much less likely to believe in a deity who is omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent and active in human affairs.
So those who do not believe in god could potentially fall into multiple categories depending on if they accept 1 or 2 out of 3 of the all-powerful, all-knowing, and good God. That's a lot of options (I'll let others do the math).
There's a concept of belief in a transcendent reality or 'higher force' that I call 'Somethingism'. You've maybe heard of people proclaiming it as their stance, the ones who say 'I believe in something', by which they mean some sort of power in the universe that they don't claim to understand, but has to do with meaning and purpose and providence and maybe the origin of the universe. I think it might as well be declared the national religious opinion of Iceland, and the Dutch have a word for it: 'letsism'. Which basically means 'somethingism', so apparently I wasn't very original in calling it that.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.
