(September 30, 2018 at 6:26 am)Pandæmonium Wrote: Would be interesting to know their sample if they collected that data. Out of about 60/70 people I know on talking terms in RL, around 5 or 6 are religious. 2 Christians and the rest Muslim.
Every single dataset since the 90s, be it BSA surveys or the census, has shown all religious beliefs except Islam and minority BME Christian sects as in steep decline.
But I suppose believing in miracles =/= believing in the rest of the religious guff. Also, as you point out, not really clear what one defines as a ‘miracle’, so interested to know if they have examples.
The 18-24 category surprises me, though I suspect that links more into the growth of ‘spiritualism’ rather than religious conviction.
I tend to agree with you; it depends what is meant by the vague term 'miracle', and using the definition they've used of 'a fortuitous event believed to be caused by divine intervention... ', that suggests not just theism to me but any type of superstitious/woo/spiritualist thinking; anything that reads supernatural meaning into coincidences or good luck.
It's not a huge surprise to me, even the 18-24 bracket. I know this is not the most balanced sample of British people
, but I'm currently watching Big Brother and the youngest one there is talking with a straight face about the Big Brother house being possibly haunted, and he's 18, and others are talking about positive and negative energy and being psychic etc, also with a straight face. So there are those demographics out there and it is pretty normalised/casual in society, and fed into by the media, so yeah, not a huge surprise.
