|
A comprehensive new study entitled “What Americans Really Believe” was recently released by Baylor University. It challenges to the core the conviction that the new atheism will lead to a smarter, more scientifically literate and civilized populace in America. In the words of Mollie Ziegler Hemingway, who has summarized the report, “[the study] shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness of astrology. It also shows that the irreligious and the members of more liberal Protestant denominations, far from being resistant to superstition, tend to be much more likely to believe in the paranormal and in pseudoscience than evangelical Christians.” The Gallup Organization, under contract to Baylor’s Institute for Studies of Religion, asked American adults a series of questions: Do dreams foretell the future? Did ancient advanced civilizations such as Atlantis exist? Can places be haunted? Is it possible to communicate with the dead? Will creatures like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster someday be discovered by science? The answers were added up to create an index of belief in occult and the paranormal. While 31% of people who never worship expressed strong belief in these things, only 8% of people who attend a house of worship more than once a week did.
Furthermore, Hemingway reports, “. . . while increased church attendance and membership in a conservative denomination has a powerful negative effect on paranormal beliefs, higher education doesn’t. Two years ago two professors published another study in Skeptical Inquirer showing that, while less than one-quarter of college freshman surveyed expressed a general belief in such superstitions as ghosts, psychic healing, haunted houses, demonic possession, clairvoyance and witches, the figure jumped to 31% for college seniors and 34% for graduate students.” GK Chesterton once wrote that “It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense, and can’t see things as they are.” The recent Gallup study for Baylor validates that very point. Perhaps the new atheism evident in the best seller lists of this past spring and summer will foster a whole new interest in the paranormal and the superstitious—and that is sad and tragic. It is also a mark of foolishness. For that reason the Bible (Psalm 53:1) declares that “the fool has said in his heart that there is no God.”
See Hemingway’s summary of the Gallup and Baylor study in the Wall Street Journal (19 September 2008). |
