Friday, June 27, 2008

Gods with little to do

From today’s What’s New (by physicist Bob Park):
PEW FORUM: U.S. RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE SURVEY.

The latest findings of the respected Pew Forum’s massive survey make it clear that we are an overwhelmingly religious people. Only 16 percent identify themselves as "unaffiliated" and only a tenth of those are atheists.

The strongest predictor of a person’s faith has always been the faith of their parents, but with interfaith marriages increasing, a quarter of adult Americans have switched to another religion.

The greatest gain was in unaffiliated, but even among the unaffiliated 70 percent said they believe in God.

The willingness of Americans to compartmentalize their beliefs, holding totally contradictory convictions in different spheres, is remarkable. Scientists accept as a given that behind every physical effect lies a physical cause. That seems to rule out supernatural causes, leaving gods with little to do.
—Check out OC Weekly's Orange Coast magazine has a party. I happen to know that Rebel Girl was invited to (and attended?) that party, and a piece about her (among others) will appear in the next edition.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jesus loves you, Chunk. And He loves you too, Reb, regardless of what each of you think or how you feel.

Anonymous said...

I thought Jesus died some years ago. How do you have any idea what he "thinks," then?

torabora said...

10:14 Don't get 9:55 going. You'll get regaled with tales of the supernatural and mumbo jumbo about a holy ghost. It's a death cult thing and they number in the hundreds of millions. Positively creepy.

torabora said...

The living come with grassy tread

To read the gravestones on the hill

The graveyard draws the living still

But never any more the dead.

The verses in it say and say

The ones who living come today

To read the stones and go away

Tomorrow dead will come to stay

So sure of death the marbles rhyme

Yet and help marking all the time

How no one dead will seem to come

What is it men are shrinking from?

It would be easy it would be clever

And tell the stones; Men hate to die

And have stopped dying now forever

I think they would believe the lie

Frost

Found this surfing today and thought it kinda fits. For what it is worth I believe that there is something going on, we'll all find out soon enough.

Anonymous said...

Good poetry selection, TB.

Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...