Yep, according to a new Harris poll, 62 percent of U.S. residents believe in a literal hell and the devil compared to only 42 percent who believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution. (I’ve always argued that it requires much more faith to believe incredibly complex life simply evolved than to believe in a Creator.)
The poll of 2,455 U.S. adults, also reported that 82 percent believe in God, 79 percent believe in miracles, 75 percent in heaven, and 72 percent believe that Jesus Christ is God or the Son of God.
It’s an interesting poll, but begs the apostle James’ warning, “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.” What we do with our beliefs is as important as what we believe. At least that’s what these two James believe.
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December 3, 2007 at 11:07
More crack-headed polls, if you ask me. 62% believe in (some form of literal) hell, yet 82% believe in (some form of) God? What kind of spiritual malaise are those 20% (who believe in God, but not in hell or the devil) in?! And 72% believe that Jesus Christ is (the Son of) God, but fewer believe in the hell and devil about which he spoke? I would love to ask that 10%: “Who tempted Christ?”
To me, this just signals more lazy American “Christianity” where it’s easy to believe in something, ANYTHING, but hard to accept difficult spiritual truths or develop rigorous spiritual beliefs.
(BTW, in your article, “Does DNA disprove evolution?” you argue for a young earth, but link to an article by Hugh Ross, Ph.D., who is notoriously old-earth-y. “Verfiy, verify, verify” indeed!
December 3, 2007 at 11:22
Jes’ goes to show ya, tha’ average Joe has more hoss sense than most of them thar edu-ma-cated varmints in tha’ skolastik world.
Kudos to the common man.
December 3, 2007 at 13:51
Okay, but apparently far fewer of the 72% (that believe Christ is God or the Son of God) know Him as their Savior. That much is evident from popular culture in America today. Even the New Age crowd and pagans recognize that a majority tends set the moral course of a nation.
The preponderance of seeker-driven, feel-good, churchianity easily explains the difference between people who say they know Him and those who recognize that sin is a problem. The preaching of the cross is offensive to those who prefer to perish, as a wise man once said (1Co 1:18). We have men like Rob Bell, Brian McLaren, and Joel Osteen who seem to think the worst sin is to preach John 3:17-18 along with John 3:16.
But perhaps I shouldn’t mention names. That’s like throwing a monkey wrench into the mammon machine. Let not your heart be troubled, Mr. Money. The people seem to lack the discernment to see the truth.
December 8, 2007 at 13:47
I believe in God. I do not believe in polls. Any poll can shift by a dozen points or more merely by rewording the question. Otto von Bismarck became an improbable advocate of universal suffrage when he said, let the people vote, I don’t care whether they vote yea or nay, as long as I get to write the questions they are voting on. The poll results are neither disturbing nor encouraging, they are just a gust of wind.
I believe in the obvious facts of evolutionary biology. In fact, they are so well anticipated by the first two chapters of Genesis, I can’t imagine how anyone could accept evolution and deny the authority of the Bible. I always believed that an Almighty, omnipotent God, to whom time is nothing, was the only one who could have come up with anything so complex and subtle as the evolution of life—even if mere mortals have a hard time understanding it, and want a simpler explanation to comfort their little souls.
I believe that Jesus knew what he was talking about. I doubt very much that mere Christians, myself included, have a very good idea of what Jesus was talking about, but I have to take on faith that it is worth trying to work with what little I can grasp. I don’t believe Christian theologians have a very good grasp on Satan: in Job, Satan appears in classical Jewish understanding as God’s servant, the administrator of hard tests, not God’s adversary. Even the Temptation in the desert follows this concept. Satan is NOT Ba’al Zevuv, nor Lucifer Son of the Morning. And I don’t believe in hell, I share the Seventh Day Adventist conclusion that those who are not saved will simply die, forever.
Finally, Christiane, sincere and devoted sister in Christ, please be careful about dumbing down the common man. My mother is from east Tennessee, up on the Cumberland plateau, and she speaks perfectly good English. There was a governor of Texas, Mary Ann “Ma” Ferguson, who announced that the state would not fund instruction of foreign languages in public schools, because “if English was good enough fer Jesus Christ, its good enough fer Texas.” A very devout Christian friend, from Ethiopia, had a good laugh about that. So would every Christian in every land around the Mediterranean Sea, who knows that Jesus spoke in Aramaic and Scripture passed through at least three other languages before being translated into English at all. Those who passed Greek “magna cum grace” do have something to offer all of us.