Religion gives poor countries an emotional boost.
By theBEattitude
A new poll by Gallup shows the poorer and less educated a country is, the more religious they are. Why does money and education make any difference for belief in a god? Because desperate people search and hope for something better than they have. As soon as education and economic development takes place, religion becomes much less important.
Tags: Countries, Gallup, Importance, Income, Poor, Religion
This entry was posted on March 9, 2009 at 3:22 pm and is filed under Thought & Questions, Why be a Christian?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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March 9, 2009 at 4:04 pm |
The results are skewed by an uneven distribution. By comparing aggregates, the particular chart chosen for reproduction here does not show the stark difference between countries with high per-capita income. For example, in Mississippi, 85% responded “Yes.” Overall, the US responded 65% “Yes” whereas nations like Norway, Denmark, and Japan respond with far more “No” answers. In other words, the data only points to the conclusion reported if you look at it a certain way. It cannot explain why religion is important to the majority of the world’s people with a high income.
March 10, 2009 at 3:56 am |
As a matter of interest, what would you answer?
March 12, 2009 at 11:45 am |
In another recent Gallup poll, 94% of Americans (USA) indicated they believed in God or a higher power. This is in contrast to the relatively low 65% who answered that religion is an important part of their daily life.
For the sake of the poll results and conclusion, my response is irrelevant, but since you asked, I would be among the apparent 29% who answer that religion per se is not important to my daily life, but like some of them, I do believe that God is and that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God. This, and not religion, is important.
March 12, 2009 at 12:01 pm |
The 29% did not say they believe in Jesus or the god of the bible. The 29% could be Agnostics believing in a Flying Spaghetti Monster god.
March 12, 2009 at 12:59 pm |
I wasn’t asking you Ben, I was asking theBe!
March 12, 2009 at 1:13 pm |
Since organized religion is no longer an important part of my life I would obviously answer no. I’m assuming this is a setup so you can respond that atheism is a religion.
March 13, 2009 at 12:52 am |
Mwahah, a setup from the other direction!
The question was: Is religion an important part of your daily life?
If you answered no, they would only have to take a look at your blog to see that religion does in fact form a major part of your day.
So then you would fall into the statistics, but for the wrong reason and they would then draw incorrect conclusions.
Just showing how misleading stats can be.
July 4, 2009 at 6:45 am |
Cool blog! Thanks, webmaster.