I was thus interested to see today's SMH item - yes, the time of the year when the mass media are desperate for filler - reporting that newspaper's survey of belief [PDF].
The SMH quotes a response from Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, a vocal exponent of the 'gay = abomination' school, who claimed that the survey results show the religious instinct was universal.
There was no denying that increased numbers of people described themselves as non-believers, but this was no boon to the atheist cause, he said. "The decline of Christian faith does not lead to lack of religious belief; it just opens the way for superstition".Quite so. Notions of a heavenly father with a deep personal interest in every sparrow (albeit a certain inattention regarding several million Jewish kiddies and oldies in the 1940s, not to mention Armenians, tsunami victims and so forth) and a virgin birth, proficiency in conversion of water into wine, resurrection etc etc are presumably scientific rather than mere vulgar superstition.
Nearly half of the 1,000 people polled by Nielsen for the SMH reported belief in psychic powers such as extrasensory perception. 41% believe in astrology. 34% believe UFOs exist. Women are supposedly much more likely to believe in God and other phenomena than men, with the exception of UFOs. 63% of the surveyed Australians "believe in God or a universal spirit". 24% do not believe in either God or a universal spirit.
50% reported that religion is "important or very important in their lives", although the survey did not indicate whether that importance was reflected in behaviour and "committed Christians" might of course behave in ways that their irreligious peers consider to be repugnant, indeed illegal.
88% of the faithful indicated that they were either absolutely or fairly certain in their belief. 29% reported that the Bible is "the word of God", "to be taken literally, word for word". (Bad news, presumably for people wearing blended fabrics of animal & vegetable fibre ... stand next to the witches and those who question the righteousness of owning slaves.)
63% believe in miracles and 51% claim to believe in angels. 53% believe in life after death; 56% in heaven and 38% believe in hell. 49% expressed a faith in "psychic powers such as ESP"; 41% believe in astrology. 37% of respondents believe in Satan, a tad more than the 34% who believe in UFOs and 22% who believe in witches.
Regrettably there seem to have been no questions about Elvis or the peregrination of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
The self-professed 'Christian' cohort was asked about specific beliefs regarding Christ. 94% of the cohort believed he was a real person who lived some 2,000 years ago, with 91% believing that he was the son of God but only 72% believing that the mother of Jesus Christ was a virgin.
32% of respondents believe in an evolutionary process "guided by God". 23% believe the Biblical account of the origin of human beings (ie Eve generated from Adam's rib and so forth), affirming that "God created human beings, largely in their present form, at one time in the last 10,000 years or so".
