Quote:
Originally Posted by Displaced Flames fan
I told you guys this was happening, just thought it was at a much higher rate already. And it may be. Some people are reluctant to divorce themselves completely from their claim to a particular religion even if they don't practice it in any way whatsoever.
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I think one thing we have to remember about these surveys is they don't dig deeper.
For example most of my Christian friends don't believe in adam/eve, don't believe in the resurrection, don't believe the bible is anything other than a man's creation.
If pollsters dug deep to people claiming Christian belief, the numbers of people who really see the bible literally is very small, as photon posted.
A perfect example of people who claim being Christians and are about as far from the American definition is the Nordic countries. In Sweden/Denmark most people there call themselves Christian, in 2 countries where people who don't believe in God make up around 80% of the population.
When the sociologist dug deeper in his book (society without god), he found that people who didn't believe in God, calling themselves Christian meant Christian by it was there heritage, they felt strongly in the golden rule, strongly about charity and taking care of each other as a people.
Obviously socialism there works well with the teachings of Jesus about charity, helping the poor and caring for your fellow man.
So for me anytime I see statistics from surveys I always wonder if people are being truly honest about what they believe, if they really give it much thought or even if it really means much to them at all.
So that 75% or higher that are said to be Christian, you really can't assume that more than a minority of that is true literalist's.