More Americans believe in the devil than they do evolution

[mudesi]

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/More-Americans-Believe-Devil-Hell/story.aspx?guid={9FF6758C-00C0-4673-81B9-6D506085F974}

:cry::banghead::cry::banghead::cry::banghead::cry::banghead::cry::banghead:

[lame54]

1. After this last administration...

how can you blame them?

Lots of evil and no sign of evolving

[stray cat]

11. LOL my thought exactly

[QueenOfCalifornia]

2. I for one

am going to buy my ticket to Hell right after I finish my bagel with cream cheese... I do not want to go to Hell on an empty stomach.

People are fucking stupid.

[KansDem]

8. "...am going to buy my ticket to Hell "

Will you be going first-class or coach?

[mod mom]

3. After 8 years of Bush/Cheney, I do now as well!

[Nikki Stone1]

5. That's because Cheney is the devil and Bush is still a monkey.

:)

[CrispyQ]

4. I found this interesting

snip...

A Note on the Methodology Used and How It Affects the Results

Other research has shown that when replying to a question administered impersonally by a computer, people are less likely to say they believe in God, or attend Church services when they really don't. It is generally believed that surveys conducted by live interviewers tend to exaggerate the numbers of people who report the socially desirable, or less embarrassing, behavior, and that the replies given to an online survey such as this, are more honest and therefore more accurate.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Which brings up the question of what is the embarrassing behaviour here

and what that says about American society.

[MedleyMisty]

7. If you want to change the world, teach people to read

Have you seen literacy statistics for the US recently? It's dismal. Of those who can read, a great deal only read on a fifth grade level or so.

A few days ago, in another thread, I said that I didn't have special access to anything that the majority of "sheep" didn't have.

Then I looked around the house and thought about the five and a half bookcases, double and tripled stacked with more stacks of books on the floor and around the computers. I thought about my mother reading to me whenever I wanted her to when I was little (which was all the time) and how reading was a valued and acceptable way to spend your time and how she even let me off the hook on housework so that I could read.

I compared it to the furnished houses I sometimes go to for work. They are quite a bit nicer than mine and the people who own them went to better schools than I did and have a four year degree if not a master's degree. But they don't have very many books, and the ones that they do have tend to be mostly books about finance. I remember the shiver of horror when I went into one house and the only books I saw were the Bible, an Ann Coulter book, and three "The Millionaire Next Door" type books.

And so maybe, for people who did not grow up reading like I did, maybe belief in myth over reality is not a fully reasoned choice. Maybe they don't consciously decide to believe propaganda.

Frederick Douglass said that reading was the path to freedom, and he should know.

The thing is, though - like I said, even people who have been taught to read don't read very well and don't think of it as an important activity and don't choose the widest range of books to read. So not only do we need to teach people to read, we need to somehow also get people to value reading.

[MineralMan]

9. I don't think it's possible to get non-readers to read...

That behavior gets set early on, it seems to me. I don't understand it, but I do know some people who never read anything at all...not even the newspaper.

On the other hand, all of my good friends are regular readers.

[CrispyQ]

12. I agree with you that most readers are generally instilled with joy of reading when they are young.

My mother read to me & encouraged me to read. I love to read. I have reading material scattered through the house. My sister, who is 11 years younger than me, doesn't read at all. She was raised very differently - Mom never read to her & instead, plopped her in front of the TV most of the time. To this day, sis doesn't read. She can read & is a much better reader than lots of people I know, but the idea of reading a novel or a political book or even a daily column, doesn't appeal to her.

When I was in my early 20s, she was a teen & asked me to read some sexy type books & mark the hot sections for her. :rofl: I told her she would have to suffer through the book herself to find the hot spots.

[Greyskye]

10. Romania just removed Evolution from their school curriculum

http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/4652/46
Fun fact: A larger percentage of people in Romania believe in evolution than do people in the U.S.