Kudos to Jeff over at the Missoula Skeptics Blog for spotting an AP story in today's Missoulian about a study that found 57% of Americans still believe that "God’s intervention could save a family member even if physicians declared treatment would be futile." I would have completely missed this story if Jeff hadn't blogged about it.
Jeff sounds pretty discouraged by the results of the study, but I actually found it encouraging (I guess you could call me a "glass 43% full" kinda guy). The news for me here is that 43% of Americans do not believe that god's intervention could save a family member. Regardless of whether or not god would intervene, these people apparently don't think she's capable of changing the outcome.
That's a significant proportion of Americans who are at least starting to think about these kind of things rationally. Most of them would probably still say that they "believe in god", but they're starting to recognize that she's irrelevant. If they don't believe that she's going to do anything about a suffering loved one, then she probably doesn't have any influence on the more mundane moments in their lives, either.
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2 comments:
In groundhog we trust...
. . . to predict the weather, I suppose?
I could not help but notice, next to this post, that the calendar lists February 2nd as an important day. Why not February 1st, the Superbowl? What is about the groundhog's predictive ability that makes them deserving of note? In short, I am trying not to be too serious (are you?), but I am skeptical of the skepticism.
Bend,
The calendar lists important dates, as well as traditional holidays (as defined by Google). They're there merely for reference.
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