Compared to what?

April 13th, 2003 | the commons

In his entry entitled, “This explains it all…” David Weinberger refers to a recent Harris poll on “The Religious and Other Beliefs of Americans 2003.” The results indicate that

“…half of all [American] adults believe in ghosts, almost a third believe in astrology, and more than a quarter believe in reincarnation – that they were themselves reincarnated from other people. Majorities of about two-thirds of all adults believe in hell and the devil, but hardly anybody expects that they will go to hell themselves…”

Americans, as a whole, seem to be like the current occupant of the Oval Office in their religious faith and superstition. But what I want to know is how this compares to the rest of the world. How do our religious beliefs stack up against our allies, who are increasingly nervous about the religious fundamentalism in George W. Bush’s public statements.

According to this article in MSNBC/Newsweek [Google cache link]

“…Americans are religious in ways that many Europeans find almost incomprehensible. ‘We could never imagine putting IN GOD WE TRUST on our money,’ says one Parisian intellectual. A series of surveys by the University of Michigan since 1981 suggests that on a spectrum of traditional versus secular values, with religious attitudes being a key test, Americans are closer to Turks, Indonesians and Iranians than to Italians or French, Belgians or Brits. In most societies, the survey suggests, affluence brings self-expression, and self-expression reduces religiosity. But less so in the U.S.A…”

I want the Harris people to use the same questions in Britain and France and Germany and Russia and China. I’d like to see the World Values Survey at the University of Michigan perform a study on their data comparing religious beliefs in the US and the rest of the world. I want to know if we really are still living in the Dark Ages.