Survey sheds light on American Christian perspective.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=7400529

Actually Gothamp, these surveys tell us a lot. Almost all surveys in America are taken of 1500 people or fewer. They've been scientifically proven as effective or more effective than census data anyway. True, there are obvious problems (people who use cell phones as their primary phones aren't contacted, as well as people with no phones) but that's the point of a margin of error. This survey would be as accurate as any other.
Now, of course, the survey could have many, many other problems that the article doesn't address (how did they do the telephone sampling, for instance? There are many ways to do it, and some are better than others) but the size of the sample is not a problem.

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Oh how I've missed the board these last 5 weeks...

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Have you ever read a main-stream article with the s.d. number in it? No one reports standard deviations. It's not even really that relevant to this survey.

Edit: Wait, before you comment on what I said (because I realize I didn't say it very well.) Standard deviations apply to how many in a group would be w/in one s.d. of the mean. So if the mean height is 6 feet, then in a normal distribution, 68% of people would be within one s.d. (say, 3 inches) of that height. How does that apply to this survey? 68% of people fall within 2 scripture passages of reading a book of the Bible a day? I don't understand your s.d. comment, is what I'm saying (sorry, not a lot of sleep last night, I'm still on Africa time.)

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Updated On: 2/7/05 at 03:53 PM

Well they sure as hell ain't higher else there are more hypocrites in this country then you can count.

SOMEBODY'S buying all that porn and pot!

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Jerby - I used to have a priest friend who made me swear that if anything ever happened to him I'd go get his bag of porn and paraphrenalia out of his room. They're not mutually exclusive.

And that would be why he USED to be a friend.

The point being that "Church going Americans" is a very loose term. Southern Baptists will give different answers than Northeastern Catholics. Both of those groups consider themselves "Christians". So this article doesn't really shed any light on the American Christian perspective because it doesn't acknowledge differences within the "Christian" population.

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I just love how Gotham tried to sound like he knew what he was talking about, and Jess shot him down!

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Ah, thanks guys! I missed you all so much, you have no idea. In a couple days when I've got my stuff together, I'll do a formal "I'm back" with a report of my amazing-beyond-words trip, but I couldn't stay out of this conversation. First full day back, and I'm already arguing with Gothamp. Ah, good times...

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