Secular Right | Reality & Reason

Aug/09

23

Politics & regionalism

9 Comments · Posted by David Hume in data

repdemconlib

The chart is pretty self-explanatory, but context & methods here. I have two related posts over at ScienceBlogs.

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9 comments

  • Susan · August 24, 2009 at 10:00 am

    There aren’t many surprises here, but it’s VERY interesting that New England conservatives are less inclined to believe that the Bible is the word of God than are New England independents and Republicans.

    Is New England the spiritual–so to speak–home of the secular right?

  • John · August 24, 2009 at 5:32 pm

    I’m surprised by how few people think that the Bible is the word of God. It seems to me you pretty much have to believe it in order to be Christian. (note: you don’t have to believe that God dictated it word-for-word, but you do have to believe that it was divinely inspired)

  • Susan · August 24, 2009 at 5:49 pm

    Perhaps the respondents thought they were being asked if they believed the Bible is literally true. Or if they believed that it was dictated by God to a series of human scribes.

  • Author comment by David Hume · August 24, 2009 at 7:19 pm

    john, the options are:
    literal word of god
    inspired word of god
    book of fables
    other

    #1 is what i’m reporting. sorry for the confusion.

  • Mike I · August 24, 2009 at 10:48 pm

    Mr Hume,

    It may have been more helpful to lump together ‘literal’ and ‘inspired’ Word of God for this poll, as it may vastly underrepresent certain groups. The official teaching of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches is that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. Only fundamentalists (and theologically illiterate/imprecise/uneducated Catholics and Orthodox Christians) would agree with #1. This is in fact a major parting point between most Christians and Muslims; Muslims believe the Koran to be directly dictated by God; most Christians do not believe that to be the case with the Bible.

  • Caledonian · August 25, 2009 at 6:58 am

    There is also a distinction between “the Bible is literally correct” and “the Bible is the literal Word of God” that people often become confused over.

    The first is potentially compatible with the idea of the scriptures’ content being determined by human beings, while the second is not.

    Of course, the second is also incompatible with the known history of the Bible, unless you believe God caused people to vote to include only the text that was “really” God’s Word.

  • John · August 25, 2009 at 1:20 pm

    @David Hume
    OK, thanks :)

  • SFG · August 29, 2009 at 6:49 pm

    I’ve noticed a lot of upper-income people up here in the Northeast basically do take the secular right, non-loony-libertarian position. Basically a lot of the gay/abortion stuff doesn’t make sense without Christianity. Why do I care if two men like to have sex with each other, exactly? Why is it any of my business as long as they don’t do it in the street and scare the horses? (Which they have been known to do in San Francisco–Folsom Street Fair anyone?)

  • SFG · August 29, 2009 at 6:51 pm

    I also find it particularly amusing that 20% of _New England liberals_ think homosexual sex is ‘always wrong’. The evolutionary disgust for non-procreative sex dies hard, eh? ;)

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