Religion survey

Ekstasis said:
I agree.
This brings up the question of statistics in general - At what point can one assume that the sample group tested are going to be a close enough indication of the total population's status?
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you can if you know what the distribution would be, then your estimation can be quite accurate. You can also use confidence intervals to determine how large your size needs to be.
 
Lycanthrope said:
I'm afraid I don't buy it.

"Not religious" doesn't mean "not superstitious."

Also, where do they get these statistics from? What's the demographic of their sample?

South Africa is a very religious/superstitious nation and I'm afraid that as long as 25% of it remains unemployed and far more of it remains uneducated, unskilled and impoverished, I think it will remain that way for a long while yet.
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I don't know hey, the general younger population (those born post 85 or so) are less prone to believe these fairy tales, mainly because of all the access to information..
 
Lycanthrope said:
I think this is where using statistics gleamed from the national census would be a great asset.



I am saying that educated people are far less likely to be religious and, certainly, far less likely to be fanatically so.
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Did I mention I'm doing my masters?:p
 
Nicodeamus said:
I don't know hey, the general younger population (those born post 85 or so) are less prone to believe these fairy tales, mainly because of all the access to information..
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Ever seen the Jesus Camp documentary? People will push their beliefs down a kid's throat to the point that the information they access is considered the work of the devil. Jesus Camp is a documentary that allows evangelical christians to have their say, without prompting them. And they hang tie their own noose, so to speak. It is a pretty hair-raising portrayal of child abuse, if you haven't seen it. But by contrast, a friend of mine recently saw it and she thought what they were doing was brilliant - she is "reborn".

Access to information is one thing. Knowing what to do with information is another altogether...
 
DJ... said:
Ever seen the Jesus Camp documentary? People will push their beliefs down a kid's throat to the point that the information they access is considered the work of the devil. Jesus Camp is a documentary that allows evangelical christians to have their say, without prompting them. And they hang tie their own noose, so to speak. It is a pretty hair-raising portrayal of child abuse, if you haven't seen it. But by contrast, a friend of mine recently saw it and she thought what they were doing was brilliant - she is "reborn".
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it is sad, not to mention all the bigotry that goes with it, it isn't much different to what the Nazis or the Commies did.

Access to information is one thing. Knowing what to do with information is another altogether...
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You know when I did my confirmation in 2007 at the NG Church (the local church in my community) about 50% of those my age just did it because our parents or our school wanted us to do so (or they thought that it was important), hell my parents just told me to say Ja and Amen to everything despite them not being religious. In SA society there are a lot more closet atheist and agnostics than one gives credit for.

I just get the feeling that atheism is a bit more acceptable today than it was a few years ago, even if you compare the amount of letters in some of our conservative newspapers you will find that atheism is becoming more and more acceptable.

Open minded churches that allows gay people, Buddhists and other 'heathenetic activities' such as this one http://www.renaissancegem.co.za/ wouldn't have existed 10 years ago. In fact the only growing Church type in South Africa is the evangelical movement (those crazy folks with the tongues) and if you go and visit these churches you will find that younger people are less and less common.

However whenever I see Angus Buchan mighty men conferences then I do feel that we are moving a bit back towards the stone age.
 
The value of this study is very limited. What I would like to see is that if there is indeed a drop, how it differes between different religions. And then the definition of "religious" and "religion" is not clear. Is the belief and use of a sangoma "religion"? There is a large change amongst the youth in the Black community away from their traditional beliefs. That alone will show a huge drop. Question is: is there as big a drop amongst Christians, Jews, Moslems and Hindus? In a country like China the number of Christians are growing (substantially). The same growth in Christianity is happening in some African countries. Where religion - especially Chritianity - was outlawed in the past it is showing healthy growth. There are more Christians in the world now than ever before, but the places you will find them have changed.
 
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BeVonk! said:
The value of this study is very limited. What I would like to see is that if there is indeed a drop, how it differes between different religions. And then the definition of "religious" and "religion" is not clear. Is the belief and use of a sangoma "religion"? .
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Why not? Belief in the supernatural is not owned by the major religions.
 
Techne said:
It would be interesting to understand the causes of this and how it mixes with the finding that atheism has the lowest retention rate when compared to religions. I.e., it appears that only about 30% of people that are raised atheist remain atheist.
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Where is this research? You keep omitting this link...
 
Ekstasis said:
Two people equally educated - one religious the other not. The likelihood is based on the conclusion a person come to based on the information he/she receives. Not sure how research can come up with this notion of education level having a direct influence on a persons religious/non-religious state.

Let's once again take ToE as example. Two people oaf equal intelligence receive the information - one accepts the other shouts BS.
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Someone doesn't know what "correlation" means. :erm:
 
empirex said:
Because you're religious, and us religious folk tend not to be well-educated ;)
I was being sarcastic :)
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Erm now that you mentioned it that darn emoticon was too far down for me to realise that.:cry:

Owell I'll stop skimming posts from now on.:)
 
DJ... said:
The sample group is about 1000 people per country which is far too small to be indicative of anything in my opinion. Especially when you're talking about as diverse a country as ours. I wouldn't read all that much into these results - the fact that they show double digit changes across the board indicates that either the world underwent some radical process (which didn't happen) or there is a problem with their dataset. I'm going with the latter...
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The math says that 1 000 people sampled from a population of 50 000 000 will give results with a 3% margin of error on a confidence level of 95%. So, it can be quite accurate.

However, the 1 000 people in the sample have to be selected in such a way that they are representative of the entire population - these studies almost always assume a normal distribution. That would be quite difficult in SA because of the diversity you mention - but it can be allowed for.
 
Rkootknir said:
The math says that 1 000 people sampled from a population of 50 000 000 will give results with a 3% margin of error on a confidence level of 95%. So, it can be quite accurate.

However, the 1 000 people in the sample have to be selected in such a way that they are representative of the entire population - these studies almost always assume a normal distribution. That would be quite difficult in SA because of the diversity you mention - but it can be allowed for.
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Which is why I mentioned the diversity aspect. It is nigh on impossible to draw any conclusions from this data-absent poll...
 
DJ... said:
Which is why I mentioned the diversity aspect. It is nigh on impossible to draw any conclusions from this data-absent poll...
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Agreeing with you again , there are so many strata of our society .
 
Rkootknir said:
The math says that 1 000 people sampled from a population of 50 000 000 will give results with a 3% margin of error on a confidence level of 95%. So, it can be quite accurate.

However, the 1 000 people in the sample have to be selected in such a way that they are representative of the entire population - these studies almost always assume a normal distribution. That would be quite difficult in SA because of the diversity you mention - but it can be allowed for.
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Yah finally someone who actually knows about statistics. People always moan when the sample size isn't near the actual population size, but it is near impossible to achieve that.

DJ... said:
Which is why I mentioned the diversity aspect. It is nigh on impossible to draw any conclusions from this data-absent poll...
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That is true, but you can't just automatically assume that they didn't try to get a accurate representation of South Africa's diverse populace. Anyway, it may not be such a drastic decrease as represented but I do feel that there are less religious people in the newer generations compared to the older, but that is just from personal experience, and most of the people I socialize with are from university which tends to be less religious.
 
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