More crap

[dreamer_easy]

Choose Your Own Adventure book icons. You will never think of the books the same way again.

Early incursion by the evil Pomeranian Empire.

21 year old Australian chess grandmaster!

A survey on young Australians' religious beliefs (about a third don't have any).

Comments

Dropping Up

[(Anonymous)]

The SMH thing about non-belief has some interesting terminology:

'The research showed 31 per cent of youths aged 13 to 17 were non-believers - a significant drop from previous generations.'

It's a significant *rise* in non-believers, of course. You can just
about squint and get away with that, but then there's ...

'While there were no comparable figures to show the size of the drop of non-believers, anecdotally it was a big decline, she said.'

OK ... now the increasing numbers of atheists is not just a 'drop' it's also a 'decline'. Imagine it was a survey of ethnic mix instead of belief, and there had been a significant increase in the number of 'non whites'. If the editor had characterised that as a 'decline', would he still be the editor this morning?

Also, the questioning is clearly skewed. After inviting Christians to self-identify, it then asks to say if they do charitable work. (I suspect that questionnaire didn't define terms - someone who spent a year teaching poor kids in Africa to read and someone else who seriously thought about putting a dollar in a collecting tin could both say 'yes'). The problem with that approach is neatly spelled out here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yhN1IDLQjo

The survey was carried out by that well known neutral party when it comes to the value of religion the Australian Catholic University. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the poll was *designed* to create the impression that non-believers are selfish.

Re: Dropping Up

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

The survey was a joint project between Monash and the ACU; I think it's fair to be concerned about bias. However, I wouldn't at all be surprised if people involved in organised community religion participate more in the community, if only through having many more opportunities to do so.

Intuitively it makes sense that more young people would be atheists than before, but if we don't have those comparable figures, how can we be sure?

You're mistaken about the survey questionnaire, which is available online for your perusal.

ETA: So is a summary of the findings.