Poll dancing: In his latest survey, Christian pollster George Barna actually uncovered information that helps explain recent findings by other pollsters that more Americans today believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction than believed it in 2003. Barna found out that Americans are liars and atheists make better activists.
Barna set out to see how Americans perceive themselves — always a tricky topic, if you ask me. Americans are notorious liars and generally want to appear to be better than we are. We want people to like us and we are willing to dissemble in order to cover up the fact that we are reprehensible boors.
Here are some of Barna’s findings:
Most adults hold a generally favorable impression of themselves. At least nine out of 10 said they are “a good citizen” (97 percent), “friendly” (94 percent) and “generous” (90 percent). At least eight out of 10 claimed to “feel at peace” (83 percent), to be “clear about the meaning and purpose of your life” (81 percent), and to be “making a positive difference in the world” (80 percent). Nearly seven out of 10 who have children in their home said they are “an effective parent” (69 percent).
See what I mean? I don’t have a problem with the first three attributes (well, maybe “generous”), but when more than 80 percent of respondents are at peace, clear about their life’s meaning and purpose, and claim to be making a positive difference in the world, we’ve moved into downtown Liarville. I don’t know what Barna meant by “effective parent,” but the 69 percent figure probably jibes with the percentage of the general population of parents whose children are not in jail.
But when Barna started in with negative self-describing adjectives, any pretense of telling the truth went out the window.
Only 13 percent said they are “in serious debt” and only one out of every five (21 percent) are “feeling unfulfilled.” One out of three (34 percent) admitted to feeling stressed out – the highest level recorded for that descriptor in the past five years. And four out of every ten adults (40 percent) admitted to being overweight.
I don’t know how you define “serious debt,” but the Federal Reserve just issued a report that Americans owe $2.19 TRILLION in consumer debt, which doesn’t count mortgage debt. The unfulfilled 20 percent were the only ones who didn’t lie about being clear about the meaning and purpose of their life, and there is definitely some overlap between the 34 percent of stressed-out individuals and the lying 83 percent who claim to be at peace (about 17 percent, by my calculations, but probably more). And if only four in 10 Americans is overweight, I’ll eat your Big Mac.
Respondents’ flirtation with “truthiness” continues:
Amazingly, more than eight out of 10 Americans (82 percent) believe that they “live a simple life.” A slight majority claims to be “into new technology” (58 percent) and to be “active in the community” (53 percent). Four out of 10 adults acknowledge that they are still “trying to find a few good friends” (40 percent). Roughly one-quarter admit to an aggressiveness in their lifestyle, as 29 percent described themselves as a “social activist” and 25 percent said they are “often trying to persuade others to change their views.” One out of every eight (12 percent) also noted that they are “dealing with an addiction” that personally haunts them.
I suspect these dolts must have misheard the question as “live a simpleton’s life.” Does “into new technology” mean being able to operate a turkey fryer on Thanksgiving? And if more than half of them truly were active in their communities, do you think we’d have voter turnout of less than 40 percent? Of course four in 10 of them are still trying to find a few good friends because 29 percent of them are self-described aggressors and a quarter of them are dictating to others what they should think. The 12 percent who admitted to having an addiction must have been drunk or stoned to actually tell the truth.
And the lying just goes on and on: 75 percent of respondents said they are “very open to moral views that differ from yours,” but 66 percent admitted that they “like to be in control” and 52 percent indicated they are “very convinced that I am right about things in life.” Translation: So while I want to appear open to new ideas, in reality my mind’s made up and you’d better see things my way.
But my favorite part of the survey is the section that uncovered the fact that atheists make better activists than Christians:
The survey also highlighted the fact that people who are not in the born-again constituency (based upon their beliefs, rather than their self-identification) are less likely than atheists to be social activists (42 percent of atheists claimed that label, compared to just 29 percent of born-again adults and only 20 percent of evangelicals). Despite their activism, though, atheists emerged as being less clear about their purpose in life and less likely to feel at peace. Not surprisingly, they were also considerably less concerned about the moral condition of the country.
Barna just had to get in that little dig at the end, since he was having a bad survey day with this one. For a guy who always finds the results he’s looking for, this poll obviously left him shaken, hence the dig at atheists’ morals.
Of course, it’s a red herring. For if you don’t describe yourself as Christian — especially evangelical or born-again — on a Barna survey, then you’re an atheist, which includes Muslims, Jews and Buddhists. And we know how activist those folks can be.
But the real message behind the lack of activism among evangelicals and born-agains is the thing that’s scary about Lebanon and Pat Robertson’s trip to Israel — millenialism. The belief that we are in the end times as fortold in the Book of Revelations is what drives George Bush’s environmental policy (Why save the trees when they are going to be destroyed in the Apocalypse?), his Middle East policy (Annihilate the Jews and the Muslims so Jesus can return to Israel.) and his domestic policy (Why save the poor little black children when they aren’t going to heaven anyway?). That’s why Barna “atheists” are activists — they know the world is what we make it, not what happens after some mythical “Rapture.”
Listen to the wingnut pundits on TV, and you will hear them refer to “apocalypse” and “World War III” and other millenialist code words that indicate they have given up on the world and are just waiting to be taken up into the bosom of Jesus.
Meanwhile, we “atheists” will continue to activate and try to make things better for all our fellow liars out there.
