NEWS: Survey: "Teens" Religious Knowledge Shallow

A four year research effort by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has found that a majority of American teens believe in god. However, the study concludes that thier knowledge of religion is "shallow" and that they are unable to articulate the difference that religion makes in thier lives. The full data will be available in book form next week.



I would like to see the sponsor and the initial intent of the researchers before I would jump to any conclusion of this. While the university in question has a good reputation, for a 4 year study, the sample seems pretty small. 3370 teenagers were randomly selected and 267 were directly interviewed. The Lilly Foundation is providing the funding so thier motives are as yet known either. What I'm getting at here is the truly subjective nature of this type of data collection. Yes the calls were random, but the selection of the 267 for detailed interviews may not be. One really has to understand the methodology of the poll to truly study the data.

Originally posted by FredT
The research found that devout teens hold more......., trust of adults....

I find that to be an interesting conclusion......as my main issue with organised religion is the trusting of sometimes archaic information and the trusting of adults who, in my experience, do not question things for themselves. Aside from that, how many adults are worth trusting beyond the context of community?

Many positive attributes can be derived from a religious perspective, but that, imo, is definetely not one of them.

That is strange! Out of EVERYONE that I currently have ANY personal contact with (excluding work aqaintences), I know of only one person that is religious. All the rest are either Buddhist, agnostic or athest.

So what this mean, that now the "Religious organizations" should get federal funding to teach our teens about God?

Or perhaps another excused to bring God, fundamentalist style into the classroom.

I see it as propaganda by religious groups to pursue Federal funding for "God" teaching.

Does this mean they are lacking on "Jesus teachings too" well that will be outrageous, we need to drill "Jesus and God" on these children.

Objective Subjectivity

The Lilly Endowment must have some sort of interest in the subject, or they wouldn't have paid for the study.

It is always a good idea to assume that whoever funds research has influenced its outcome. Even if it's not deliberate, it does tend to happen. Just the nature of the beast.

Aside from that, studies like these choose their methods and evaluation criteria based on what they expect to see. Again, the nature of the beast.

Testing The Waters

I am forced to wonder just what "shallow" really means in this case.

The image that comes to mind is some kid saying a blessing over his meal "...in the name of the Slaughter, the Sun and the Holy Goat, amen."

Then again, if the kid happens to be a Pagan, maybe he knows more about his religious beliefs than researchers might be able to appreciate.