A couple days ago I noted attendance at evangelical churches is up. Well, that’s only the tip of the irrationalist iceberg. In his column yesterday, David Harsanyi collected various polling results showing a marked turn to the supernatural and irrational.
* “[A]ccording to a 2006 Scripps-Howard/Ohio University poll, a full third of you believe that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were an inside job.”
* “[O]ne-third of Americans… believe that UFOs exist… A Newsweek poll says the number of believers is up 15 percent since the 1980s…”
* “A new Harris poll finds that 28 percent of you believe in witches and 40 percent of the public — including 46 percent of women — believe that ghosts are hovering in the so-called ‘real’ world. Over 20 percent of you have claimed to have actually witnessed a poltergeist.”
This is in addition to the traditional nuttiness: 73 percent believe in miracles, 61 percent believe in a high demon, and 59 percent believe in hell.
The world really is haunted by demons — the demons of people’s irrational and mystical beliefs.
Yikes! with a population like this, perhaps the stock-market is not rational either.
But see this:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/113452/Evidence-Bad-Times-Boosting-Church-Attendance.aspx
NS