Some interesting figures

[Rhiannon]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-39153121

The one that raised my eyebrows is a third of Christians not believing in life after death.

[Bubbles]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-39153121

The one that raised my eyebrows is a third of Christians not believing in life after death.

For me, it was this one.

"9% of non-religious people believe in the Resurrection, 1% of whom say they believe it literally"

How someone non religious believes it literally without being religious I don't get, unless they believed he wasn't really dead by modern standards.

I'm surprised as many as 9% of non religious people believe it at all.

Perhaps by life after death they meant like coming back as ghosts or existence after death.
Some Christians don't believe in an afterlife until people are raised up on judgement day.

As it's a third, I'd guess that's where that's coming from.

[Sriram]

Hmm...actually...what is the problem with the resurrection?  Literally millions of people have NDE's. Many people die  (even by modern medical standards, complete with ECG's, EEG's and a medical team in attendance etc. etc.).... and then come back alive!  Maybe the same thing happened to Jesus.

No one goes ga ga over all those NDEr's.

But did Jesus really ascend to heaven in his body or did he merely continue to live on earth quietly (with Mary Magdalene or something, somewhere)....that is the question? 

[floo]

Whilst many people think Christianity has some good points, which are worth taking on board, they can't buy into the less than credible concepts like the virgin birth and resurrection.

[Bubbles]

Hmm...actually...what is the problem with the resurrection?  Literally millions of people have NDE's. Many people die  (even by modern medical standards, complete with ECG's, EEG's and a medical team in attendance etc. etc.).... and then come back alive!  Maybe the same thing happened to Jesus.

No one goes ga ga over all those NDEr's.

But did Jesus really ascend to heaven in his body or did he merely continue to live on earth quietly (with Mary Magdalene or something, somewhere)....that is the question?

Sriram

If we thought that people came back to life after three days , or might,  we wouldn't be happy with burying them, just in case.

[Sriram]

Sriram

If we thought that people came back to life after three days , or might,  we wouldn't be happy with burying them, just in case.

That depends on how convinced we are that they are actually dead.   Maybe some people in rural areas and in poorer countries are really being buried even before they are actually dead, just because there is no immediate evidence that they are alive. Maybe some sophisticated equipment might find them to be actually alive.

It is possible that that is what happened to Jesus. People could have thought he was dead and he came back after three days. That wouldn't be such a big deal in today's world.

[Gordon]

I'm wondering if perhaps this bit of work should be viewed with caution since, it seems to me, that their data collection (presumably a questionnaire of some sort) might need some work if we are to believe that some religious people don't accept the resurrection of Jesus yet some non-religious people do.

Must look into the details of the method used, if available. I see some clerics are portraying this work as a positive, which seems off given the mixed messages in the findings.

[floo]

I got the impression some non religious people believe in some sort of afterlife, but that is not the same as believing in the resurrection.

[Rhiannon]

I'm wondering if perhaps this bit of work should be viewed with caution since, it seems to me, that their data collection (presumably a questionnaire of some sort) might need some work if we are to believe that some religious people don't accept the resurrection of Jesus yet some non-religious people do.

Must look into the details of the method used, if available. I see some clerics are portraying this work as a positive, which seems off given the mixed messages in the findings.

Yes I did wonder that. How many non-religious even know what the doctrine of the Resurrection is?  It's quite normal for Christians not to take it literally, but I've never yet met a Christian who didn't believe either in an afterlife or in the hope of one (i.e. a 'don't know'.)

I think the Church is aware that its best hope of survival is to catch the 'spiritual but not religious' crowd in some way so this will appeal. And let's be honest, there's been quite a lot of straw clutching in the reaction.

[Nearly Sane]

Yes I did wonder that. How many non-religious even know what the doctrine of the Resurrection is?  It's quite normal for Christians not to take it literally, but I've never yet met a Christian who didn't believe either in an afterlife or in the hope of one (i.e. a 'don't know'.)

I think the Church is aware that its best hope of survival is to catch the 'spiritual but not religious' crowd in some way so this will appeal. And let's be honest, there's been quite a lot of straw clutching in the reaction.

I am a bit cautious about the term non religious , it's not synonymous with atheist.

[Rhiannon]

I am a bit cautious about the term non religious , it's not synonymous with atheist.

Of course it isn't. I fall into the 'spiritual but non-religious' category. I'm not a theist in the conventional sense, but I'm not an atheist either.

Plenty of 'spiritual' people haven't got the first clue about religious doctrine.

[Nearly Sane]

Of course it isn't. I fall into the 'spiritual but non-religious' category. I'm not a theist in the conventional sense, but I'm not an atheist either.

Plenty of 'spiritual' people haven't got the first clue about religious doctrine.

neither do many religious people. I wonder if the self identification here is suspect overall. Were some of the Christians identifying culturally rather than in terms of belief. Have some of the non religious identified because of issues with mainstream religion but still hold the doctrines.I think it underlines more the fluidity of terms rather than tells us that much about beliefs. Even taking the term 'literally', I am not sure that people might not think that some form of non corporeal resurrection isn't literal.

[Gordon]

Here is the link to the data tables, which show the questions/options asked in this telephone survey.

http://www.comresglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/BBC-Religion-and-Ethics-Survey-Data-Tables-1.pdf

Without even going into great detail there are some obvious concerns regarding the options offered to participants in view of both the content validity of the questions being asked and the practicality of the method, bearing in mind the number of options to be asked for  some items, and that presumably participants had to remember all the options before choosing one.

Especially tortuous is question 3 'You mentioned that you believe that there is life after death. Which of the following forms, if any, do you believe this takes?', and this is asked of respondents who said they believed in life after death. There are 16 different options listed that they are asked to select from or are assigned to by the person conducting the survey (a potential issue in itself) during the telephone call and where some of the options seem too imprecise to be useful, reference other terms that seem not to be clearly defined, may not be mutually exclusive or are inherently fallacious.

If I was to show this to one of the Profs who supervised me I'd be lucky to get out of her office in one piece.

For example;

'You become a ghost/a spirit'.

'Energy cannot be destroyed so we exist as something else/a different form'.

'We go to a parallel universe/the astral plane of existence'.

'I believe there is something but I do not know what'.

'I believe in The Rapture/Judgement Day/Armageddon'.

'We go to a spirit world/spiritual dimension'.

'Other answers' (presumably determined by the person conducting the survey).

'Nothing'.

'Don't know'.

I suspect this exercise deserves to be filed in the round filing cabinet.

[2Corrie]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-39153121

The one that raised my eyebrows is a third of Christians not bellowing  in life after death.

So this could suggest that 17% of people have saving Faith. 'If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God  raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved"

[floo]

So this could suggest that 17% of people have saving Faith. 'If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God  raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved"

Yeh right, and there is not one shred of evidence to support that assertion, even if we needed saving!

[Gordon]

So this could suggest that 17% of people have saving Faith. 'If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God  raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved"

Not sure what the above means but, as I noted earlier, I suspect this exercise has no real merit beyond creating a story for the BBC Religion & Ethics department to post on the BBC website, since it was they who commissioned (and presumably paid for) the work by ComRes.

I'd be disinclined to take the findings seriously.

[Rhiannon]

Not sure what the above means but, as I noted earlier, I suspect this exercise has no real merit beyond creating a story for the BBC Religion & Ethics department to post on the BBC website, since it was they who commissioned (and presumably paid for) the work by ComRes.

I'd be disinclined to take the findings seriously.

I can't believe some of the questions asked. They are nonsensical.

I think that there could be some interesting findings in there, but ComRes and/or the Beeb cocked it right up.

[Gordon]

I can't believe some of the questions asked. They are nonsensical.

I think that there could be some interesting findings in there, but ComRes and/or the Beeb cocked it right up.

I'd be amazed if this would ever see the light of day, even as a proposal, by any credible research department with an eye on publication in a peer-reviewed academic journal.

Aside from the daftness of some of the questions being asked of people who say they believe in life after death various terms are included in the questions without it having been established all respondents would understand them at all or, if they think they do, understand on the same basis terms like 'astral plane', 'Rapture', 'spirit', the comments about 'energy' in one question.

Then, this being a telephone poll, and bearing in mind the number and content of the questions, there is the issue of how these questions were asked and how those administering the question dealt with any requests for clarification - the scope for inconsistency and unintended bias is obvious.

Definitely for the round filing cabinet.

   

[Rhiannon]

Dis ComRes have a definition of 'spirit' or 'energy'?

'Do you believe in some form of life after death?" is enough. If the BBC's Religious Broadcasting department is responsible for the questions asked they should be fired.

[ippy]

Any story can be made up in the same way that that Mormon initiator did, there'll always be someone gullible enough to be completely taken in by whatever story is constructed.

ippy

[Sassy]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-39153121

The one that raised my eyebrows is a third of Christians not believing in life after death.

That would be a third of those actually asked out of how many?

I wasn't asked so reality shows it isn't an actual statistic is it?

But it gets peoples interest and they having read it, spread it about.

So how do you know what you read has any real significance?


2,010 British adults by telephone, What people did they ring and how did they know the religious status before calling?
Not really anything to go by considering the actual number of Christians in the world today.

What a CROC! LOL