A Pilot Study on Religion and Religious Views
From Sept 2017
To address personal questions, I’ve had about God and Religion, I decided to start my own project to understand what the thoughts of others were about God, Faith, and Religion. This project and set of surveys focus on the boundaries between religions, and how people think of other religions while being a participant in one religion.
I created a survey through Survey Monkey and received answers to the survey during the period from July – September 2017. The Goal of this survey was to understand how my friends may have helped answer 4 basic questions I had about religion. This survey population is my personal network of friends and family and ask questions about their beliefs about God and Religion. Questions asked included:
1. What did God do for humans before Jesus began His Ministry?
2. Why do the religions exist at all? Why are there so many different religions? Why is there atheism? If God is around, why isn't he getting a handle on these humans?
3. Believing in a spirit that you can't see, touch, hear or directly interact with seems fanciful, weird and consistent with a wild and fearful imagination and likely makes a great science fiction story. But it also seems counterintuitive that most people in this reasonably sentient species would start believing in something they can't directly see, hear or otherwise directly experience. We don't see animals praying to God, after all.
4. What grade is God giving us? How is God grading us? Are we being graded? Most of us do not kill (unless God counts more than bugs/insects), most of us do not commit adultery (unless we are single and hormone enraged teenagers), most of us do not steal (does taking cookies from the cookie jar when mom told you not to when you're a kid count as stealing?)
Survey respondents ranged in age from 19 to 50+. There were 14 participants, all living in the US. As these people were friends and family of mine, the survey isn’t a representative sample of Americans or a specific faith. However, I hope to have results of a survey soon that is more representative of the US population.
Findings from this survey were surprising in that my friends that are Christian had a diversity of opinions around how God dealt with humanity prior to Jesus’ arrival on the planet. I was expecting common threads around unawareness that God might have done more for humans prior to Jesus’ arrival. The small, non-random sample size would make it clear that these findings are not necessarily applicable to the broader Christian or American population as a whole Question 1 asked if respondents believed in God.
The first question, “Do You Believe in God?” was actually to start with a common understanding about God, so I was joking about the “Flying Spaghetti Monster” but I knew I was adding atheists to the respondent group. No surprise to me, as 10 of the 14 respondents said they believed in God. 3 said they did not believe in God, and 1 said they sort of believed in God.
Question 2 was for understanding the strength of my friend’s belief in God. Respondents were asked to choose from the “lowest” faith as “I’m more spiritual than religious, then go from 1 to 10, where 10 was I’m a no-doubt believer in God. 5 of the respondents said their belief was no-doubt at 10. Two responded with 8. One person responded with 7. One person each responded with 5, 4, and 1. Two people replied they were more spiritual than religious. One person said they did’ believe in God. This is about what I would have expected, a spectrum of responses. I am a bit surprised that 5 people rated the strength of their belief as a 10; I would have thought it was less.
Question three is the first of my “outside-my-faith” questions, and asked, “If you believe in God, do you think God addressed the spiritual needs of humans prior to your prophet appearing to humans?” It would have been more appropriate as a question for those that already selected, they were believers in a faith, but this survey instrument could not sort.
9 of the 14 respondents replied yes, when answering if God addressed the spiritual needs of people prior to their prophet showing up. 1 person said no. interesting, 4 people said this was not an issue they worried about.
I thought what was surprising was that most respondents thought God did something. I would have thought more would have said that this was not an issue they worried about. I do wonder if there’s something in the question itself that I need to address that would make people think God did something.
Question 4 was “if you believe in God, what faith are you today?” 6 of the 14 respondents said they were Christian. 3 said that they were more spiritual than religious, 2 of the 12 were Baha’is, and 2 reported that they didn’t believe in God.
Since this was a US based survey, and most of my participant friends were respondents, there isn’t really much surprise that they majority of them are Christian. Many of the respondents are predominate religion in the US and this is a US based survey. That I have more atheists and Baha’is in my survey isn’t a surprise, although the percentage of Baha’is as a part of the total survey population is higher than the US average is just a sign that the sample size is small.
Question Five was the second of my “outside-my-faith” questions, and asked “How do you think God took care of humans before Jesus showed up?”
While one person skipped this question, 4 of the respondents answered with “I don’t know, and this is not an issue I worry about”. 3 said that there was a prophet that helped humanity before Jesus, 3 said that there were plenty of other prophets that helped humanity before Jesus, and 2 said “I don’t know but I’m sure God did something”. Only 1 replied, “I don’t know”.
What is surprising is that only four respondents said that I don’t know, and this is not something I worry about. I would have thought the percentage would have been much higher. It is fair to say that this survey sample shouldn’t be considered as representative of Americans as a whole, so it would be interesting to take a survey sample of more Americans to see how they answer this question.
Question six is the third “outside-my-faith” question and asked, “Why do religions exist at all, or for those that indicated a faith in question 4, why do the other faiths exist besides yours?” This is a double-barreled question, and as such, the answers may not reflect the confusion that might have existed for the respondent about the question I was really answering. A double-barreled question asks two questions in one line. If you have 2 questions, they really should be broken up into two separate questions; otherwise, one introduces confusion as to what the question is really asking, and therefore introduces confusion into how to answer the question. I’ll fix this in the next survey.
Such as it is, 4 respondents answered, “there is more than one way to God”. 3 respondents replied with “God put the other faiths on the earth as well as mine”, 3 selected other, 2 selected other and gave reasons including religions give life meaning, and religion gives life meaning. One selected “people are making up God for some reason” and one person selected “Don’t know”
This is a surprise, as I was expecting more respondents to select either “don’t know” or “don’t care”. It is possible the double-barreled question allowed for more possibilities for other answers in survey participants minds, but it also possible that this survey population is just particularly open minded, and not representative of Americans as a whole. More survey work is needed here.
Question Seven is another part of the “outside-my-faith” questions, and asked “Why do you think there are so many different religions?”
Only 11 of the 14 respondents answered this question. Of those, 5 responded with “other” and of those, 3 provided reasons that included “there are as many religions as cultures”, “different people come to God in different ways”, and “different cultures”. 3 of the 11 people that answered this question selected “They are God’s religions from previous eras and places. 2 people selected “I don’t know” and one person selected “God has his reasons”.
It’s worth nothing that respondents are aware that there is a cultural component to religion that influences how this question can be answered. 2 of the respondents that answered “other” noted cultures in their answers, with one person saying “different cultures” and another person saying “there are as many religions as cultures”. Future surveys need to address this component as well.
Question Eight asked “Have you ever read the holy book(s) of a faith other than your own?” 5 of the 14 respondents selected they “read pages or sections of multiple other books from other religions”. 4 of the 14 respondents selected the answer that they “read a few pages of another book”. 2 said that they read a few pages of another book, and 2 said “No” to this question. 1 person selected, “No, but they had thought about reading the pages of another book”.
For the most part, it’s a bit surprising that my survey respondents have read books outside their faith. It will be interesting to see if the respondents here are representative of a larger, and randomly selected sample of Americans. That respondents have read books outside their faith implies an openness to or a curiosity about other faiths. This is an area that should be explored further.
Question Eight asked “Have you ever read the holy book(s) of a faith other than your own?” 5 of the 14 respondents selected they “read pages or sections of multiple other books from other religions”. 4 of the 14 respondents selected the answer that they “read a few pages of another book”. 2 said that they read a few pages of another book, and 2 said “No” to this question. 1 person selected, “No, but they had thought about reading the pages of another book”.
For the most part, it’s a bit surprising that my survey respondents have read books outside their faith. It will be interesting to see if the respondents here are representative of a larger, and randomly selected sample of Americans. That respondents have read books outside their faith implies an openness to or a curiosity about other faiths. This is an area that should be explored further.
Question 10 asked, “if you’re religious, do you think it is odd to believe in a spirit that you can’t see, touch, hear or directly interact with?” 5 of 14 respondents selected “no, I do’t think it is odd”. 3 of 14 respondents answered “no, I don’t think it is odd, but I get why some don’t believe in God”. 3 of 14 responded with “yes, but I believe in God anyway”. 2 replied with “other”, with one of the 2 replies being “I’m not religious, but I don’t think it’s odd because the need for religion is so great”. Lastly 1 of the 14 respondents selected “no, don’t care what others think”.
This last question was another area to determine what people thought about their perceptions about God.
Conclusion
My friends and family gave me a bit of a surprise with how broadly they thought about religion, and I’m happy to have learned from this experience. I look forward to collecting data from broader populations to see how different my friends and family are from Americans as a whole.
Their thoughts that culture fit into God’s plan also broadened my thinking.
But it’s interesting, the spectrum of ideas would have added to my confusion about God’s plan, and how I might go about understanding Gods vision for myself is as confusing as it ever was if I looked to friends and family for answers. It’s possible that the Baha’is might have had a helpful answer, but I would have needed more Baha’is to weigh in on this survey than did.