Tag Archives: Mollie Hemingway

Are Religious Folks More Irrational?

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Not according to an article published last year by the Wall Street Journal.  The columnist cites research which indicates that people who never worship at a traditional house of worship are more likely to be superstitious.  Below is an excerpt:

The Gallup Organization, under contract to Baylor’s Institute for Studies of Religion, asked American adults a series of questions to gauge credulity. Do dreams foretell the future? Did ancient advanced civilizations such as Atlantis exist? Can places be haunted? Is it possible to communicate with the dead? Will creatures like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster someday be discovered by science?

The answers were added up to create an index of belief in occult and the paranormal. While 31% of people who never worship expressed strong belief in these things, only 8% of people who attend a house of worship more than once a week did.

It seems that the modern, secular myth that traditional religious folks, especially Christians, are generally more irrational and prone to believing things without evidence, is clearly false.  It turns out that everyone, and especially the non-religious, believes some things without evidence.

No group of any size has the market cornered on cold, hard, rational thinking.  In my life, I have met irrational Christians, atheists, Muslims, and Mormons, to name a few.  Each group has its share of irrational followers.

Instead of poking fun at the irrational followers of a movement, why don’t we seek out the rational and reasonable members, and speak to them?  I think it’s because those people might actually make us think, and reconsider some of our cherished beliefs.  That wouldn’t be as fun, would it?