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Questions 1 – 4

Question 1

Rate the following.
Answer Options		Does not exist	Probably does not exist	Don’t know	Probably exists	Definitely exists	Don’t care	Response Count
A deity		53	49	47	33	65	7	254
An afterlife		51	39	46	43	69	6	254
A soul or spirit		35	31	37	42	106	3	254
Reincarnation		78	46	72	35	21	2	254
Ghosts		68	39	54	40	47	6	254
Items that increase good luck		113	67	35	22	10	7	254
answered question								254

 

Participants were asked to consider the existence of a deity, an afterlife, a soul, ghosts, and items that increase good luck. To estimate relative strength of belief the allowable answers were “does not exist”, “probably doesn’t exist”, “don’t know”, “probably does exist”, and “definitely exists”. A “don’t care” column was also added to check for apathy towards considering an answer. Those surveyed 20.87% said that items that increase good luck don’t exist, while 41.73% said that a soul or spirit definitely exists. A future survey could look into how people view the concept of soul or spirit to see why such a large percentage of people seem to say that such a thing exists.

Question 2

How religious do you consider yourself to be?
Answer Options		Response Percent	Response Count
Not religious at all		53.1%	135
Somewhat religious		34.6%	88
Very religious		12.2%	31

 

This question is very subjective. It depends a lot on how one defines religiosity. However, the idea of this question, as well as many of the other questions on religion, was to get an idea of how the participants perceive themselves. The majority of participants,53.15%, selected “not religious” while only 12.20% selected “very religious”.

Question 3

Can a scientific theory ever be proven true?
Answer Options		Response Percent	Response Count
Yes		78.0%	198
No		22.0%	56

 

This question gave what I consider to be the most startling response of all. 77.95% of the sample selected that a scientific theory could, at least in some cases, be proven true. Even using a confidence level of 99.99 that still gives a range of 69.39% to 86.51% as the population estimate. A lower bound of almost 70% of the population is troubling.

Question 4

Which is better, science or religion?
Answer Options		Response Percent	Response Count
Science		44.5%	113
Religion		11.0%	28
Neither is better than the other		44.5%	113

 

This was the first question out of the group which tries to get an idea of how the population views religion. 44.49% said that science was better and an equal number said that neither science or religion was better.