This one is for PZ Myers

[pyesetz]

According to a recent online poll by PollingPoint, over half of all people who go to church frequently think President Bush's moral values are just like theirs.  This is the best evidence I've ever seen for why organized religions should be banned!

*Grumble* Why can't PollingPoint use decent permalink URL's for their results?  And why don't they say *anything* about how recent the "recent polls" are?
Edit: Duh!  The footnote at the bottom says "February 2005 to July 2005".  Thanks, PZ!

Comments

That's me in the corner, that's me in the spotlight...

[just-the-ash.livejournal.com]

1. Go to which church? Did the poll include, I dunno, devout members of Asatru pagan or Gardnerian Wiccan groups? I bet you a donut that you'd get rather a different result there -- so why should Odin-worshippers be turned into Thor losers because some Christians agree with one jackass?

2. You might well get a similar result if you polled Harley-Davidson riders. If that proved to be the case, would you also call for the instant revocation of all motorcycle licenses?

3. Then, what about the faithful Christian-church-attenders who don't agree that the baboon-in-chief is in synch with their moral values? Scratch an anti-war protest, find any number of Quakers and Unitarians. Granted, Unitarians are perhaps the least organized of "organized" Christians, but nominally Christian they remain.

4. And then you've got the Anabaptists. Or we do. The Amish farm some damn good produce! I don't want to lose that!

Re: That's me in the corner, that's me in the spotlight...

[pyesetz]

Losing my religion
I like that song.  It is an excellent treatment of the feeling of stage-fright.

1. Non-Christian frequent church-goers are presumably a miniscule fraction of the survey, so removing them wouldn't change the numbers much.

2. I'm kidding about "banning all organized religion".  Banning things is stupid—it just creates an underground economy.

3. The whole problem with bans is that they throw out the babies along with the bath-water.  The government *should* encourage users of incandescent lamps to switch to compact fluorescents.  But banning incondescents will just drive the users underground.  Imagine if the government had banned vacuum tubes because transistors use less power.  All the audiophiles would become criminals!  It's bad for the country to have large numbers of people who feel that they can't live their lifes without breaking a law, especially one that's stupid and draconian and overenforced as a propaganda measure (e.g., reduced roadway speed limits "to save gas") because this leads to cynicism.

4. The Kitchener-Waterloo area of Ontario (where I'll be moving) was originally settled by Mennonites.  It still has a lot of German influence, but apparently there was a massive wave of Irish immigration at some point.