Secular Statistical Shenanigans? On playing with statistics to sell a secular narrative
Yesterday, I came across this tweet from my favorite British atheist, Richard Dawkins Stephen Law:
0.0% of Icelanders 25 years or younger believe God created the world, new poll reveals | Icelandmag https://t.co/F0bmY00R8f #icelandmag via @icelandmag
— Stephen Law (@stephenlaw60) January 17, 2018
Whoa, I knew Iceland was secular, but geez louise, is it really that bad?
So I read the article. Here’s the key excerpt:
“Less than half of Icelanders claim they are religious and more than 40% of young Icelanders identify as atheist. Remarkably the poll failed to find young Icelanders who accept the creation story of the Bible. 93.9% of Icelanders younger than 25 believed the world was created in the big bang, 6.1% either had no opinion or thought it had come into existence through some other means and 0.0% believed it had been created by God.”
Did you get that? The pollsters set up a false dichotomy between Genesis 1 and contemporary cosmology: either you accept what the Bible says or you accept what the scientists say. There is no third option, no possibility of saying that the Bible, properly interpreted, is not in competition with Big Bang cosmology. Given those options, 93.9% side with Big Bang cosmology.
Gee, what a surprise.
The thing is, I take it as good news that 0% of young Icelanders reject modern cosmology based on a naive fundamentalist biblical hermeneutic. Unfortunately, the article writers at Iceland Magazine have opted to spin this fact into the deeply misleading headline that “0.0% of Icelanders 25 years or younger believe God created the world, new poll reveals.”
The real take home from this new poll is that 40% of young Icelanders are atheists. But that’s hardly earthshaking news in a famously secular country. Beyond that, the poll reveals only that the presumably secular staff at Iceland Magazine is willing to sacrifice statistical integrity on the altar of clickbait.
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