I Hate Polls

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

I Hate Polls

This Pew Research Center poll has lots of interesting information.

Like this
A similar pattern is evident in views on the obligation to fight for the country, whether it is right or wrong.

As in the 1990s, the public remained split on this measure - 46% thought a person should fight, whether the country is right or wrong, while an identical number said it is acceptable for someone to decline to fight in a war they see as morally wrong.

Since 1999, an increasing number of Republicans express the view that a person has an obligation to fight, while Democrats have moved in the opposite direction. By 66% to 27%, Republicans said that people should fight for the country, right or wrong; Democrats, by a comparable margin said it is acceptable to refuse to fight in a war that one sees as morally wrong.
And this
Although Americans are bound by their sense of the personal importance of religion, they divide almost evenly over whether belief in God is a prerequisite of personal morality. Roughly half assert that it is necessary to believe in God to be a moral person, while nearly as many disagree.

This is not a partisan question; Democrats and Republicans are each split on the issue. But the link between faith and morality divides the public in other ways. Only about a third of college graduates (35%) believe a person needs to believe in God in order to be moral, while more than two-thirds (68%) of those with no high school diploma feel this way. Whites are split evenly on the question, but blacks by a three-to-one margin (72% to 24%) see faith in God as necessary for a moral life.
So a majority of people think that you have to believe in God in order to be moral. And a plurality of people also seem to think that Americans ought to fight for their country even if the US is wrong and the war is immoral.

Since I am somewhat unfamiliar with most religious texts, perhaps someone could track down the passage where God tells his children that it is important be moral, but that it is more important fight and die defending one's nation in an immoral war.

As I always say, there is no higher morality than that of the person willing to sacrifice their life to defend their country's immoral endeavors.

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