The Sleepwalk of the West

Theos, the Christian “public theology think tank”, has published yet another survey. They are quite keen on this radically democratic method of establishing truth. Here they seem to want to imply – while avoiding the risks of actually saying so – that because more people believe in ghosts than did so in the 1950’s, the case for the existence of ghosts (thus the supernatural, thus God, etcetera) has dramatically strengthened:

The poll of over 2,000 people… shows that… Almost four in 10 (39%) of people believe in ghosts, 22% believe in astrology or horoscopes, 27% believe in reincarnation and 15% believe in fortune telling or Tarot… The comparison with the 1950s is especially striking. In 1950, only 10% of the public told Gallup that they believed in ghosts, and just 2% thought they had seen one. In 1951, only 7% of the public said they believed in predicting the future by cards and 6% by stars.

Perhaps the data does reflect a real increase of ghosts of three hundred and ninety percent since 1950. This is indeed an alarming discovery, for which we must be grateful to Theos.

Hold on, I get it now. This is what Theos means by “public theology”. In order to resolve those difficult questions about life, man, and universe, you really only need a good focus group.