Tag Archives: protestant

Flawed Statistics

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Statistics and I don't always get along well. I'm getting better at detecting fishy conclusions drawn from statistics, though. Take this article about abortion among Catholic women for instance.

Almost half of the clinic's 6000 patients last year identified their religion and of this group almost 40% said they were Catholic. A further 23% identified themselves as "Christian", while fewer than 5% said they were Protestant. Seven% were Muslim and 5% were Buddhist.

Nowhere does this article mention what percentage of women in the general population consider themselves Catholic. All it says is that 40% of those women who (1) have an abortion and (2) identify their religion, are Catholic. If Catholics outnumber Protestants in Australia, such a disparity is to be expected, all other things being equal.

Let's simplify the numbers a bit to clarify this. Suppose 100 women have an abortion. 40 are Catholic, 23 are generically Christian, 5 are Protestant, 7 are Muslim, 5 are Buddhist, and the remaining 20 are something else. Let's divide the 23 generic Christians equally between Catholics and Protestants, since we have no data to support a more lopsided grouping. That makes 52 Catholics and 16 Protestants. Let X denote the number of Catholic women in Australia and Y the number of Protestant women. The percentage of Catholic women who had an abortion is 100*52/X. The percentage of Protestant women who had an abortion is 100*16/Y. These percentages will be equal when X = 3.25 * Y. If the multiple is smaller than 3.25, the percentage goes up and vice versa. In other words, if Catholic women outnumber Protestant women by less than 3.25:1, Catholics women are "more likely" to have an abortion than Protestant women. Too bad the article doesn't give us a population breakdown. To make matters worse, only about 50% of those women having abortions identified their religion. The numbers given are essentially meaningless.

The Fallacy Files site has a good explanation of this kind of statistical goof.

Speaking of fallacies, this site is sort of a Cliffs Notes version of Fallacy Files.

Hidden Impact?

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Perhaps the impact of The Passion of the Christ was bigger than I was initially
led to believe. The Mighty Barrister seems to think the
survey results are biased.

“Despite marketing campaigns labeling the movie the ‘greatest evangelistic tool’ of our era, less than one-tenth of 1 percent of those who saw the film stated that they made a profession of faith or accepted Jesus Christ as their savior in reaction to the film’s content.”

Surprised? I was at first, but not once I did a little digging. It turns out that George Barna, “Founder and Directing Leader of the Barna Research Group, Ltd.,” is a born-again evangelical.

Barna’s religious preferences appear to have colored his conclusions, if not the survey’s methodology itself. Take, for example, the last sentence in the quote above. It is almost guaranteed that nearly all of the people who saw the movie were believers in Christ before they saw the movie. He tells us that 53% of the people who saw the movie were “born again Christians,” but he doesn’t tell us how many were Catholics. In fact, the only time he mentions Catholics at all is in a slightly disparaging remark, noting that “Protestants were more likely than Catholics to give The Passion an “excellent” rating (78% versus 68%, respectively),” – and this is mentioned right after he says that the groups most likely to disparage the movie were “atheists and agnostics, homosexuals and liberal Democrats.” We are in fine company.

Scorecard

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A question’s been nagging me of late. Has anyone attempted to keep a tally of bishops’
stances on denying communion?

I’ve also been curious to know which Christian denominations are firmly and officially
pro-life (other than Catholics and Eastern Orthodox).

Secularism Rising

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My Protestant readers ought to find this interesting.

Protestant Majority Disappearing in U.S.

“The increasing secularization of American society has taken a particular toll on Protestant identity, presenting the prospect that after more than 200 years of history, the United States may soon no longer be a majority Protestant country, according to a new study by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago.”

“The percentage of the population that is Protestant has been falling and will likely fall below 50 percent by mid-decade and may be there already, the research reported.”

Catholic numbers steady despite rising unbelief in USA

“A survey in the United States has found that Protestant Churches have been losing numbers at an alarming rate due to an upsurge in those identifying themselves as having no specific religion, while the effect on the Catholic Church has been cushioned by the large number of Catholics among immigrants.”

“While still outnumbering Catholics roughly two to one, Protestant numbers fell from 63% in 1993 to 52% in 2002, and will drop below half in the next year or two.”

“The survey found those who said they were Catholic in 2002 remained fairly steady at about 25% of the population.”

Chick This Out

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A Saintly
Salmagundi reminded me of someone who makes my blood boil – Jack Chick. It’s
one thing to think Catholic teachings are unbiblical, but resorting to poor scholarship
and outright lies to turn people against the Church is un-Christian.

Thou shalt
not bear false witness against thy neighbor

The
Nightmare World of Jack T. Chick