Dogma, good God y'all, what is it good for?

So an interesting study on American religious beliefs came out the other day. The most widely discussed finding is that one in five American athiests believe in a higher power and thus are in all likelihood agnostics. On the other hand it sounds like more people don’t believe in God than identify as atheist so there’s some confusion both ways. 92% of the population believes in some sort of God or spiritual force but only 51% are fairly certain said God is a person one can have a relationship with. Also, apparently 20% of the Christian population speaks in tongues from time to time, which surprises me. Political findings were about what you’d expect.

For the Curious here’s the full report. Anyhow, I personally was raised Lutheran (we’re classified as mainline protestant) and not surprisingly have the basic demographics of that group. I’ve stuck with that religion although as long time readers can guess I tend to be pretty open about such things and tend to get rather angry when people start saying that religion is necessary to be a good person or a good American.

Happily the survey found the American population is less dogmatic than I might have guessed:

Most Americans agree with the statement that many religions – not just their own – can lead to eternal life. Among those who are affiliated with a religious tradition, seven-in-ten say many religions can lead to eternal life. This view is shared by a majority of adherents in nearly all religious traditions, including more than half of members of evangelical Protestant churches (57%). Only among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and other Mormon groups (57%) and Jehovah’s Witnesses (80%), which together comprise roughly 2.4% of the U.S. adult population [are exceptions].

I’m curious whether people mean other denominations or other religions but the question did say religions. There are similar trends in whether there can be multiple interpretations of their religion. This post is long enough already, so I’ll wrap it up saying that I think arguing over whether religion is good or bad is asking the wrong question. I do believe that some aspects cause more harm than good: belief in exclusive access to morality, obsessions with purity, orthodoxy, anti-empiricism, etc. The aspects aren’t just introduced by big bad "organized religion," at least with Christianity I’m betting some of them were there in Jesus’s original teaching and not just incorrectly attributed to him. Happily it seems that many Americans are at least in part rejecting these aspects, whatever their source.