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Gallup: Poll Finds Americans' Belief in God Remains Strong By E&P Staff Published: December 13, 2005 12:15 PM ET NEW YORK A new Gallup survey released today finds that four decades after the "God Is Dead" controversy was first noted, Americans retain a strong belief in a higher power. Some 94% think God exists. Only 5% feel God "does not exist" -- and even most of them "are not sure" of that. Exactly 1% are certain there is no God. But how strongly do the believers believe? Nearly 8 in 10, in fact, say they are "convinced" God exists, although...

NEW YORK A new Gallup survey released today finds that four decades after the "God Is Dead" controversy was first noted, Americans retain a strong belief in a higher power. Some 94% think God exists. Only 5% feel God "does not exist" -- and even most of them "are not sure" of that. Exactly 1% are certain there is no God. But how strongly do the believers believe? Nearly 8 in 10, in fact, say they are "convinced" God exists, although Gallup does not ask them why that is. Conservatives are more likely to be convinced than liberals (87% vs....

A new Gallup survey released today finds that four decades after the "God Is Dead" controversy was first noted, Americans retain a strong belief in a higher power. Some 94% think God exists. Only 5% feel God "does not exist" -- and even most of them "are not sure" of that. Exactly 1% are certain there is no God. But how strongly do the believers believe? Nearly 8 in 10, in fact, say they are "convinced" God exists, although Gallup does not ask them why that is. Conservatives are more likely to be convinced than liberals (87% vs. 61%), women...

Last week, I outlined the problem of the age: the incompatibility of Islam with a multicultural West that hides away inconvenient history and disturbing doctrine under layers of political correctness. Without stripping them off to examine the problem, all we get is a lot of wishful thinking. Historian Niall Ferguson, writing in the London Telegraph on the intensifying "Muslim colonization" of Europe, has decided that such "demographic shifts" are not "invariably a bad thing." After all, seven centuries of jihad-imposed dhimmitude for infidels in Muslim Spain gave us the Alhambra, or something. It's that pesky "ideology" of conquest that follows...

After the 7/7 London bombings many have raced to renounce the phrase “Islamic terrorism.” A London Anglican priest named Paul Hawkins said in a sermon: “We can name the people who did these things as criminals or terrorists. We must not name them as Muslims.” It may seem odd to deny to the likely perpetrators of the bombings the name that they themselves prize above all others, but such are the politically correct dogmas that prevail in most contemporary public discourse. No one is better versed in those dogmas, or more relentless in her pursuit of any dissenters from them...

Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" is sparking a lot of controversy because of its distortions about the history of Christianity, fantasies concerning the messianic bloodline and supposed iconography embedded in the paintings of Leonardo Da Vinci. Predictably, Hollywood has jumped at the chance to assail the Gospels and is making a film out of Brown's novel. Tom Hanks will star in and Ron Howard will direct the cinematic version of the book. According to a poll conducted by the National Geographic Channel in Canada, where almost 20 percent of the population has read "The Da Vinci Code," people are...

While American universities may proclaim diversity as an exalted value, a recent study shows that the only freedom of thought that really exists on campus is "to believe the dominant political ideology. Other ideologies are marginalized." (Klien and Western. For full text of study, follow links below.) But Phil Mitchell doesn’t need a study to validate what he has experienced for over 20 years. "The truth is, universities are the most hostile, narrow-minded and intolerant environment in society," Mitchell said. Mitchell, 57, is a former history professor at the University of Colorado (CU) and a deeply committed Christian. He was...

A Crucial Word for California Patricia King On the issue of California, when I was at the National Religious Broadcasters convention this February, we stayed in Anaheim and I ministered in L.A. For days I was vexed in my spirit. I kept thinking of Lot and how the Bible said his righteous heart was daily vexed because of living in the midst of unprincipled men. Everywhere I looked, I saw gross immorality, lust, and greed. I was filled with remorse and even felt sick to my stomach. One night, I woke up in the middle of the night and I...

The new dean of the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Liberty University theological seminary is a former Sunni Muslim who plans to turn out a hipper generation of graduates by relating to them with lyrics from rapper 50 Cent, TV's "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" and the latest movies and film stars. Ergun Mehmet Caner cracks one-liners as easily as he quotes a Bible verse. Lecturing to a packed auditorium of 450 students, Mr. Caner mixed religion with jokes to keep his students on their toes in a late afternoon theology class. He asked his students which popular actors they would...

It seems only a year or so since every talk-show host and pundit in the country was telling us that Ronald Reagan had personally demolished communism in Eastern Europe. Now we come to the end of an entire week when the mass media behaved as if we all lived in a Catholic country and were united in mourning the Dear Leader, in which this historic achievement of freedom was credited to "the Polish Pope." That isn't necessarily a contradiction: The two men might possibly have shared the work. And it's perhaps thinkable, though not apparently mentionable, that the Polish workers...

The semantics of immersion Some good conversation has come up lately about baptism. For the sake of clarity, I'm simply going to refer to it as immersion, because that is what the word meant to the first century believers. Why it has been transliterated in most Bibles rather than translated into English, I don't know. But the meaning of the word is really not in dispute by anyone. The semantics of Christian immersion is far more divisive than the Biblical treatment of the subject. No doubt some will read a few sentences and either assume I'm one "position" or the...

THE SCHIAVO STAKES: WHAT THE FIGHT'S REALLY ABOUT -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- March 25, 2005 -- THE looming death by starva tion of Terri Schiavo has ex posed yet again the key fault line in American culture. Those who have sided with her parents in seeking the reinsertion of her feeding tube have a view of life that is profoundly different from those who have sided with her husband's quest to have her die. Those who want her to live tend to view life as a gift — a treasure beyond value that has been bestowed upon us and that we therefore have...

RUSH: With the Schiavo case at the end of the program on Friday, I said, "I'm going to throw some gasoline on the fire." I said, "Isn't it amazing that when it comes to the subject of life, you don't find any Democrats on that side?" It just continues to amaze me. Even when the subject is life of a human being, the Democrats always seem to come down on the opposite side of life. So I'm watching all these debates over the weekend and I'm watching some of the debate in the House late last night, and there it...

Editor's note: Readers may also be interested in New Jersey: An Islamic Murder of Coptic Christians?.Anyone following the investigation into the mid-January slaughter of the Armanious family (husband, wife, two young daughters), Copts living in Jersey City, N.J., knows who the presumptive suspects are: Islamists furious at a Christian Egyptian immigrant who dares engage in Internet polemics against Islam and who attempts to convert Muslims to Christianity.The authorities, however, have blinded themselves to the extensive circumstantial evidence, insisting that "no facts at this point" substantiate a religious motive for the murders.Somehow, the prosecutor missed that all four members of this...

Lieutenant General James Mattis recently made comments at a forum in San Diego that are now pervading the news; he said, "It's fun to shoot some people... You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." So of course, liberals have now become frantic in their revolted outrage. As the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Nihad Awad, said, "We do not need...

Lead story - Friday January 21, 2005 PAKISTAN : ENRAGED MUSLIM CHOPS OFF CHRISTIAN’S ARM Death threats force victim into hiding. Shahbaz Masih January 21 (Compass) -- A young Christian shopkeeper in Pakistan’s Punjab province had his arm chopped off by a Muslim customer who became enraged during a disagreement over a TV rental. Shahbaz Masih, 22, was approached last November 28 by a customer wanting to rent a television set from his video shop in Talwandi, a little village near Chak Jhumra in Faisalabad district. When Masih declined the request, his customer, a 26-year-old butcher named Ahmed Ali,...

For nearly as long as there have been villages, there have been village atheists, the hypervigilant debunkers who lovingly detail the many contradictions, fallacies, and absurdities that flow from belief in holy writ. As a strictly intellectual proposition, atheism would seem, on the face of things, to have wiped the floor with the believing opposition. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, by Sam Harris, New York: Norton, 336 pages, $24.95 Still, village atheists are as numerous, and as shrill, as they’ve ever been, for the simple reason that the successive revolutions in thought that have...

I receive the most amazing e-mail messages from all over the world. Some of these messages are angry, most are supportive, and some are from Muslims who feel they are on a mission from Allah to show me the error of my ways. Many from other countries show a woeful lack of knowledge of Americans and what is really happening in the world. One very nice Muslim man said, “Look at me, I am peaceful.” Well, that’s one. Over and over again, these e-mailers remind me that Islam is a religion of peace. The well-documented genocide at the hands of...

Prophetic Signs that we are in the End Times Contender Ministries -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Bible gives many examples of signs that should warn us of the coming end of the age. Six such signs are given by Jesus, two characteristics are given by Paul, and eleven other occurrences are given by the prophets to occur prior to or soon after the end of the age. While we are also told we will not know the time of the End, God obviously wanted us to know when that time was getting closer. As the Christian church is increasingly drawn into the interfaith...

Dear fellow human, Today humanity is being challenged. Unthinkable atrocities take place on daily basis. There is an evil force at work that aims to destroy us. The agents of this evil respect nothing; not even the lives of children. Every day there are bombings, every day innocent people are targeted and murdered. It seems as if we are helpless. But we are not! The ancient Chinese sage Sun Zi said, "Know your enemy and you won't be defeated". Do we know our enemy? If we don't, then we are doomed. Terrorism is not an ideology, it is a tool;...