Survey reveals Evangelicals drifting from scripture

[pinacled]

Just curious, how does reporting a survey that says people aren't believing truth and sound doctrine trying to sway people to believe something that is contrary to truth and sound doctrine?

Ligioner Ministries (Presbyterian) and Lifeway (Southern Baptist) are two of the most conservative organizations defending of truth and sound doctrine in the Evangelical church today. The call of this survey is not to believe false teachings it is a call for the church to re-focus the teaching of "truth and sound doctrine" because, for whatever reason, some who call themselves Christian aren't following the historic and Biblical teaching of Christianity. In particular, the Christological teachings that have been a part of Christianity since the Apostolic age.

Have you ever heard of domain spoofing?

 

[Lanman87]

Have you ever heard of domain spoofing?

Yes, I'm an I.T. professional. What does that have to do with anything?

 

[pinacled]

From the site:

• A demographically balanced online panel was used for interviewing American adults.
• 3002 surveys were completed March 10-18, 2020.
• The sample provides 95% confidence that the sampling error from the online panel does not exceed ±2.0%.
• Margins of error are higher when filters are applied.
• Results are weighted to balance gender, age, ethnicity, income, region, and religion.

It has every question asked (you can even answer the questions yourself) and if you click on data explorer you can see how different ages, genders, regions, Density of the population, education levels, income levels, marital status, ethnicity, religious affiliation, belief (self identify as evangelical or not), and church attendance answered the questions.

Do you have other questions?

Interesting.
So a percentage of 3,002 surveys omitted online constitute the "evangelical" whole?
Data surveyer is available for attendees of the poll. But the data itself is not available.

Do you believe that this poll honestly represents evangelicals as a whole?

 

[pinacled]

Yes, I'm an I.T. professional. What does that have to do with anything?

It has everything to do with numbers and misrepresenting a foe.
Lamechen can attest to what I've found before.
She herself shared a link to a church web-site that turned out to be a fraud.
The physical address of the supposed church led to an empty plot of land surrounded by farms.

 

[hedrick]

Interesting.
So a percentage of 3,002 surveys omitted online constitute the "evangelical" whole?
Data surveyer is available for attendees of the poll. But the data itself is not available.

Do you believe that this poll honestly represents evangelicals as whole?

Yes. But the term "evangelicals as a whole" isn't clearly defined. They've adopted a specific definition, based on answers to some questions. I assume they are the questions to which 100% of evangelicals agreed:

• The Bible is the highest authority for what I believe.
• It is very important for me personally to encourage non-Christians to trust Jesus Christ as their Savior.
• Jesus Christ’s death on the cross is the only sacrifice that could remove the penalty of my sin.
• Only those who trust in Jesus Christ alone as their Savior receive God’s free gift of eternal salvation.

You'd get a different result if you asked people whether they consider themselves evangelical, or if you used different questions. I suspect people use the term evangelical more broadly, so that there are people who think of themselves as evangelical who might not answer yes to all 4 of those questions. I think there are people who consider themselves evangelical who might not agree with question 4. I also note that question 1 does not require inerrancy. Some people consider that part of the definition of evangelical.

This will have the same problem that political survey have: how accurately does the sample represent US Christians? They've tried to get a good sample, but there could well be unintentional biases. If you've followed discussions about the presidential election, you'll know that Trump did better than the polls indicated. Why? One guess is that people conducting surveys didn't get a completely representative sample. The same thing could happen here, but remember that the political surveys were accurate to a few percent. It's just that in a close election that matters.

So I wouldn't take the percentages as precise. But I'd guess that the results are roughly right, given their definitions of evangelical and other categories.

 

[pinacled]

Yes, I'm an I.T. professional. What does that have to do with anything?

Anonymity over the internet provides a platform for nonbelievers to pose as evangelicals(protestants) and contribute to surveys or polls.

I hope there is no further need to explain in detail how and why I made a conclusive statement about the survey and its dishonest practitioners.

Blessings Always

 

[pinacled]

Yes. But the term "evangelicals as a whole" isn't clearly defined. They've adopted a specific definition, based on answers to some questions. I assume they are the questions to which 100% of evangelicals agreed:

• The Bible is the highest authority for what I believe.
• It is very important for me personally to encourage non-Christians to trust Jesus Christ as their Savior.
• Jesus Christ’s death on the cross is the only sacrifice that could remove the penalty of my sin.
• Only those who trust in Jesus Christ alone as their Savior receive God’s free gift of eternal salvation.

You'd get a different result if you asked people whether they consider themselves evangelical, or if you used different questions.

This will have the same problem that political survey have: how accurately does the sample represent US Christians? They've tried to get a good sample, but there could well be unintentional biases. If you've followed discussions about the presidential election, you'll know that Trump did better than the polls indicated. Why? One guess is that people conducting surveys didn't get a completely representative sample. The same thing could happen here, but remember that the political surveys were accurate to a few percent. It's just that in a close election that matters.

So I wouldn't take the percentages as precise. But I'd guess that the results are roughly right, given their definitions of evangelical and other categories.

The definition of what you have detailed is sabotage .

 

[hedrick]

The definition of what you have detailed is sabotage .

huh?

 

[pinacled]

huh?

The survey is a Sabotage of the definition of evangelical.
Similar to redefining marriage.

Definition of EVANGELICAL

of, relating to, or being in agreement with the Christian gospel especially as it is presented in the four Gospels; protestant… See the full definition

www.merriam-webster.com

 

[tango]

This will have the same problem that political survey have: how accurately does the sample represent US Christians? They've tried to get a good sample, but there could well be unintentional biases. If you've followed discussions about the presidential election, you'll know that Trump did better than the polls indicated. Why? One guess is that people conducting surveys didn't get a completely representative sample. The same thing could happen here, but remember that the political surveys were accurate to a few percent. It's just that in a close election that matters.

So I wouldn't take the percentages as precise. But I'd guess that the results are roughly right, given their definitions of evangelical and other categories.

In political polls the data are also like to be somewhat distorted by the way it has become increasingly socially unacceptable in some circles to hold an opinion that doesn't include the requirement of orangemanbad. That would create the possibility at least that some people who intended to vote for Trump would either tell polling agents they were undecided or even that they were going to vote for Biden.

Issues with finding truly representative samples are also critical but even if you can find a truly representative sample of the population the data can still be rendered useless if people don't answer the questions honestly, for whatever reason. With a survey like this there would seem to be less reason to answer less honestly, unless people felt some kind of pressure not to be "narrow-minded" or "bigoted" by suggesting their view was the only truthful one.

 

[Lanman87]

Anonymity over the internet provides a platform for nonbelievers to pose as evangelicals(protestants) and contribute to surveys or polls.

All polls have issues. They aren't meant to be the be all end all and nobody expects them to be 100% accurate. And your right in the fact that these polls ask people self identifying questions. The answer to those questions can be skewed due to cultural Christians who answer "I'm and evangelical" because I went to a Baptist church 15 years ago. Or "I'm Catholic" because I was baptized a Catholic and confirmed, even though they may not have been in a Catholic church in 20 years and "being Catholic" has made no difference in their worldview.

This is a tool to help identify general patterns of beliefs for the public at large and for those who call themselves "Evangelical", "Mainline Protestant", or "Catholic".

Ligionier and Lifeway are both reputable organizations. I'm not sure why anyone would think they are intentionally trying to distort the results of a poll like this.

 

[pinacled]

All polls have issues. They aren't meant to be the be all end all and nobody expects them to be 100% accurate. And your right in the fact that these polls ask people self identifying questions. The answer to those questions can be skewed due to cultural Christians who answer "I'm and evangelical" because I went to a Baptist church 15 years ago. Or "I'm Catholic" because I was baptized a Catholic and confirmed, even though they may not have been in a Catholic church in 20 years and "being Catholic" has made no difference in their worldview.

This is a tool to help identify general patterns of beliefs for the public at large and for those who call themselves "Evangelical", "Mainline Protestant", or "Catholic".

Ligionier and Lifeway are both reputable organizations. I'm not sure why anyone would think they are intentionally trying to distort the results of a poll like this.

Distortions occur when a pool of participants contaminate the curve of percentages.
Something which would obviously happen when a poll is administered on an open website platform.

 

[Lanman87]

Distortions occur when a pool of participants contaminate the curve of percentages.

I'm sure some people in every survey lie on purpose. A good pollster will take that into consideration. That is one reason surveys have a margin of error.

Just curious, why do you think a large enough amount of people would lie to this survey to skew the results?

 

[pinacled]

I'm sure some people in every survey lie on purpose. A good pollster will take that into consideration. That is one reason surveys have a margin of error.

Just curious, why do you think a large enough amount of people would lie to this survey to skew the results?

The poll was provided on an open website platform far as I can tell.

An experiment would be to conduct the same poll here with transparency

 

[pinacled]

I'm sure some people in every survey lie on purpose. A good pollster will take that into consideration. That is one reason surveys have a margin of error.

Just curious, why do you think a large enough amount of people would lie to this survey to skew the results?

Would you be willing to participate?

I'll answer to each question with a yes or no.
And invite other posters here to do the same.

 

[Lanman87]

Would you be willing to participate?

I'll answer to each question with a yes or no.
And invite other posters here to do the same.

No, the point of a survey like this is to get a snapshot of what the general public feels on any given subject. Folks on this board are not the public at large and, while interesting, the results would be greatly skewed. The folks are on this board for a reason. They are very invested in their faith. Sadly, that is not true for a large part of self identified Christians.