Jim Clark wrote: >Personally, I am skeptical as to the need for religion in order >to promote moral living, but other far more notable figures than >I appear to believe otherwise. Below is a link to a paper by >David Myers on the subject. >http://www.christianityonline.com/ct/2000/005/6.94.html An interesting article. There was one point that grabbed my attention. An argument was made that claimed that there is a growing "spiritual hunger" in the US and other countries. Of course, it is difficult to provide supporting evidence for this argument since most of the relevant evidence, it seems to me, can be interpreted in various ways. Although I believe that this claim is a plausible one (and I even suspect that it is true), I don't know how credible it is. One piece of evidence in support of it was stated as follows: "This spiritual hunger is manifest all about us: [a number of observations are provided here]; on the Internet, where Alta Vista finds 'God' on 3.6 million pages." This seemed to be an interesting type of evidence--one I decided to think about further. I am serious about this: I wanted to consider the value of this type of evidence because I have seen such data used before to support arguments. (To be fair to David, this was a very, very minor part of what he was trying to say; so this post should not be seen as implying anything about his argument, even though I was not convinced by it.) My suspicion was, however, that this type of datum generally is uninterpretable. I think that what I present below supports this conclusion. Intrigued by the large number of hits for "God," I searched Alta Vista for other words that deal with broad areas of interest to people. Here are my results in order from highest to lowest number of hits: education--37,611,800 entertainment--34,742,390 science--29,882,895 money--21,443,855 sex--15,131,880 literature--8,676,995 religion--8,499,610 politics--8,129,545 philosophy--5,369,865 spirituality--1,533,065 If we interpret these results in the manner typical for those who use such results as evidence, then it's good to know that education is the thing that people are most concerned with in life, although it is not far ahead of entertainment. (It probably would be best if we could combine the two in some way. We'd really have something then.) Science has a very respectable showing, it seems to me. Money is a distant fourth and is even ahead of sex. Religion seems to be somewhere down in the muck with politics; and spirituality, the newest buzz word, is not even in the running. I then thought I would examine actual entities, since this was the original evidence referred to. Again, from highest to lowest number of hits: Jesus--5,787,445 God--5,022,040 Buddha--1,112,750 Beatles--474,215 Madonna--354,290 Backstreet Boys--318,989 Britney Spears--266,052 Allah--240,370 William Shakespeare--164,241 Plato--145,950 Marilyn Monroe--117,186 Socrates--112,347 Richard Nixon--83,023 Oprah Winfrey--65,890 Sigmund Freud--60,331 George Bush (both father and son together)--57,379 Albert Einstein--50,302 James Dewey--23,337 Hugh Hefner--10,653 James B. Conant--7,771 Monica Lewinsky--5,834 Soupy Sales--2,413 Jeffry Ricker--42 (and not all the sites listed were about me, which is true of some of the people listed above, too) So here, when we focus on actual entities, religion comes to the forefront, way ahead of educators, entertainers, and scientists (and me). Jesus edged out God for the top spot. Interesting to see that the Beatles are not bigger than Jesus. I guess burning all those records worked. Educators and scientists now are down in the muck with politicians. Well, I'm not sure what to make of all this except to say that I think I'll refrain from collecting such "data" in the future whenever I try to support a position. Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd. FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department [EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 "Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths" Karl Popper “No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up.” Lily Tomlin Listowner: Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html
