Americans Think that Religion Is Good — until It Starts Telling the Truth — the Cynically Humorous Result of a Bloomberg Opinion Poll regarding Pope Francis

© 2015 Peter Free

 

24 September 2015

 

 

“Just don’t do anything real, man”

 

Our propensity for magical thinking, unencumbered by facts and sound observation, frequently leads to cynically amusing results:

 

 

Americans love Pope Francis and his forgiveness agenda, but they're less enthusiastic about the judgments he's making about secular issues such as the debate over climate change and income inequality, according to a new Bloomberg Politics poll completed on the eve of the pope's arrival for his first visit to the United States.

 

The splits are most pronounced when it comes to Francis’s views on the outspoken call for a global drive to reverse climate change, which he blames on human activity: 71 percent of Republicans, 51 percent of independents, and 42 percent of Democrats call it a “bad direction.”

 

Reactions to Francis’s stance on economic inequality also break along party lines: only 37 percent of Republicans like the pope's outspoken condemnation of capitalistic excess, compared to 63 percent of Democrats. Meanwhile, 59 percent of younger Americans say it’s good for the church to critique capitalism in this way, compared to 41 percent of Americans 55 and older.

 

© 2015 Margaret Talev and Arit John, America Loves Pope Francis, But Not His Stance on Climate Change: Bloomberg Poll, Bloomberg Politics (23 September 2015) (extracts)

 

 

In other words — according to a plurality of Americans

 

The Church should stay out of planetary and economic health, despite the fact that both have absolutely primary relationships to human material well-being and, therefore, spiritual bloom and wilt.

 

It is a blatantly illogical position.

 

 

The moral? — Comparatively few of us rationally consider the origins and consequences of our opinions

 

The result is that we occasionally get these amusingly illuminated clashes with common sense.