Surveys....

I understand that a survey of 1000 young people has revealed that about two-thirds of them do not believe in God and that money is more important than God.

Why this should be considered news is beyond me. I guess it plays neatly into thew hands of the British Humanist Association and the National Secular League or whatever they are called. But straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel comes to mind.

The CofE spokesperson rightly says that this has always been the case with young people. Indeed I well remember at Secondary School (some years ago now!) that hardly anyone in my year would have dared own up to such a belief and many seemed to rejoice in pouring scorn on the establishment view etc. That was the days of Pupil Power when we all went on strike - until Mr Wilson came down the corridor and we all fled back to our rooms - strangely, he was the one teacher who never had to resort to corporal punishment. Anyway, I digress - the upshot is that young people have always had doubts about such the beliefs they held as a child. After all learning the truth about a winter visitor does a lot to dampen one's trust in what adults tell you.

But the real issues about this survey are:

Who commissioned it?

Why was it commissioned?

What were the questions?

Were the 1000 young people taken at random or from a representative sample?

What mood were the young people in when they answered the questions (a row with parents that morning can radically alter one's outlook)?

In short this "survey" seems to me to have been a complete waste of time and effort. It tells us nothing that we couldn't have guessed and does nothing to tell us what these young people will believe in five or ten years time.

Given the people that are held up in the press this day as leading interesting lifestyles is there any wonder that this "survey" came up with the results it did. Only last week I was having a coffee in a well-known chain of coffee-shops and the only paper available in the rack was "The Sun" (Comic Cuts). I learnt far more about the supposed bedroom antics of a recently transferred footballer and of a lady who has recently left her husband and was pictured displaying herself for all to wonder at, than I did of any real and lasting significance.

I doubt the newspaper journalists and editors that reported the results of this survey are worried about the result, but they ought to be worried about the diet of dross, filth and slander that they expose our young people to every day.