So, I kept seeing these references to a Harris Poll that said 79% of Americans believe in God. Now, the last Harris Poll I saw (The Religious and Other Beliefs of Americans — February 2003) had it at 90%, and Gallup (with their conservative bent) puts it at 94%. So this number seemed, sad to say, too low. But sure enough, here it is. The Harris Poll #59, October 15, 2003, says “This survey found that 79% of Americans believe there is a God, and that 66% are absolutely certain this is true. Only 9% do not believe in God, while a further 12% are not sure.” But even that “only 9% do not believe” is pretty misleading, because 9% turns out to be the number who believe that there is no God; surely that other 12% who neither believe nor disbelieve (you know, the agnostics) do not believe in God.

So, when you look at the actual questions asked, what you get is this: 79% say they “believe in God” (made of of the 66% who say they’re “absolutely certain that there is a God”, and the 12% who say they’re “somewhat certain that there is a God”. 9% say they “believe there is no God” (made up of the 4% who say they’re “absolutely certain that there is no God”, and the 5% who say they’re “somewhat certain that there is no God”). And then, there’s the 12% who say they’re “not sure whether or not there is a God”.

A few comments about all this:

(a) This surely makes clear that if the only options given are “believe in God or not”, essentially all those who are actually agnostic will say “believe” (I think the reasons for that aren’t hard to understand), and the only ones who will say “don’t believe” given only those options are the 9% or so who would also say they “believe that there is no God”. After all, in Harris’ own poll from only 8 months earlier you get 90% “yes” if you ask “Please indicate for each one if you believe in it, or not” and then give “God”. (Or, maybe belief declined from 90% to 79% in those 8 months. Now that would rock.)

(b) Given that fact, it’s clearly just an outright lie on the part of the pollsters to ask that question and report as fact that 90% (94% in Gallup’s version) “believe in God” — as Harris’ own Febrary 2003 article does (e.g., “The 90% of adults who believe in God include 93% of women, 96% of African-Americans and 93% of Republicans but only 86% of men, 85% of those with postgraduate degrees, and 87% of political independents”). It’s like finding that 40% of people think that Michael Jackson is a child molester, and concluding that 60% think he isn’t, when you know damn well that 35% don’t feel they know whether is he or not. (Personally, I have no idea what further evidence they need, but that’s just me.)

(c) Things aren’t quite as dismal as we thought, but the willingness of the pollsters to effectively lie over long periods of time about levels of belief suggests just how strong the impulse to create an illusion of near-unanimity of theistic belief is — thus supporting the continuing and ongoing attempt to utterly marginalize those of us outside that mainstream.