The results of the latest Pew Research study measuring Americans’ confidence in what the next 40 years will look like is both frightening and wildly entertaining. Will cancer be cured by 2050: 71 percent of you think so, a number dwarfed by the percentage who think computers will be able to talk like humans (81 percent). Then there’s those who think there’s an energy crisis coming (72%) and a woman will be elected president (89%). And then there’s Jesus: 41% of you think he’ll at least hit up a Starbucks drive-thru by 2050; 46% of you think “this will definitely or probably not happen.”
Zach
Hopefully that statistic will come down significantly over the next 40 years. Until then, we have to learn to tolerate the deranged.
Sceth
The results make me a little skeptical about the statistical worth of those 1,546 online and telephone interviews.
AndrewW
Why does Jesus get another 40 years?
Enough, already. It’s just a story.
Tallskin
Strewth!!
Fuck me!
See what happens when you pollute little kids’ minds with religious bollocks, they’ll end up believing utter horseshit as adults
Unless those interviewed were in fact little kids.
B
No. 4 · Tallskin: “See what happens when you pollute little kids’ minds with religious bollocks,”
… but what about what happens when you pollute the urchins’ minds with disaster movies? Given the mean time between asteroid impacts, the 31% who think we are likely to be hit sometime in the next 40 years are as wacky as the religious nuts.
Zach
@B:
See, unlike Jesus, asteroids are real, have hit the Earth and significantly affected it. And if we had billions of dollars, armies of observers, and the technology to monitor every possible threat, and said efforts resulted in a collective conclusion that there are no potential threats within the next forty years, then you classify them as wacky as religious nuts. Until then, you’re comparison is nonsensical.
B
No. 6 · Zach wrote, “@B: See, unlike Jesus, asteroids are real, have hit the Earth and significantly affected it.”
LOL. I’m well aware of that, but the last impact that significantly affected the earth (e.g., the K-T extinction) occurred some 65 million years ago. The point is that the probability of a similar impact occurring in “the next 40 years” is extremely small given a class of events that occur roughly once every 100,000,000 years. You know, you divide 40 by 100,000,00o and what you get is a pretty small number – too small to be called “likely”.
Given that 4 people objected to a statement that people are wacky who think an impact that occurs on the average once every 100,000,000 years is likely in the next 40 years, one can only conclude that these 4 individuals are as wacky as the religious nuts (or alternatively they have very poor reading comprehension skills).
And note – I wasn’t suggesting that the religious nuts aren’t wacky as well. It’s just that there is plenty of wackiness to go around.
Zach
@B:
“And note – I wasn’t suggesting that the religious nuts aren’t wacky as well. It’s just that there is plenty of wackiness to go around.”
Work on reading comprehension, please. Comparing, as you do, the belief that what has happened and what will likely happen at some unknown point in the future, with a belief in something that will never happen, is idiotic in the extreme.
B
No. 8 · Zach wrote, “Work on reading comprehension, please.” Take your own advice. You wrote in No 6, “@B: See, unlike Jesus, asteroids are real, have hit the Earth and significantly affected it, ” but that was in response to No 5, where I wrote, “Given the mean time between asteroid impacts, the 31% who think we are likely to be hit sometime in the next 40 years are as wacky as the religious nuts.”
What I wrote was 100% correct – it is as wacky to claim that an asteroid impact is *likely* in the next 40 years when the mean time between impacts is more like 100,000,000 years. The probability of an asteroid impact in a randomly selected 40 year period is about 0.00004%, way too small to be called “likely”.
Did it even occur to you that both claims – the “likely” asteroid claim and the second coming claim are equally wacky because both are completely false?
Even if you believe in the second coming stuff, we’ve gone about 2000 years with nothing happening, so it is unlikely to occur in any 40 year interval due to 40/2000 (the current upper bound) being 2%.
Both 2% and 0.00004% qualify as “unlikely”. For that matter, 0% and 0.00004% both qualify as ‘unlikely”. Why can’t you understand that?
tjr101
Unfortunately this survey reflects reality in America. I work with a woman who believes the “second coming of Jesus” will happen a lot sooner than 2050 and that we should all prepare. By all appearances this is a very rational woman.
Kent
I was raised hard-core Mormon – and believe me, this shit is exactly what these people believe. My mother told me we were living in the “last days” and that Jesus was due to arrive at any moment. They had me totally brainwashed into believing it also. Religion SUCKS!
libhomo
Is Zombie Jesus really going to return?