Comment 40 by strangebrew

I think this time you are far from wrong. :)

Q3 - Do you think that the monarchy should be head of the Church of England, or not? 31% Yes. 55% No - Wow - the opposite of the report!

Is the BBC being deliberately selective in its use of data as propaganda, or is it just incompetent in its reporting?

Well, OK, that is actually from different COMRES poll, but a recent one. You could spin the whole story in a different way like this.

But just a minute folks. Which god is being talked about? Is it some generic god or one in particular?

I find it generally encouraging that belief in god(s) is diminishing, but I'm rather disappointed to see (if I read the report correctly) that there was a bigger change between 1991 and 1998 than between 1998 and 2008. I'm a little bit disappointed at the lack of statistical backup data too. What were the sample sizes and what are the estimated errors?

It is all a bit pseudo-scientific and anecdotal. Perhaps I only believe it because I like the message that it seems to send. Certainly it is not up to the standard of the excellent RDFRS/IPSOS Mori survey.

It will be interesting to see whether the proliferation of New Atheism's publications in the last 5 or 6 years has much effect on the next set of data. That's the main area of hope for me.

What a pathetic rag the Telegraph has become! That story is completely lacking in substance.

Its a shame that the dreaded Alain de Botton has (in my opinion wrongly) become associated with the sensible side of rationalism though. I can't imagine that we will easily get rid of him. It is too easy to ridicule the things that he has been reported saying, and by association ridicule the sensible things that are said.

I went to the same school as William Wilberforce but I have never been allowed any credit for his work to end slavery.

On the other hand, somehow, as a British subject, apparently I do inherit the blame for what Cromwell did in Ireland and for all sorts of crimes committed against humanity in the name of the British Empire.

No justice! But the past is a foreign country and I think we share much less with our ancestors of a century ago than we do with the ordinary people in most foreign countries of the world today.