Dumbest … poll questions … ever

February 3, 2007

Fox News released a poll (.pdf) this week with many of the usual political questions one would expect to see right now — the 2008 presidential race, the war, etc. But, with the Super Bowl in mind, the network also asked respondents two of the strangest questions I’ve ever seen in a national poll.

35. Do you believe God plays a role in determining which team wins a sporting event?

Yes: 27%
No: 66%
Don’t know: 7%

36. Which team do you think God wants to win the Super Bowl this year?

Chicago Bears: 14%
Indianapolis Colts: 11%
Same/No difference: 16%
God’s too busy/doesn’t play favorites: 33%
Don’t believe in God: 1%
Don’t know: 25%

Why on earth would any news outlet in the country pay money to put these questions in the field?

And one-in-four people actually believe that divine intervention helps dictate the results of sporting events?

God caused Janet Jackson’s nipple to pop out during the halftime show. It wasn’t Justin Timberlake’s hand that caused the wardrobe malfunction, it was the hand of god.

  • Why, that must be the same 27% that still think Bush is qualified for his job.
    God cares who wins the superbowl? Gimme a fuckin’ break. No need to play the game, just give the money to the guys with the halos.
    In case you haven’t guessed, I’m a 1%er (Atheist). This kind of foolishness only reinforces my wonder at how people can be so stupid.

  • I have never understood athletic teams praying for victory. Utter nonsense (to believe a being like God either exists or gives a damn about football), but then much of what passes for culture in America makes no sense to me.

    I often wonder what it must have been like to be an astronomer at the Alexandrian library, accurately calculating Earth’s circumference or the distance to the Sun (neither of which my university students could explain or even guess how to do), while my fellow citizens worshipped dogs and hawks. Then I turn on the TeeVee and I understand exactly what it must have been like.

    I just read that french fries were first served at dinner by Thomas Jefferson. I can’t imagine that brilliant polymath surviving in our world; he’d surely go insane. But then I also just read that peanut butter was originally designed as a protein source for people with bad teeth. Go figure.

  • The Evangelicals’ God does care who wins the Superbowl. That’s how petty It is.

    The ones I wonder about are the ones that think God is either busy or purposely neutral in not taking sides. As weird as the ones who think He does care. Basically every football program in the country prays before games.

    The Flying Spaghetti Monster is a jealous Spaghetti Monster.

  • Hey! As a Steelers fan, I’m here to tell you that God most certainly takes an active role in football contests! How else do you explain the Immaculate Reception? Huh?

    OK. I don’t really think that. This poll is just Super Bowl fluff for the network to fill time with.

  • how come 27% think god picks a favorite, but only 25% think it’s made a choice in this go-round?

  • I’m with barrelhse on this. That 27%of the population that thinks that divine intervention occurs during sporting events must have a huge overlap those who support Junior. Too bad Faux didn’t break down the results by party affiliation.

  • I wonder what the results would be if they polled only those who watch Faux news.

    Thank God I see American “football” for the celebration of everything rotten, stupid, ignorant and evil in America that it is. I am proud to say the last time I watched a Stupor Bowl was the first time the Chicago Bears got there (1986?) and that was because my then roommate bought several cases of beer.

  • God wants the Seahawks to win the Super Bowl, and He’s pissed that we aren’t doing what He wanted (not that that’s anything new.)

    REPENT SINNERS!

  • No serious theology supports the idea that God takes sides in athletic contests. Still, it’s amazing how many people seem to believe this sort of blasphemy.

  • There was a great commentary on this on Third Rock from the Son once. The high school was having a basketball game against another school and both teams were praying before the game. Tommy Solomon looks at the other team and says “Oh, so they have a different God?” and the coach scoffs and tells him not to be silly. “So, you don’t see a conflict of interest here then?”

  • John Rogers at Kung Fu Monkey has argued that 27% of the population is the baseline for right-wing craziness — because that’s how many people in Illinois voted for Alan Keyes over Obama in 2004.

    Oddly enough, that’s the exact same percentage that thinks God is determining the winners of football games.

  • yeah, but this just goes to show how superstitious athletes are. People that are often idolized and paid massive amounts of money pray to god that they don’t mess up. If it made any actual difference, a team of priests would sweep the entire season.

  • Well, Fox just blew it. By acknowledging a poll in which 63% doubt the ability of some divine bearded guy in a toga to affect the outcome of a sporting event, Fox acknowledges communicating with almost twice as many non-believers as believers. Note to Fox—the weekly checks from the wingnut faithful will no longer be forthcoming….

  • When I was in primary school (back in Poland, aeons ago), most of my classmates prayed before every test (usually, to be too sick to attend school). My parents, being atheists, advised me to study harder, instead. Surprisingly, I had much the better grades than my classmates; God must prefer a sacrifice more serious than mere lip-service…

  • An even more disturbing aspect of the Fox Poll, is their complete failure to ask the one question that actually matters:

    Who would Jesus bet on?

    What kind of journalists are these? The answer to that question is news I could really use. But, all kidding aside, I am not worried. I know the final score:

    Bears 41
    Colts 13

    This is not really a prediction, since earlier in the week I was visited by the Ghosts of the Chicago Bears Past, Present, and Future in a dream. I peeked at the final scoreboard while the Spirit of the Chicago Bears Future was dragging me around Miami. That was a mistake – no real suspense in watching the game for me now. Anyway, the whole Dickensian tale is linked below, but will probably only be understood and appreciated by Bears fans:

    “Da Bears Song in Prose – Being a Ghost Story of the Superbowl”

  • Years ago I heard a stand-up comedian talking about this issue, and how if God helped the winners win, he must really hate the losers. As in,

    “Yeah, we were in the game. Until Jesus made me fumble!!”

    Funniest take on it I ever heard, and the perfect excuse for every losing team. How can it be their fault when Jesus stacked the deck? I’d love to hear Pat Robertson explain that one.

  • The God doesn’t play favorites or he is too busy… Too busy doing what? Clearly His powers are infinite and he has the time (infinity) and the ability (Omnipotentcy) to affect the outcome which he created anyway. Maybe He is kicking back with His hommies to watch and doesn’t want to know the score before it happens…But then He reminds himself that he is GOD and exists outside of all time and space in some strange, unimaginable singularity…. Rats another Sunday ruined.

  • Do you believe God plays a role in determining which team wins a sporting event?

    OK, stop right there. If God played any role, would any of the other factors matter? This is the kind of stupidity the wingnut believes.

    Personally I think God would (and perhaps did) die of boredom, because not knowing the future is the only thing that keeps life interesting. Imagine reading a book or watching a movie you already had memorized, and then imagine doing that for billions of years.

    Bang. (god shoots himself in the head)

  • Of course:

    Heav’n from all creatures hides the book of Fate,
    All but the page prescribed, their present state;
    From brutes what men, from men what spirits know;
    Or who could suffer being here below?
    The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
    Had he thy reason would he skip and play?
    Pleas’d to the last he crops the flowery food,
    And licks the hand just rais’d to shed his blood.
    O blindness to the future! kindly giv’n,
    That each may fill the circle mark’d by Heav’n;
    Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
    A hero perish or a sparrow fall,
    Atoms or systems into ruin hurl’d,
    And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

    Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;
    Wait the great teacher Death, and God adore.
    What future bliss He gives not thee to know,
    But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.
    Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
    Man never is, but always to be, blest.
    The soul, uneasy and confin’d from home,
    Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

    Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor’d mind
    Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
    His soul proud Science never taught to stray
    Far as the solar walk or milky way;
    Yet simple nature to his hope has giv’n,
    Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler Heav’n,
    Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,
    Some happier island in the wat’ry waste,
    Where slaves once more their native land behold,
    No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
    To be, contents his natural desire;
    He asks no Angel’s wing, no Seraph’s fire;
    But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
    His faithful dog shall bear him company.

    – Pope

  • Any advice or predicitons in this thread by anyone claiming to be me (while not denying or confirming the possibility that they may or may not have been written by me) was posted while I was in a state of temporary insanity. Legal and medical documentation available on request. Any and all posts and comments while I was in this state are now formally declared inoperative. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation during this difficult time. I am feeling better now.

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