Nicholas Kristof on belief:

In a New York Times Op-Ed piece (August 15, 2003), and in a related discussion on the web at his web site (www.nytimes.com/kristofresponds), Kristof discusses at some length the degree to which Americans believe in the apparently unbelievable, arguing that this situation has become worse rather than better over the last fifty years among believing Christians and the population as a whole. He reports that Americans are three times as likely to believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus (83%) as to believe in evolution (28%). This is so in the face of mounting evidence for the latter and mounting evidence that there is little evidence in the Christian record for a virgin birth. The earliest discussions of the birth do not mention that Mary was a virgin.

A Harris Poll from Aug. 12, 1998, conducted with 1,011 adults, found that 94 percent believed in God, 86 percent believed in miracles, 89 percent believed in Heaven, and 73 percent believed in the Devil and Hell.

“Views of a Changing World, June 2003,” a multi-nation poll conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project (www.people-press.org), found that 58% of Americans accepted the proposition that one needed to believe in God to be moral while only 13% of Frenchmen did. It found that the American emphasis on the need to believe in God to be moral, while uncommon in the rest of the industrialized world, was common in developing countries like Nigeria and Pakistan.