She may be spoiled, entitled, and even bigoted, but she is right about the game. I'm involved in the admissions process, and I have seen first hand that in the most competitive schools the process is not about finding the right individual, it is not about finding the best student or the best person, it is not even about getting the most money. It is about getting the right statistical student body, with the right number of minorities, the right test scores, and the right amount of student aid. It is about showing the admissions officers that you care about the politically correct issues of the day, or at least care about their opinions enough to fake that you do. It's about spending four years to create a persona that one can abandon the moment s/he gets in, or let's hope that s/he has the guts to abandon it because the persona required often produces the self-righteous prigs that are in many of the posts above.
@Jenny I really wasn't making a judgement about the political views of either group of church goers. I was mostly making a comment about how the poll in question was really meaningless because of the low numbers of participants and it's poor design. I find it funny that people here are using the results to "confirm" their views about Christians, conservatives, etc. I'm not defending the groups, I don't consider myself conservative or evangelical. Speaking to your point, there are a lot of historical reasons that Evangelicals tend to be conservative (not all of them are conservative, btw. Stereotyping works for liberals too). Overall, I think that people get nervous when their culture changes too fast. They retreat into traditions and traditional values. Their religious beliefs get pushed aside in favor of their defence of the status quo for it's own sake, which they tend try to warp their beliefs to fit. The political right has tapped into these fears and tendencies better than the political left. It started with Reagan in the late 70's and continued through GWB.
Wow, reading the story it seems that this study is so poorly designed as to be meaningless. Using the plain percentages there is no accounting for correlated extraneous variables. There would be a clear correlation between type of church attended and political views. Evangelicals tend to be more conservative and Mainline church-goers tend to be more liberal. Thus their views on torture can just as easily be ascribed to political view as their church attendance. I can think of 3 other possible extraneous variables just off the top of my head. Don't these people do these polls for a living? Haven't they ever taken at least one class on how to design and statistically analyze a survey?
I really wasn't making a judgement about the political views of either group of church goers. I was mostly making a comment about how the poll in question was really meaningless because of the low numbers of participants and it's poor design. I find it funny that people here are using the results to "confirm" their views about Christians, conservatives, etc. I'm not defending the groups, I don't consider myself conservative or evangelical. Speaking to your point, there are a lot of historical reasons that Evangelicals tend to be conservative (not all of them are conservative, btw. Stereotyping works for liberals too). Overall, I think that people get nervous when their culture changes too fast. They retreat into traditions and traditional values. Their religious beliefs get pushed aside in favor of their defence of the status quo for it's own sake, which they tend try to warp their beliefs to fit. The political right has tapped into these fears and tendencies better than the political left. It started with Reagan in the late 70's and continued through GWB.