{"id":6391,"date":"2010-06-07T12:42:33","date_gmt":"2010-06-07T12:42:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/2010\/06\/the-devil-made-me-do-it.html"},"modified":"2010-06-07T12:42:33","modified_gmt":"2010-06-07T12:42:33","slug":"the-devil-made-me-do-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/06\/the-devil-made-me-do-it.html","title":{"rendered":"The Devil Made Me Do It"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The comparison of these two numbers surprised me: while 89% of Americans believe &#8220;most evil in the world is caused by mankind&#8221; only 25% believed human nature is basically evil. Terms aside, one would think that if that many think humans cause the problem they&#8217;d also think humans are corrupted. Theologians call this &#8220;original sin&#8221; (or the lack thereof). 43% of Americans think &#8220;most evil is caused by the devil.&#8221; (You can obviously vote for more than one option.)<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>All this from <em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1602581789?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=jescre-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=1602581789\">What Americans Really Believe<\/a><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=1602581789\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important;margin:0px !important\" \/><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/em>. The Baylor Survey of Religion then broke this down by denominations:<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Cons Prots: devil (73) mankind (84) human nature (39)<\/div>\n<div>Lib Prots: devil (34) mankind (92) human nature (17)<\/div>\n<div>RCs: devil (38) mankind 90) human nature (13)<\/div>\n<div>Atheists: devil (0) mankind (88) human nature (19)<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Women vs Men on the devil (47 vs. 39), human nature (22 vs. 29).<\/div>\n<div>African Americans vs. Whites on the devil (70 vs. 40)<\/div>\n<div>Political cons vs. Political libs on devil (58 vs. 21) and human nature (36 vs. 11).<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>What about capital punishment? after the jump<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nOne&#8217;s belief that either the devil is behind evil or human nature is behind evil are more likely to believe in capital punishment:&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Those who believe human nature is basically evil disagree (26% vs. 16%) that the feds should eliminate capital punishment while they think criminals should be punished more harshly (79% vs. 67%).<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Those who believe the devil made me do it think we should punish criminals more harshly (81% vs. 59%).<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The comparison of these two numbers surprised me: while 89% of Americans believe &#8220;most evil in the world is caused by mankind&#8221; only 25% believed human nature is basically evil. Terms aside, one would think that if that many think humans cause the problem they&#8217;d also think humans are corrupted. Theologians call this &#8220;original sin&#8221;&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gospel"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Devil Made Me Do It - Jesus Creed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/06\/the-devil-made-me-do-it.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Devil Made Me Do It - Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The comparison of these two numbers surprised me: while 89% of Americans believe &#8220;most evil in the world is caused by mankind&#8221; only 25% believed human nature is basically evil. Terms aside, one would think that if that many think humans cause the problem they&#8217;d also think humans are corrupted. Theologians call this &#8220;original sin&#8221;&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/06\/the-devil-made-me-do-it.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-06-07T12:42:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=1602581789\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Scot McKnight\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Devil Made Me Do It - Jesus Creed","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/06\/the-devil-made-me-do-it.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Devil Made Me Do It - Jesus Creed","og_description":"The comparison of these two numbers surprised me: while 89% of Americans believe &#8220;most evil in the world is caused by mankind&#8221; only 25% believed human nature is basically evil. Terms aside, one would think that if that many think humans cause the problem they&#8217;d also think humans are corrupted. Theologians call this &#8220;original sin&#8221;&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/06\/the-devil-made-me-do-it.html","og_site_name":"Jesus Creed","article_published_time":"2010-06-07T12:42:33+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=1602581789"}],"author":"Scot McKnight","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/06\/the-devil-made-me-do-it.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/06\/the-devil-made-me-do-it.html","name":"The Devil Made Me Do It - Jesus Creed","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/06\/the-devil-made-me-do-it.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/06\/the-devil-made-me-do-it.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=1602581789","datePublished":"2010-06-07T12:42:33+00:00","dateModified":"2010-06-07T12:42:33+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/19879975236b70da80f4cbea933c59d0"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/06\/the-devil-made-me-do-it.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/06\/the-devil-made-me-do-it.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/06\/the-devil-made-me-do-it.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=1602581789","contentUrl":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=1602581789"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/06\/the-devil-made-me-do-it.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Devil Made Me Do It"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/","name":"Jesus Creed","description":"Scot McKnight on Jesus and orthodox faith for today","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/19879975236b70da80f4cbea933c59d0","name":"Scot McKnight","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c10\/c10b0226ed6cfd8319b2b8742ac4088ax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c10\/c10b0226ed6cfd8319b2b8742ac4088ax96.jpg","caption":"Scot McKnight"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/author\/smcknight"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/70"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}