Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics
Last night I watched an advert on the television that stated that 9 out of 10 women preferred a particular brand of hair lotion being 'peddled' to any other brand. The lady in the advert with the beautiful soft voice that complemented her beautiful soft hair said that these 9 out of 10 women noticed a difference in the 'shine' of the hair when they started to use this wonderwork product?

Tucked away at the bottom of the screen was the all important information data used to derive this 9 out of 10 statistic. How big a sample of women were questioned in conducting this survey? Twenty eight people, TWENTY EIGHT. What did the reachers do to carry out such an in depth study? Ask members of their immediate family? Implying facts with limited data is not just confined to adverts!

Last week on the BBC morning news programme the 'hosts' kept announcing a time slot when Sir David Attenborough would be in to talk about his new television programme on Charles Darwin. How did the announcers give out this information? Each time the announcement was made opening line was 'he is a man who has been told that he should rot in hell'.

Not quite in the 9 out of 10 category but such a 'fact' tweaked my ears to hear what Mr Attenborough had to say about this. The implication was that these intolerant Christians were at it again, coming down on this gentleman with their outmoded views of the afterlife, all this heaven & hell stuff. Interestingly Mr Attenborough (with his soft voice but on that particular morning not so manageable hair) said that he got a FEW letters in his life saying that he should rot in hell. He did go on about the fact that in some Southern states in the USA the children were so indoctrinated into Christianity that they refuse to accept the theory of Evolution as a fact. Just to emphasise how stupid these children were he put on a 'southern drawl and said that a typical student when taught the theory of Evolution said "we don't believe that kind if thing around here".

As usual he was given free reign to expound what he sees as scientific fact while at the same time denigrating the biblical story of creation as a myth. No one was there to put the biblical point of view, so it was all one way traffic on BBC. But it does go to prove that on TV they do not let 'facts' stand in the way of a good story. I would have liked to have told Mr Attenborough that a true Christian would be praying that his eyes would be opened to the truth and that he would accept the Lord as his saviour before he finds out about the reality of hell. In closing this bit, it is an interesting fact that our Lord talked more about hell than heaven in the bible, yet we rarely get a sermon on hell. Some information is not easily received or given........