Poll finds that religious views are considered a cause of terrorism – but not so much with the young

A YouGov poll on attitudes to the causes of Islamic and Christian terrorism shows a significant differences of views between younger and older respondents.

While “religious views” is thought to be the main cause of terrorist acts, in neither Christian or Islamic cases is terrorism thought to reveal anything about the faith.

Asked “Generally speaking, which one or two of the following do you think are the most common causes of individual acts of terrorism?”, 33% thought that religious views were responsible. However for people aged 18 to 24 that figure was only 20%, rising to 41% for over-60’s.

50% felt that terrorist acts told them nothing about Islam, and 60% felt  they revealed nothing about Christianity.

In a separate poll for the Times, YouGov found a four-point decline in the proportion of people who say that they believe in God, from 32 per cent in February last year to 28 per cent today.

The Times reports” Those saying that they actively do not believe in any god or higher spiritual power has gone up five points, from 33 to 38 per cent.

The proportion who believe that there is no god but might be some kind of spiritual power has remained static on 20 per cent, while 14 per cent do not know.

Britons’ faith in God has been in decline for decades. Using a different question, the British Attitudes Survey found that 50 per cent believed in a god in 1991. This had fallen to 35 per cent by 2008, close to a 1 per cent downward trend a year. Today’s YouGov poll suggests a much bigger fall since last year.

The 2015 survey showed that 25 per cent of people declared themselves to have “no religion”, up from 15 per cent in 2011.”

see the YouGov survey here

see the Times report here