Big Bang Theory

You can hardly turn on the TV and not find The Big Bang Theory playing somewhere. It's quite popular. And as everyone knows, the program often pokes fun at religion and so I've always wondered, what do religious people think of the show?

Yes, I have data for that. (I have data for everything)

I may write a longer piece, either academic or for real people, but lemme share a couple of quick hits when it comes to who watches the program.

Let's go with a favorite, people's belief in the Bible:

• Among those who believe the Bible is the actual, literal word of God, only 19 percent report watching the show.

• Among those who believe the Bible is the word of God but not to be taken literally, 28 percent say they watch the program.

• Among those who believe the Bible is a book written by men and not the word of God, 31 percent say they watch the program.

The results above are fairly obvious. Literalists/fundamentalists are, not surprisingly, less likely to watch the program. Still, nearly 1-in-5 do watch it, and that's very interesting. Then again, it's a damn funny show. Oh, and for the statistically minded of you out there, the relationship above is X2 = 62.1, df=2, p<.001. In simple terms, the relationships are statistically significant.

Okay, one more. How important is religion in your daily life? This is a yes-no question and as you'd expect, those who see religion as important were somewhat less likely to watch the program, but not by a lot. Yes, it's statistically significant (X2 = 31.9, p<.001) but not strongly so. Among those who see religion as important, 23 percent watch the program. Among those who do not see religion as important, 31 percent watch it. So the difference, while statistically significant, isn't all that big.

I've got other data and maybe when I finish on some other projects I'll crank out a good pop culture academic piece or perhaps a data-based essay.