The question, “Is God Real?”, posed by the Student Life Society at last week’s OUSU Fresher’s Fair found that ‘definitely’ was the most popular answer.
The Student Life Society, run by a number of Christian students who aim to encourage Oxford students into thinking deeply about questions of life and religion set up the stall which invited passing students to place a marble into one of the six jars ranging from ‘definitely’ to ‘don’t care’.
Just under 1400 people took part and they found that the two most popular opinions were ‘probably not’ and ‘definitely’, the latter winning marginally by 7 votes.
Student Life Intern Rachel Wears, who was running the stall said that, “The aim was to engage freshers with a spiritual topic, and to allow people to voice their opinion, whatever it was.”
Luke Robertshaw, another Student Life member who was working on the stall, noted that, “Some people instinctively knew what their response was, and others pondered the question before casting their vote.”
As well as Student Life there were a variety of other religious societies at the fair which offered students the chance to explore diverse perspectives on life and the world, as well as the opportunity to learn about their own faith. Oxford’s Inter-Collegiate Christian Union (OICCU), who also ran a stall, found that almost 280 freshers signed up.
When asked about the poll, the President of the OICCU, Joshua Peppiatt, was clearly very pleased with the result: “I think the poll was a great idea and I’m pleased that students are using their time at university to think about life’s big questions. I find it interesting that so many of the brightest people in this country find the Christian faith reasonable; the new atheists would have us believe we sacrifice our intellectual integrity if we believe in God, and this is simply not so. Students in the OICCU love to discuss these issues and their experience of God, and I’d encourage everyone to challenge their Christian friends about why they believe in God, and to come to our weekly Friday Lunchtime Talks, where common objections to the Christian faith are discussed.”
Oxford University also accommodates a number of Atheist and Agnostic societies, such as the Oxford Atheist, Secular and Humanist Society, which aims to broaden student understanding of Atheism and promote an open arena in which student’s can discuss all of their views.
Fresher and Atheist, Ben Waters, commented that the results of the poll were biased, “Because the stall was Christian-based, it’s obvious that Christian students would be more attracted to it than non-religious ones and therefore that skews the vote in their favour.”
