People Can Come Up With Statistics to Prove Anything, Kent. Fourfty Percent of All People Know That.

CNN has an article where apparently 95% of all US citizens (and, as any statictician knows, +/-4%) have had premarital sex. While I think it's certainly high (higher than is good for us), there is no way that the number is that high. The other interesting point is that it's been that high for decades. That seems to directly contradict this study right here that says incidences of premarital sex went from 32-45% from 1972-1982 then leveled off. While I'm sure that their statistical methods were sound, I wonder if their sample was an inaccurate sample. I could take a sample of people I know and premarital sex would drop down to around 20%. It's not going to be statistically accurate because of the high proportion of Mormons in it, but I think it illustrates the problem with the CNN study. Maybe they were just unlucky, or maybe they used some sort of push polling, or perhaps some other methods that tend to cause statistical anomalies.

Let's say for a moment that this is true though. What does that mean for society? It means that we're a nation of manwhores and people who don't care about the sanctity of sex. It's not just something to knock about with and have a good time. It should be taken seriously, and if the entire nation is having sex, not only are we all having affairs as well, but we're causing long term problems. Seeing as how most of the nation is still Christian in one form or another and that one of the tenets of all major Christian religions is that you should have sex within the bounds of marriage, then we're all condemned to Hell.

Of course, the good news is that this is almost certainly wrong, as that's such a high percentage as to call the entire study into question. They can always go back and do it again though.