What the heck do we believe?

I just read some interesting research done by the Barna Group examining differences between Christians based on the size of the church they attend.

The research pointed out a bunch of different stats about church size and beliefs.  Most of the information gleamed is rather boring, nothing to tell a friend over drinks.

Except this, they asked people about their beliefs and resulted in some astonishing respones (to me at least).  Here's the highlights:

1. Roughly 70% of people think Satan is NOT a living being.  If he's not a fallen angel, what is he?
    
2. 30% of the people think Jesus committed sins while on Earth.  I don't remember this in the bible...
    
3. About half think people can get to heaven by being a good person.  This one depends if they are considering people who have not heard the word.
    
4. One third thinks the bible is inaccurate in what it teaches.  Then what do you believe?
    
5. 10% think faith is not an imporant part of their life.  Then why believe?
    

The only correlation I saw in the belief differences is the smaller the church the more likely they are to have a loose interpretation of the bible.  This makes sense as it's easier for smaller organizations to do their own thing without much hullabaloo.  Large organizations must convince a larger population to believe or not believe a certain truth, which is a more difficult task.

Regardless, the only other group of people in the world that I can quickly recall who are members of a large, loose knit organization and still maintain their different and strongly held beliefs are scientists.  We've all heard of the hair brained, mad scientist just as we've heard of the crazy Christian.  But both groups have a level love for the fringes because in the end we're all on the same team.