I Broke Down and Made a New Post

[apple_pathways]

From this article in the New York Times: (commentary and bolding is mine)

Basic Religion Test Stumps Many Americans (Well of course it does!)

Americans are by all measures a deeply religious people, but they are also deeply ignorant about religion.

Researchers from the independent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life phoned more than 3,400 Americans and asked them 32 questions about the Bible, Christianity and other world religions, famous religious figures and the constitutional principles governing religion in public life.

On average, people who took the survey answered half the questions incorrectly, and many flubbed even questions about their own faith.

Those who scored the highest were atheists and agnostics, as well as two religious minorities: Jews and Mormons. The results were the same even after the researchers controlled for factors like age and racial differences.

Knew it! Here are some of the questions from the survey:

Among the topics covered in the survey were: Where was Jesus born? What is Ramadan? Whose writings inspired the Protestant Reformation? Which Biblical figure led the exodus from Egypt? What religion is the Dalai Lama? Joseph Smith? Mother Teresa? In most cases, the format was multiple choice.

Without the benefit of multiple choice (or Google) my answers: Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Ramadan is an Islamic holy month, Martin Luther inspired the Protestant Revolution, Moses led the exodus from Egypt, the Dalai Lama is a Buddhist, Joseph Smith was a Mormon, Mother Teresa was a Catholic.

How did I do? (Meaning, do feel free to correct me on any wrong answers.)

I'm telling you: atheists ROCK Bible trivia!

Comments

[creativeaminot.livejournal.com]

Haha, I totally read this yesterday. And then punched the air in joy. (Is agnostic).

I can't believe people didn't know the impact of Martin Luther.

[rachel2205.livejournal.com]

And this is why religious education is a GOOD thing, people! Admittedly here in the UK religious studies at school is a bit Judaeo-Christiancentric, but you do study the other major world religions too... Knowledge is power!

[rachel2205.livejournal.com]

Also, thinking aloud, it'd be interesting to see results from other countries, because I get the impression that much of the US is Christian-by-default, so to be atheist one has to make an active choice. In the UK, by converse, I'd say most people I know are irreligious-by-default, so I'm not sure atheists would be any more likely to know anything...

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

I'm almost positive that's a factor in why american atheists and agnostics scored so well on the survey: identifying as atheist or agnostic tends to be the end result of a lot of soul-searching and research, rather than a default setting, as you say.

Also, like myself, I find a lot of atheists have a bit of a perverse fascination with religion and study it a bit obsessively for at least a brief period!

(And yes: religious education IS a good thing.)

[stick-poker.livejournal.com]

I think the UK still has Christianity being the one you might pick up by default, with religious assemblies and things still in so many schools. A lot more people are making the choice not to be religious once they get older, these days, but I suspect if you made the contents of your average high street sit cross-legged on the floor and say 'Our Father', then large numbers of them would still be able to glaze over and mumble the rest.

[sabriel75.livejournal.com]

Admittedly though, the Protestant Reformation began a lot of places and I wonder how many people mentioned Calvin and Knox since they are considered to the leaders of the movement when Luther really did not like to be attributed to that same group and he and Calvin verbally sparred through letters.

So eh... but yeah... I already knew on a whole Americans tended to be an ignorant lot since we do not put a lot of stock in religious studies at all.

[middlegirl.livejournal.com]

I tried to take that test yesterday, but everybody linking to it broke the site.

I know I got those sample questions correct, but I've also got a Christian college education under my belt, and I've heard numerous sermon series on what other religions believe, in a "know thy enemy" sort of bent.

I suspect one reason why "Christians" could have scored so low is that America still considers itself a "Christian" nation from time to time, and many people self-identify as "Christians," even if they've never attended church or followed the tenets of any major branch of Christianity. Therefore, there is the possibility that many of the people who took the test are non-religious but ticked the Christian box when asked their religious persuasion.

Not trying to explain away the data or anything like that, just playing Devil's Advocate (despite its name, this is my favorite thing to do) and offering another possibility.

Now, if I could only find the quiz again...

[middlegirl.livejournal.com]

Found the quiz... I would have aced it but I misread a question and, thinking it was a glitch on the page, answered incorrectly. (It doesn't help that both were worded identically and was a yes/no question. My fault for not reading more closely.)

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

Ooh, could you post the link to the quiz? I'd like to see if I could pass the rest of it.

[housemaid79.livejournal.com]

...many people self-identify as "Christians," even if they've never attended church or followed the tenets of any major branch of Christianity.

I think you raise a really good point. I have had conversations with people who seem to view "Christian" almost as a default setting, rather than an active decision.

[middlegirl.livejournal.com]

I have never spoken with any of these people personally, but I've heard of people who think that being American automatically means being a Christian as well.

I'll even admit that, according to my mom (I was too young to remember), I thought I was born with Jesus "in my heart" because that's what they taught in Sunday School. It wasn't until I was in elementary school that I learned that it was a choice I had to make.

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

I wondered myself whether or not they included a "not religious/no relgion/spiritual but not religious" category on the survey. Because there's such a stigma against identifying as atheist or agnostic in most of the country, I agree that non-religious people are more likely to tick "christian" than "atheist or agnostic" if they're between categories. I do imagine they included more categories than those they mentioned in the article, since they did differentiate later between evangelical christians and other types.

[wldcatsprstr-14.livejournal.com]

Most Christians never receive a religious studies education per se, so while they may follow the faith their whole life, they aren't aware of many of the major historical events that helped shape it. Myself for example. I didn't begin my religious studies "education" in any serious way until university (my university is a Catholic institution) although I was raised, and remain, a Christian.

My feeling is that a lot of people who aren't religious, and who did not grow up in a religious household(I'm speaking about people I know personally) study religion deeply in order to learn about it and make their decision accordingly, while people who are average churchgoers and grew up as such haven't seen a reason to study deeply something in which they've already spent their whole life believing so while they know the faith-based facts, information about people like Calvin or Luther don't come up for them.

It's kinda like knowing the sky is blue and always believing it. I know that it is so I don't really see a point to wasting time learning exactly how it got that way.

As for the questions about other religions, it's safe to say that people who are atheist (proper ones, not just ones that shun religion on principle) have searched for and studied religions in which they hoped to find truth so they probably score higher on average on questions about all faiths than people who have always followed just one.

[planejane.livejournal.com]

I think that's true for the most part, although part of it for me is having to defend my position to people who think they can/should try to convert me. Needless to say, I've never tried to convert someone of faith to atheism.

[wldcatsprstr-14.livejournal.com]

Nor I someone from atheism to faith. I try to make them understand why it's important to me because a lot of atheists I've met are very belittling, assuming that I'm an idiot or something for believing in a god.

[planejane.livejournal.com]

IKR? Not nice. I'm definitely of the live and let live school.

[planejane.livejournal.com]

Yay! Go atheists! That's all I have to say on the matter! :)

[ladylovelace.livejournal.com]

I have to say (and given that I live in a country with a tiny population and therefore my experience is hardly valuable as a yard-stick), that I have attended both public (as in government run, non-denominational) schools, and Catholic schools, and I learned more about the actual words of the bible and the historical flotsam associated in the public schools. The Catholic schools spent a lot of time teaching us about 'respect for your fellow students'.

And then humiliating us for wrong answers in front of the whole class, because that is totally how respect works ::eyeroll::.

Point being, I totally know the answers to those questions, but I am also about 2 units away from a Bachelor of Philosophy, so religious stuff is something I need to know, despite them not asking a single question about my particular religion on the test :/

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

The vast majority of what I know about the Bible and world religions comes from my own research, and not the 6 years of (Catholic) religious education classes I took. The years that I made my First Communion and First Confession, we spent a lot of time learning about the proper procedures for those rituals, and the other years we talked about how the fourth commandment meant Jesus wanted us to clean our rooms.

[jacknjill270.livejournal.com]

That's a pretty interesting article. It seems to go along with what I've noticed with myself and my agnostic/atheist friends - like you said, most people who are agnostic or atheist came to that decision after lots of time researching and so they know at least the basics of other religions.

Even so, it still kind of surprises me that Americans aren't more knowledgable about other religions. I mean, aren't we supposed to be this great melting pot? One would think that would mean that Americans would know more about different religions because they are more likely to actually know someone who practices it than, say, someone in a small country where there might not be as much religious diversity.

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

I think religious diversity tends to exist mostly in small pockets in the US: I went to school with all different kinds of christians, but I'd only met a handful of Jewish people before college. I knew one girl who was a practicing Muslim; I used to sit next to her in psychology class. I learned about Ramadan from her. She was quiet, and mostly kept to herself, and in order to learn something about her faith, the other kids would have had to, I don't know: TALK TO HER!

Growing up, I was naturally curious about religion, and so would often talk to people about theirs. I'm not sure that was the norm. I think a lot of the kids I went to school with either didn't know how to talk to someone about their religion (when it's different from theirs) or assumed it was a taboo subject. It's a shame, really.