Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Don't know much about religion


The Times has the revelatory news:

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.

By Zeus!

It's hard to believe that such a self-righteously and hypocritically pious people could be so... so... ignorant. I mean, atheists knowing more about religion than the religious, Jews knowing more than Christians? What is up with that?

Next think you know, we'll find out Americans don't know much about the Constitution.

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2 Comments:

  • Having taken the sample test on the Pew site, and scoring 15 of 15, I find it boggling and disheartening that the average scores would be so low.

    The notion of certain things being "common" knowledge isn't that meaningful any more.

    By Blogger surakmn, at 5:43 PM  

  • It’s true that atheists scored higher than Christians and Jews about world religions but that's not particularly counter-intuitive to me. But the study doesn’t really say that atheists know more about Christianity than other groups.

    By Anonymous Amy, at 8:12 AM  

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