Community | September 28, 2010 | 5 comments

Atheists Know More About Religion Than Religious People (Video)

source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/us/28religion.html?_r=3&hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1285670836-6/...

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

How much do you know about religion? Try answering a sampling of questions asked in a phone survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
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.

Clergy members who are concerned that their congregants know little about the essentials of their own faith will no doubt be appalled by some of these findings:

¶ Fifty-three percent of Protestants could not identify Martin Luther as the man who started the Protestant Reformation.

¶ Forty-five percent of Catholics did not know that their church teaches that the consecrated bread and wine in holy communion are not merely symbols, but actually become the body and blood of Christ.

¶ Forty-three percent of Jews did not know that Maimonides, one of the foremost rabbinical authorities and philosophers, was Jewish.

The question about Maimonides was the one that the fewest people answered correctly. But 51 percent knew that Joseph Smith was Mormon, and 82 percent knew that Mother Teresa was Roman Catholic.

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    Community,   Religion,   Atheism,   Gods and Atheists
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    Religion,  Knowledge,  Atheists
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5 comments // Atheists Know More About Religion Than Religious People (Video)

  • Radical_Centrist
    • 0
      Radical_Centrist  

    • I have no problem believing this. I think MOST people who claim to be religious do so because they go to church a couple times a year. My Grandfather was a Baptist Minster he would say "I go to my garage every day, but that does not make me a Car."

    • 1 year ago
  • Stoneyroad
    • +3
      Stoneyroad  

    • Fine ! . . All you smarty pants atheists can spend eternity patting yourselves on the back in hell.. Us good christians will have Jesus as our personal tutor forever & ever.
      (just kidding, i'll be in hell with the smart people)

    • 1 year ago
  • bike10
  • ThatdBMe
    • 0
      ThatdBMe  

    • I have been saying this for years. I, an Agnostic/Ignostic, often get in debates about religion with devout followers. I've had many, many of these devout followers say "Wow, I didn't know that."

      I think the problem is: If you get like-minded people together, and that's all they essentially hang out with and converse with, it causes blinders. It happens with family traditions. A lot of people do things "just because it's tradition" but, never know why it became tradition.

      People of a religion, to some extent, shun outsiders (In my experience). And, when confronted with a confusion/controversial question, they usually (In my experience) chalk it up to "Faith" as the answer. So, they are never really challenged in their beliefs and thus, never fully research why they believe what they believe, where did it all come from, etc.

    • 1 year ago
  • danitassin
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