http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcont...y.2a19a12.html
Agnostics, atheists, Jews, Mormons score highest on Pew religion quiz
If you have a factual question about religion, you might want to ask an atheist.
A new survey of Americans shows that atheists and agnostics rank with Jews and Mormons as the top-performing groups in religious knowledge.
The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life posed 32 basic religious questions and found that atheists and agnostics answered, on average, 20.9 correctly. Jews were right on 20.5, and Mormons on 20.3.
The survey of 3,412 people, conducted between May and June of this year, had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, while the margins of error for individual religious groups was higher.
Because of the survey's margin of error, Pew did not declare a winner, saying those three groups did about equally well.
The survey found atheists and agnostics to be more knowledgeable about religion than Protestants and Catholics.
People in the South – the Bible Belt – tended to score lower on the survey than those in other regions.
"If I was a religious leader, I would be saying, 'Hey people, we need to pick up the pace here,' " said Paul Mitchell, president of the Texas Freethought Convention, a group of atheists, agnostics and other skeptics.
The survey found that most American Protestants don't know Martin Luther inspired the Protestant Reformation.
Forty-five percent of American Catholics are unaware Catholicism teaches that bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ during communion, the survey showed.
"This study gives convincing proof that Americans may be deeply committed to faith, but that commitment comes most from the heart, not the head," said Michael Lindsay, a religion sociologist at Rice University in Houston.
Not surprisingly, the survey found that respondents' level of education had a big role in how they did answering the questions.
But even controlling for education and other key demographic traits, atheists and agnostics, Jews, and Mormons knew more than other groups.
Mitchell said skeptics tend to be curious but have another motive for learning about religion.
"We have to prepare ourselves with an intellectual defense, so that way, if we're approached by family, friends or co-workers who find out we're atheist or agnostic, we can stick up for ourselves," he said.
On average, Americans answered 16 of Pew's 32 questions correctly.
Mormons and evangelicals outperformed other groups in questions about the Bible and Christianity. Jews and atheists/agnostics led in questions about world religions and religion in public life.
Pew researchers said the scarcity of past surveys makes it hard to say whether today's Americans are less knowledgeable about religion than previous ones. But some veteran religion scholars are pretty sure of the trend lines.
"I see slippage in biblical literacy and in general religious knowledge," said David Naugle, who has been teaching at Dallas Baptist University for 20 years.
On Monday, Naugle asked a class of 55 DBU undergraduates whether the Golden Rule is part of the Ten Commandments, a question included in the survey. Eighty percent answered correctly that it is not.
Then he asked a follow-up.
"Only 51 percent of the students were able to say what the Golden Rule was," he said. "They would confuse it with other Bible exhortations."
respect and positivity...
..:: :: stephen :: ::..
.oO Phuturithims Oo.
Originally Posted by -m-
Nothing surprising there...
This pretty much sums up the reason:
Meanwhile, the religious nuts just quote random bible verses, and are for the most part ignorant to any other viewpoint but their own."We have to prepare ourselves with an intellectual defense, so that way, if we're approached by family, friends or co-workers who find out we're atheist or agnostic, we can stick up for ourselves," he said.
For all intents and purposes, my religion is common sense.
I'd really like to [verb] with you sometime. You have a/an [adjective] [body part].
Actually, common sense isn't so common anymore, even among the so-called intellectual atheists who can make the claim without a doubt that our existence is nothing but a mere accident.
I wouldn't say having claiming one way or the other is common sense. But I have been saying the world's lack of common sense these days astounds me.
"Human beings are perhaps never more dangerous than when they are convinced beyond a doubt that they are right"
I'd really like to [verb] with you sometime. You have a/an [adjective] [body part].
True enough.
that and when cracking open a case of dynamite after a dozen martinis
Read: ObtuseObserver dammit
And another study shows that on average, atheists/agnostics have a higher education than those who believe in the man in the sky.
Intelligence and religiosity have an inversely correlated relationship. Nothing new.
Blind faith! Amen!
http://i.imgur.com/0Iphu.jpg
How educated and open minded of you to suggest that people of faith must have blind faith. It is a facile comment.
Many educated people certainly reject religion. That's pretty common at university because that's the culture. Those who never bother to continue thinking don't consider religion again and often sneer at it. Those who do continue to think often come back to the church. Others don't.
It is a fallicy to presume the correlation indicates a lack of thoughtfulness or intelligence.
Read: ObtuseObserver dammit
or nitroglycerin and a barrel of whiskey in the case of 19th century railroad workers...
';[
My Office Webcam: http://beyondtheledge.com/
took the quiz... I got one wrong
anyway....lol... "Chinaman's chance"
When they were building railroads through the mountains in Cali they'd hang a chinese dude over the edge of a cliff to bore out blast holes, stuff them w/dynamite and ignite the fuse. He'd have to get swinging from the tether and hope the dynamite blew when he was away from the blast...
Read: ObtuseObserver dammit
Then what does it indicate?
Laziness?
There was a double jump... greater education does not mean a person is smarter than the person with less education. It may be true or may not. I know plenty of highly intelligent people with little formal education. I went to college... the place is over-run w/dumbasses. The claim then that smarter people are less likely to be people of faith relies on a false premise.
Read: ObtuseObserver dammit
I totally agree.
I just want to know why there are so many christians in our country who are basically clueless about their own beliefs. Its fairly easy to see how someone would assume these people are lacking a certain degree of intelligence.
They know for a fact what they believe. But they don't know anything about what they believe.
I've been a graphic designer for 10 years, and I've completely devoted my life to it. I would be pretty embarrassed if a shoe salesmen knew more about design than I do.
If it isn't a matter of intelligence, then there is definitely a certain amount of laziness in this equation.
Actually, that statement is quite true. Feel free to Google anything similar to "religiosity IQ inverse correlation" and pick what article or study you would like to read. Some even come with fancy graphs.
if i had to label myself i'd say i'm an agnostic atheist. i reject the notion of a divine creator personality who judges my every action based on western puritanical standards. faith, especially in absurdity such as this, is where thinking ends imo. i think it's pretty safe to say that atheists across the board share this reasoning. however i hardly feel that our existence is pointless and from what i've seen the only atheists who do hold this insipid value are of the militant, dawkins parroting variety. i've said it before but i really think that this whole atheism vs. religion polarity boils down to extreme cynicism vs. extreme gullibility. neither side has any sort of grasp on the big picture imo.
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