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Atheists know more about religion than believers
US survey finds that Jews and Mormons are the most knowledgeable people of faith
It will come as no surprise to those who blame religion for the world's ills, but a survey in the US has discovered that atheists and agnostics know more about religion than those who say they are believers.
The poll discovered that most Protestants did not know about Martin Luther's role in the Reformation, and that almost half of Catholics were unfamiliar with the idea of transubstantiation - the concept that the Eucharist becomes the blood and body of Christ.
Those of the Jewish faith were the second most knowledgeable group after atheists and agnostics - although 43 per cent of them did not know that the philosopher Maimonides was actually a Jew.
In third place, behind atheists and agnostics and Jews came Mormons.
The poll, conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, posed 32 questions on different aspects of religion. The 3,400 people who took the survey were asked about the teachings of the Bible, world faiths including Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism and the role of religion in US public life.
On average, atheists and agnostics answered 20.9 of the questions correctly (65.3 per cent), while Jews and Mormons were close behind on 64 per cent and 63.4 per cent respectively.
White evangelical Protestants were the most knowledgeable Christians, but they answered only 17.6 of the 32 questions correctly. Catholics had the worst results; on average they got only 15 of the answers right.
Too few Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists took the survey for those religions to be scored.
The poll also found that fewer than half of Americans know that the Dalai Lama is Buddhist, only 38 per cent identify Vishnu and Shiva with Hinduism and only a quarter of Americans are aware that most people in Indonesia – the country with the world's largest Muslim population – are Muslims.
One person unsurprised by the findings was Dave Silverman, president of the non-believers' group American Atheists. He told the New York Times: "I have heard many times that atheists know more about religion than religious people. Atheism is an effect of that knowledge, not a lack of knowledge. I gave a Bible to my daughter. That's how you make atheists." ·
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It all goes to prove that atheism is a much more educated and serious religion than any theism. Only logical and spiritual as it takes more faith to belive that God does not exists than it does to believe that he does.
Another worthless survey about not-like compared with not-like. What atheists know about "religion" is trivial and shallow. They quote the Crusades, the Albigensian heretics war, the conquests of Islam, and the slaughter of the other warring tribes by the Israelites in the Old Testament as somehow equivalent. When you point out that Christians spent the first 300 years being burnt at the stake and otherwise persecuted, and that if Buddhism is "religion", who would care if it ceased to exist tomorrow, and that Islam wins all its empires by conquest, and that the Albigensians were an family squabble turned bad, not just "religious", they have a lot less to say.
Wonderful! I have always suspected this to be the case. On a number of occasions I have had various religious groups on my doorstep. When questioned more closely about their history and beliefs I have often got wrong, confused answers, or a look of bemusement. I have an interest in comparative religion, but do not follow any faith. It just confirms my general belief that most organised religions have relied over the years on the ignorance and fear of their members. Without this they would never have survived in to the 21st century!
In the early days, the Christian church was fragmented, but the church of Rome used its political connections to bully most of the others into joining a universal (or "catholic") church. One issue that needed resolving before the takeover could be completed was that of Jesus's brothers and sisters: how could Mary remain a perpetual virgin if she had OTHER children? The church of Rome's response was simple: they were conceived through her left ear. ROme also added that anyone who denies that suggestion is NOT A CHRISTIAN. Scroll forward a few centuries, to the papal encyclical "De Vitae Humanae", which forbids contraception and abortion... but paradoxically makes absolutely NO mention of the church's position on earplugs.
Yes, I'm an atheist. Have been since the utter absurdity of religion dawned on me, aged about 10.