There is a lot of braggadocio on Atheist blogs about the new Pew poll on US Religious Knowledge. The story is that Atheists know more about religion than does the average Christian. Headlines such as ”Want to know about religion? Ask an Atheist" abound. But this is only half of the story.
The Pew poll does use “religion” as a general category apparently, at least in one general section. This refers to world religions in general. And Atheists are more knowledgeable in world religions than are Christians.
But when it comes to knowledge of Christianity, Atheists are down the list from Evangelicals, and come in about even with Protestants in general.
More striking than the purported contest between Atheists and the Other is the abysmal knowledge of Americans in general which this survey reveals. When only 82% of Americans know that Mother Teresa was Catholic, and 46% know that Martin Luther inspired the Reformation, a general ignorance of world affairs and history is revealed. I bet they all know who Lindsay Lohan is.
The dumbing down of America has been a spectacular success. On the vanishingly rare occasion that I watched Jay Leno, his Jay Walking segments left me speechless at the boundless ignorance that prowls the streets.
Of course it is the American way, codified in the Declaration of Independence as Pursuit of Happiness, to keep one’s head down and focused on one’s own business. But also required for a healthy government by the people is an education in rationality and responsibility, as well as the relation of current events to historical foundations, and the need for eternal vigilance: heads up. Government by an ignorant people cannot lead to good outcomes.
While religious ignorance is distressing, it is not unexpected, at least in a free Christian nation. Much of Christianity is based on a relationship, not on legalistic tyranny of dogma, although that does exist too. If pressed further, it might be found that most designated Christians don’t go to church either. Church is not the definition of Christianity; ecclesiasticism is a human invention.
But what Atheists don’t know about religion is that “religion” is not what the deity is about. Knowledge of the Bible acquired in a search for errors or horrors is not knowledge that applies to the relationship with the First Cause. So what Atheists know about “religion” is likely to prove to be trivial in the overall search for the rational, coherent, intelligent cause for the existence of the universe.
4 comments:
Well, probably (I don't know) most of those who responded to the survey/quiz were educated in public schools (K-12 + College) and they do not really teach Christianity there.
Also, quite frankly, Americans right now are more concerned about the economy and sundry pop culture fads than getting a high score in world religion trivial pursuit quizzes.
I would take issue with the idea that this is an American thing. I think this phenomenon is fairly widespread. I know they do those walking segments in other countries, with similar results.
In general, people just like dumb escapism and have little interest in the real world.
"Knowledge of the Bible acquired in a search for errors or horrors is not knowledge that applies to the relationship with the First Cause. So what Atheists know about “religion” is likely to prove to be trivial in the overall search for the rational, coherent, intelligent cause for the existence of the universe."
I think you are at odds here with much of Christianity. They talk about the bible frequently and use it as justification often. For example, therevblog.wordpress.com quotes the bible 4 times in the first post, 6 times in the second, 5 times in the third and so on. It's important for anti-theists to know something about the bible, so they can point out to theists that they are (a) praising the bible for being the perfect word of god or blueprint for perfect society while (b) picking and choosing what parts of it to promote, and (c) ignoring the horrors and errors.
Uncritical acceptance of the bible as literal truth leads to fundamentalist craziness like refusing blood transfusions, the 6000-year-old earth, and so on. This caused societal problems in the past ("thou shalt not suffer a witch to live") and is still causing problems today (homophobia).
While another poster on this blog recently said the "fall of man" was a metaphor and not an actual event ... guess what, most of the world's christians believe it was an actual event. The Wikipedia page on Fall of Man doesn't use the word 'metaphor' at all even though it contains several descriptions of how different sects interpret it. The interpretations seem primarily literal.
Elronxenu said,
"Uncritical acceptance of the bible as literal truth leads to fundamentalist craziness...
This is indeed a fact. The bible itself acknowledges this issue, with Saul being a rabid fundamentalist calling for the persecution and death of religious miscreants. But he was physically assaulted by God and turned 180 degrees from that false behavior, changing from persecutor under the literal law into Paul, a pursuer and teacher of the validated truth (as with the Bereans), rather than dogma (OK, some dogma for settling individual church issues).
Literal translation is senseless unless one is intimate with ancient Hebrew and Greek, and even then the bible is obviously based on and filled with parable-type metaphor.
The problem of rationality arises again: how is such a document to be taken as a rational view into the human past and the view of a deity?
Unfortunately, many eschew the rational for the dogmatic. So the question of Rights comes up. They should have the Right to their belief, yes? Unless they interfere with the Rights of others.
It seems inevitable that the conflict between individual Rights will exist in a free society. I have the Right to my belief system; I have the Right to be annoyed by your belief system; I have the Right to criticize and attack your belief system; I have a right to believe that your belief system is a hazard to mankind, etc., and escalating. And so it is the escalation that becomes the problem. For some, any amount of escalation is justifiable under their belief system. It's the radicals who infest each system.
Still, it is one thing to condemn radicals, and another to condemn the system because it harbors radicals. The system should stand or fall on its own merits, not the characteristics of its followers. (This includes Islam, another topic).
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