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If you want to know about God, you might want to talk to an atheist.
Heresy? Perhaps. But a survey that measured Americans' knowledge of religion found that atheists and agnostics knew more, on average, than followers of most major faiths. In fact, the gaps in knowledge among some of the faithful may give new meaning to the term "blind faith."
A majority of Protestants, for instance, couldn't identify Martin Luther as the driving force behind the Protestant Reformation, according to the survey, released Tuesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Four in 10 Catholics misunderstood the meaning of their church's central ritual, incorrectly saying that the bread and wine used in Holy Communion are intended to merely symbolize the body and blood of Christ, not actually become them.
Atheists and agnostics -- those who believe there is no God or who aren't sure -- were more likely to answer the survey's questions correctly.
I'm an agnostic and was raised as a Christian and I find it funny that so many Christians I encounter assume that my lack of faith is simply the result of not having heard the story of Jesus Christ. To the contrary, I attended Sunday School, youth groups, scout groups, and sermons over the course of my childhood but as I grew up and learned more about the history of the Bible, I stopped taking it seriously. While I won't profess whether or not there is a God, what is clear is that humanity does not have a workable or testable definition of God. Furthermore, I detest some of the philosophers of the Bible, particularly Paul. Like Thomas Jefferson, I think Paul was the first person to truly distort the teachings of Jesus Christ and he also introduced some Greek philosophical views, at times verbatim, that science has thoroughly debunked.
-- Perhaps that's why we're atheists, the more we studied religion, the sillier it got. The death of religion is the rise of knowledge about religion.
Heresy? Perhaps. But a survey that measured Americans' knowledge of religion found that atheists and agnostics knew more, on average, than followers of most major faiths. In fact, the gaps in knowledge among some of the faithful may give new meaning to the term "blind faith."
A majority of Protestants, for instance, couldn't identify Martin Luther as the driving force behind the Protestant Reformation, according to the survey, released Tuesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Four in 10 Catholics misunderstood the meaning of their church's central ritual, incorrectly saying that the bread and wine used in Holy Communion are intended to merely symbolize the body and blood of Christ, not actually become them.
Atheists and agnostics — those who believe there is no God or who aren't sure — were more likely to answer the survey's questions correctly. Jews and Mormons ranked just below them in the survey's measurement of religious knowledge — so close as to be statistically tied.
American atheists and agnostics tend to be people who grew up in a religious tradition and consciously gave it up, often after a great deal of reflection and study, said Alan Cooperman, associate director for research at the Pew Forum.
"These are people who thought a lot about religion," he said. "They're not indifferent. They care about it."
Atheists and agnostics also tend to be relatively well educated, and the survey found, not surprisingly, that the most knowledgeable people were also the best educated. However, it said that atheists and agnostics also outperformed believers who had a similar level of education.
The groups at the top of the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey were followed, in order, by white evangelical Protestants, white Catholics, white mainline Protestants, people who were unaffiliated with any faith (but not atheist or agnostic), black Protestants and Latino Catholics.
This has implications for politics, as well. If average Joe can't even comprehend his own religion, which is something supposedly deeply personal and of high interest, how can he be allowed to make important political decisons on issues far more complicated and out of his expertise?
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