Atheists Know More About Religion Than the Pious
Well, this is awkward. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life undertook a study in which nonbelievers correctly answered more religious knowledge questions than the devout. Mormons and Jews also scored well and, like atheists, know more about Christianity than Christians.
Well, this is awkward. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life undertook a study in which nonbelievers correctly answered more religious knowledge questions than the devout. Mormons and Jews also scored well and, like atheists, know more about Christianity than Christians.
Here are some of Pew’s surprising findings:
Wait, before you go…More than four-in-ten Catholics in the United States (45%) do not know that their church teaches that the bread and wine used in Communion do not merely symbolize but actually become the body and blood of Christ. About half of Protestants (53%) cannot correctly identify Martin Luther as the person whose writings and actions inspired the Protestant Reformation, which made their religion a separate branch of Christianity. Roughly four-in-ten Jews (43%) do not recognize that Maimonides, one of the most venerated rabbis in history, was Jewish.
In addition, fewer than half of Americans (47%) know that the Dalai Lama is Buddhist. Fewer than four-in-ten (38%) correctly associate Vishnu and Shiva with Hinduism. And only about a quarter of all Americans (27%) correctly answer that most people in Indonesia — the country with the world’s largest Muslim population — are Muslims.
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Americans’ discomfort with other peoples' religious faiths goes hand in hand with Islamophobia. Americans’ discomfort with other peoples' religious faiths goes hand in hand with Islamophobia.
"The majority of Americans identify technically as Christians,” writes Amanda Marcotte at AlterNet, “but a deeper look at how our people act, believe, and think shows that we’re not at all a ‘Christian nation,’ but a largely secular nation that suffers a small but vocal minority of theocracy-minded conservatives.”
People who knew the man accused of gunning down three Muslim American students in North Carolina -- an act many suspect to be a hate crime motivated by cultural differences -- describe him as angry and lacking compassion.
Primatologist Frans de Waal pays religion the ultimate atheist compliment: Religion is so great that we humans acquired it through the natural process of evolution.Primatologist Frans de Waal pays religion the ultimate atheist compliment in his book: Religion is so great that we humans acquired it through the natural process of evolution.
"The appearance of atheists, a growing wariness of religious controls on society, as well as the continuing lure of jihad and ultraconservatism signal a breakdown in the conformity and consensus that has marked the Saudi religious field in the recent past," Caryle Murphy writes at GlobalPost.
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