Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Atheists know more about religion than theists

I'm happy that the latest Pew Forum "U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey" is garnering so much attention. It is a common assumption by theists that atheists are only atheist because they haven't taken the time to really look into faith. But as Dave Silverman notes in this blog entry on Pharyngula:

"I have heard many times that atheists know more about religion than religious people," Mr. Silverman said. "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."

I took the quiz to see how I'd do and scored 93%...the single question I didn't answer correctly was the one about American revivalism (which was never part of my religious experience when I was a Christian). How about you?

10 comments:

Fiery said...

15 for 15

WOOOHOOO!!! Toot Toot goes my little horn.

:D

and no, I didn't use google. I just test well. Always have. YAY FOR MY BRAIN.

*snerk*

Snowbrush said...

I couldn't get the quiz page to load. Maybe they're down temporarily, or maybe it's because I have a Mac. In any event, I'm not surprised by the results.

gotdoubts said...

15 of 15 too! Yay for atheists! We like to know stuff!

Jessie said...

I'm having the same problem as Snow - but I'm fairly confident in what the results would be if I could take it. Along with my 12-year private school education, I'm the daughter of a seminary student and had the Lutheran liturgy memorized by the age of 5. When you're brought up in it, it's hard to forget.

'Agnostic' or 'atheist' is not code for 'ignorant' - you don't question the things you don't know anything about, you question things because you know enough to recognize discrepancies.

evolveintobirds said...

I think the poor website may have buckled under Pharyngulization!

Green-Eyed Momster said...

It wouldn't let me take the test. I suck at test anyway but I'm really curious as to how I'd score.

I'll try again later.

Fiery said...

its not blocked. its just a bad link in the post on this blog.

http://features.pewforum.org/quiz/us-religious-knowledge/

cp this link into your browser and then the quiz works.

Snowbrush said...

Thanks, Fiery, I got there, and have since posted about the test.

Green-Eyed Momster said...

I only got 8 out of 15 correct. Told you I suck at tests.

It was fun though. I can live with 53% because I...well...
You all know how I feel about religion in general.

Thanks for the link, Fiery!
Hugs!!

Anonymous said...

Got 93% (14/15) every thing right except a schoolgirl error that Jewish sabbath starts on friday not saturday doh!
Hehe just goes to show an british atheist probably knows more about world and americian religions than the religious! lol