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[Atheists & Agnostics] know more about your religion than you!
Mikey CTS
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U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey
In a recent Pew Research Center survey, atheist and agnostics were found to know more about religion than the faithful, followed closely by Jews and Mormons. As an atheist, this information is hardly surprising to me. I've often felt like I knew more about their religion than the person I was debating. This doesn't mean that the non-believer is smarter than the believer, though. Rather, it suggests that, as a minority group, it behooves anti-theists and minority faiths to do the research. In those debates, knowledge is power and (even if you onous shouldn't be on you) you are often on the defensive from the start.
However, the report also says that many religious people do not know information that should be common knowledge for the faithful. For example, according to Pew, 45% of Catholics do not know that the church teaches transubstantiation (that word's a mouthful, ain' it?). A standard of Vatican doctrine, it is taught that during communion the bread and wine become the literal blood and body of Christ. This is just one example of many for standard information for their faith's teachings that religious people don't know. I won't go over them all here. You can read the link above for further details.
So what does this information mean? What does it say about believers? Does it suggest anything about the state of religion in the U.S.? Does it say any about atheists and agnostics? Are there any correlations or conclusions that can be drawn from this survey?
In a recent Pew Research Center survey, atheist and agnostics were found to know more about religion than the faithful, followed closely by Jews and Mormons. As an atheist, this information is hardly surprising to me. I've often felt like I knew more about their religion than the person I was debating. This doesn't mean that the non-believer is smarter than the believer, though. Rather, it suggests that, as a minority group, it behooves anti-theists and minority faiths to do the research. In those debates, knowledge is power and (even if you onous shouldn't be on you) you are often on the defensive from the start.
However, the report also says that many religious people do not know information that should be common knowledge for the faithful. For example, according to Pew, 45% of Catholics do not know that the church teaches transubstantiation (that word's a mouthful, ain' it?). A standard of Vatican doctrine, it is taught that during communion the bread and wine become the literal blood and body of Christ. This is just one example of many for standard information for their faith's teachings that religious people don't know. I won't go over them all here. You can read the link above for further details.
So what does this information mean? What does it say about believers? Does it suggest anything about the state of religion in the U.S.? Does it say any about atheists and agnostics? Are there any correlations or conclusions that can be drawn from this survey?
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I like the quote from the American Atheists guy, something like "I gave my daughter a Bible - it's the best way to make atheists."
It remains constant even when level of education is taken into account.
Well how about that.
I wonder what the order of cause and effect is here. Do people learn about world religions because they atheist or are they atheists because they learned too much about religion?
Actually, according to this study, they don't.
You say that now, but you'll be the foolish one when you are toasting in hell forever while I'm getting it on with 70 virgins, then I'll be laughing.
Now make sure to throw rocks at your sisters head.
Stats like these often to me seem to indicate a rather disingenuous notion of what faith and religion are, though. 45% of Catholics don't know that the church teaches transubstantiation? Ok, but realistically, does being a Catholic imply that you should be able to answer such a question? Maybe an educated analytical athiest would think so. But, you know, the educated analytical athiest isn't the man of faith we're talking about. To me it's kind of like saying that 45% of American citizens don't know that their first Sec. of the Treasury was Alexander Hamilton (probably way more, I know). He's hugely significant in the history of structure of the Country, something an educated person should be able to speak knowingly about, but is academic knowledge of that really central to being an American citizen? I could probably make this point with much less obscure examples, too.
I'd say that 100% of people who believe this statistic represents a significant critique of religion are therefore people who likely fundamentally misunderstand what religion is.
EDIT: Ok the thing about controlling for education is interesting. Yeah, so maybe knowledge about religion tends to evoke athiesm?
Atheists score above average on Christianity when compared to everybody but Mormons and white evangelicals.
Only Mormons and white evangelicals know more about Christianity than atheists/agnostics, according to the survey.
White evangelical 7.9
Mormon 7.3
Atheist/Agnostic 6.7
Everyone else scored lower, according to Pew.
Edwards was the "sinners in the hand of an angry god" guy, right?
Edit: Thank you, AP history!
In other words, I was curious about exactly *what* I wasn't believing in, and why people would believe in it, so I read a bunch of stuff about it.
That, and I firmly believe that atheists and agnostics should, if possible, form their worldview by examining both sides of the argument and refusing to be ignorant of the facts.
This is personally why I know more about religion in general than many of my religious relatives and my apathetic parents/friends.
Considering they do communion constantly and describe what it is every time, I don't think that's beyond the realm of expectation. Basically, your average Catholic is exposed to it every Sunday. I've been to a mass before, and they describe what it is every time. Sure, I'll grant you they don't know the word, but the report itself, if you read it, doesn't use the word either. It's standard doctrine that Catholics are exposed to every time they particapte in mass.
This.
Hilarious.
Well, being a Catholic does kind of imply that you should know about the Real Presence, given that the Eucharist is one of the seven Sacraments and one of the two that Catholics participate in more than once in their lives. According to the Church it's a required belief. It's not really some piece of trivia. It's more along the lines of knowing that Catholics aren't supposed to get divorced and remarry, or that birth control is forbidden.
Of course, I'm also one of those people who was brought up Catholic, learned about this and went "WTF?" and eventually wound up as an atheist (though I won't pretend that's the only reason). I don't think the finding is significant, at least not in the sense of "LOL atheists know more about religion that's why they're atheists", but I'll freely admit I have no fucking what religion "is" or what the point of it actually is (so feel free to share). If I were going to guess why the results were what they were, though, I suspect it's that a lot of atheists go through a seeking period, which may entail learning about whatever religion they're brought up or learning about other religions, and so wind up with a higher score.
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Not knowing about transubstantiation as a practicing Roman Catholic is pretty hard to believe. It's not some menial fact about the history of the church. It's akin to not knowing what the Bill of Rights is as an American citizen. And yes, that type of academic knowledge is somewhat central to forming your identity.
Like MikeyCTS said above, they literally tell you every single time DURING Mass what is happening to the bread and wine. I mean the Liturgy of the Eucharist and the Communion Rites are two of the most important parts of the Mass. Basically, it means that if a Roman Catholic doesn't know what transubstantiation is, then that person is not attending mass.
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There are arguably four Great Awakenings, but it's kind of an arbitrary term that arises after the fact. The first one was the generation before the American Revolution (second quarter of the 18th century), the second was in the early 19th century and ends with the Great Disappointment, third was the tail end of the 19th century and pre-World War I and gave rise to social gospel, the temperance movement, expanded missionary work and Christian fundamentalism (in the proper sense - it's the period when "The Fundamentals" were written). The fourth (the arguable one) started in the 1960s or early 1970s and is marked by the fundamentalists and evangelicals eclipsing mainline Protestantism, the Jesus movement and the culture war. May or may not still be going on.
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As opposed to agnostics/atheists whose "religious" beliefs tend to do more with the actual religious substance and less with other things.
While not directly dealing with religious beliefs, this is an important damn thing that people should know.
As an individual raised catholic, my parents made me join a school with a christian inclination and there I learned a lot of our theological ways. Not all people have that privilege and also the required training to teach that knowledge.
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
hmm, I don't know then. Well as an athiest myself, I'd like to make a joke about how religious people are stupid, but then I'd feel bad if some Mormon started making fun of Atheists.
The more I read the article over the more inclined I am to agree with you. I've experienced it myself having been raised non-denominational Christian. For most religion is a communal experience. However, not bothering to learn something about what you've based your entire belief structure, morals, and life on seems self-defeating. I mean, you're going every Sunday anyway. Why not try to learn something while you're sitting in the pew bored to death?
As for your comment regarding atheists/agnostics, I think this has more to do with lacking a centralized power-base. We don't have a place to go every Sunday with like-minded people who help reinforce our beliefs.
I was hoping my fellow Christians would give a better showing, but honestly was not surprised. I think the reason is Christianity seems to be almost the "catchall" for someone who wants to say they are religious and mainstream, but really don't know what they are talking about. Or, as my wife calls them, the "ding ding da lings" (imagine a banjo playing), who just want to hold signs about how God apparently hates fags, or talk about how Obama is an evil mooslim. Not exactly the intellectual cream of the crop there...
As a catholic living in Mexico, I can assure you there area lot of "Sunday christians".
This has been denounced a long time ago by Soren Kierkegaard. Check the link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B8ren_Kierkegaard
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
Was the question "Do you know that the Catholic church practices transubstantiation?"
Because I can easily see people having no idea what that means. I've never heard communion referred to by that name outside of, well, threads like this :P
No, the study never refers to it as transubstantiation. It's really not a very long article. Give it a read. It's pretty fascinating.
The actual question is: "Which of the following best describes the Catholic teaching about the bread and wine used for Communion?"
The respondent picks from these two answers:
1) "The bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus Christ."
2) "The bread and wine are symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ."
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So, by default, people who come from backgrounds or belief systems that include uncommon religious knowledge will also likely pick up all the common religious knowledge as well.
Imagine the study another way: "People in the United States who speak a non-English language are very likely to be bi-lingual!" Well, duh. Almost everyone speaks English, so knowing another language is essentially a "bonus."
I suspect if you did this study in other regions, you'd find similar data.