:dance:

This is rather funny
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2010/0928/In-US-atheists-know-religion-better-than-believers.-Is-that-bad

Know your enemy.

Have not been on this forum since June of 2007 - good to know to know some things don't change.

Honest atheists and agnostics, on average, would know more about all religions than any average adherent to one faith or another.

Being that an honest atheist would diligently research all the major world religions to try to find one, thus acquiring more knowledge about each.

However, some of the questions in the Pew survey that the article you linked was based on:

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0928/Are-you-smarter-than-an-atheist-A-religious-quiz/When-does-the-Jewish-Sabbath-begin

are not relevant to whether Americans know religion or not.

I am not aware of too many adherents to ancient Greek mythology, yet that is one of the 32 questions.

I took the quiz, answering all but one correctly. The answers are not difficult, however, I can see where many people in a certain religion would not know questions about another religion.

Still, it does reveal some giant holes in education. A Christian not being able to name the four Gospels is unacceptable.

Being that an honest atheist would diligently research all the major world religions to try to find one, thus acquiring more knowledge about each.LOL! Sorry, that just cracked me up!

I have to take the test still, I looked through the questions and knew most of them, I thought. However, I don't know how honest of an atheist I am. I'm always curious about the weird stuff people believe. I guess, in much the same way I'm curious about really strange and exotic diseases. It's just so weird. How honest are most religious people? Did they ever really consider why people are atheists or look at every other religion out there before choosing theirs?

Just yesterday a friend was telling me about the weird things Mormons believe. Here it is in a cartoon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFZ1jVO3-OE. Did I watch the cartoon in the hopes of finding enlightenment and salvation? Nope. It was to scratch a curiosity. Schadenfreude, isn't quite the right word... there must be a word out there that describes pleasure derived from exploring the bizarre beliefs of others. Maybe it started as just trying to understand how humans could believe such a variety of weird things.

I also think being an atheist or agnostic you're less likely to shut yourself off to others opinions since they're all pretty weird anyway, and you don't insularize yourself with ideological clones. At least, that's how it works for me.

I remember being a very young teenager when I first started questioning it all, way before I had done much research. I just think my brain wasn't wired to support any notions of spirituality.


I am not aware of too many adherents to ancient Greek mythology, yet that is one of the 32 questions.
Ah, that's a big blind spot you have there. Greek mythology is of course relevant. It's one of the best documented early religions we have. We call it mythology now because we're all atheistic about it, but at one time it was a very popular religion.

Someone said, forgive my mangling of this quote, we're all atheists about 99% of the religions out there. Some of us just go that extra 1% of the way.

Just took the test, didn't do as well as I thought I would. :( Only got 73% 11/15. Wait... what? Actually I scored better than the average atheist. Woo hoo!

http://features.pewforum.org/quiz/us-religious-knowledge/img/quizchart-affiliation.gif

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0928/Are-you-smarter-than-an-atheist-A-religious-quiz/When-does-the-Jewish-Sabbath-begin



32. When does the Jewish Sabbath begin?

A) Friday
B) Saturday
C) Sunday
D) Don't know


Friday at sunset. Ends Saturday at sunset.
Right.

Most people think that it is Saturday, but it really is all of the day on Saturday, some of Friday night, and all of Saturday morning.

29/32. Agnostic in the "I don't know and you don't know either" camp here.

Have not been on this forum since June of 2007 - good to know to know some things don't change.
Didn't do so good on the test, eh?

Didn't do so good on the test, eh?

Better than most at 28 out of 32 = 87.5%

Admittedly my knowledge on a couple of the questions were somewhat Slumdog Millionaire-esque.

Sunny

Well, I must be retarded, because the survey starts on question 32 for me, and ends there too.

Oh well.

I think what bodes ill for theists, and well for Atheists is that we finally have some well spoken spokes people on our side.

No longer are we just given that Madalyn idiot and her son.

But now we have the 4 horsemen. Intelligent, well spoken, educated people who can present our views. The only caveat, is that Dawkins needs to lighten up, and have some fun. He is always so ****ing uptight.

Even when he was on Maher(the most popular atheist outlet available besides Bull****), he had a ****ing buttplug up his butt.

Hitchens is always having fun for example. Just keep pouring him good Scotch, and good things will happen.

Well, I must be retarded, because the survey starts on question 32 for me, and ends there too.

For whatever reason the quiz started at question #32 and counted down from there.

You just need to click on the 'Next' button in the lower right hand corner.

Sunny

:wiggle:

Here's the link to the actual survey given by Pew Research. It only has 16 questions.

http://features.pewforum.org/quiz/us-religious-knowledge/index.php?q=1

I answered them all correctly. Except I took an educated guess on one.

I'm not surprised Christians get questions about other religions and constitutional law wrong.

But it's sad that they don't even know the basics of their own religion, which they use as a basis to oppress others.Being that an honest atheist would diligently research all the major world religions to try to find one,Hilarious.

That's like a free man researching slave owners to try to find a new master.

Most of us come from backgrounds where we had to struggle to break free from religious brainwashing by friends, family, or society in general.

Atheists who live outside of San Francisco (and a few other areas of tolerance) suffer more discrimination than blacks, gays, and Muslims do, often with legal sanction, and our representation in government is virtually non-existent even though there are more of us than there are blacks.

So while we fully understand your perspective, you can't possibly understand ours.

30/32 missed 2 about what's allowed in schools. I figured by now everyone would be offended by everything that anyone did, guess it needs a few more years.

I was born and raised LDS (Mormon), I can see how they scored high on the test. Sunday consisted of 2 hours of classes. Members are asked to give talks in front of the congregation about church subjects, and the LDS church spends a considerable amount of time and money publishing free study guides and "fundamentals of our religion" books. When attending LDS seminary in high school we took a couple of field trips to a Jewish and Catholic house of worship to learn about other religions.

16/16 did not try the full 32.

quote"Quote:
Originally Posted by Gunny Burlfoot
Being that an honest atheist would diligently research all the major world religions to try to find one,

Hilarious.

That's like a free man researching slave owners to try to find a new master"

This is rather silly. While both generalizations, many do research quite a few if not all religeons. Quite frankly, there are alot of religeons out there. How about a slightly different approach to this, such as a free man researching the benefits and disadvantages of the implementation and execution of a capitalistic representative democracy versus communism. One could come to many conclusions as well.

His point is a valid one.

If as a prebeliever, one believed that one had an immortal soul which could be damned...

Then only an idiot Atheist would not do a ton of research on the subject.

I find that I usually, in just casual conversation with Christians, that I know more about their religion than they do.

I never pushed my Atheism on my children. I did not raise them to be Atheists. I raised them to make up their own minds.

Just in the remotest off off chance(infinitesimally small) that I happen to be wrong, damning my own immortal soul to Hell is a choice I have made for myself. I would never force that on someone else, especially my kids. They should make up their own mind. And forcing my non belief on my children would have been the same if I pushed my belief on them.

If as a prebeliever, one believed that one had an immortal soul which could be damned...If a pre-believer starts out believing in Christianity, then he isn't really a pre-believer but rather an undecided Christian.

The whole notion of hell, immortal souls, and damnation is very Christian. No true atheist would ever have that as a base, instinctive belief.

Well, if you started out as an Atheist.

From the beginning, then more power to you brother.

It took me my first 17 years to finally lose my faith.
I was doubtful prior to that, but it was all gone my summer of 17.
And has not returned since.

Well, if you started out as an Atheist.

From the beginning, then more power to you brother.

It took me my first 17 years to finally lose my faith.No, like you, I was brainwashed into religion and had to figure my way out of it.

But you're missing the point, which is that an actual atheist would not go around looking for a religion. Just as I haven't, you haven't, and every other atheist hasn't.

Here's another test. I did very, very badly on this one. Mostly only got the "All of the above" and lucky guesses right. I did get #6 correct because I actually knew it.

Extremism and fundamentalism religious test (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/opinion/10kristof.html?_r=1&ref=global)

Is there another study out there that's something like Atheists vs Catholics on the subject of Christianity, Atheists vs Jews on the subject of Jewish, and Atheists vs Mormon on the subject of Mormons? I'd be curious to know if it's like the contractor who only build houses, he'd wax anyone on the knowledge of houses, but wouldn't do so well against the residential/commercial/industrial firms. Do Atheists know more about specific religions then their believers or is it just religion in general?

If you go to the Pew research site and look at the actual test it shows who misses what questions. For instance, Catholics miss the one about their communion more than atheists do.