Today, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released a survey on U.S. religious knowledge. You know something? We're a remarkably ignorant people - especially since we're easily the most religious developed nation in the world.
Well, maybe that's the reason, huh? As it turned out, atheists and agnostics did best at answering religious questions in this telephone poll, followed closely by Jews. (And I have to wonder how secular Jews identified themselves - as Jews, despite disbelieving in the supernatural elements of Judaism, or as atheists?)
But lest you think there's anything to brag about here, even atheists and agnostics only averaged 20.9 correct answers - out of 32! Remember, that was the best performance of any group. I took their 15-question sample quiz and got 100%. Of course, I probably lucked out on some of the questions, and answering telephone questions is almost certainly more difficult, but still, most of them seemed very basic. Shouldn't we do better than that, especially on multiple-choice questions?
On average, Americans could only answer half of the questions correctly. Education really helped, with college graduates correctly answering 20.6 questions, compared to only 12.8 from people with a high school education or less. (Since atheists and agnostics are better educated, on average, than other Americans, that was part of our out-performance. But even controlling for education, atheists and agnostics did better than any other group.)
Mormons placed third in the poll, correctly answering 20.3 questions on average. But there was quite a steep drop after that. Mormons did the best in answering questions about their own religion, too. But on average, Christians barely got half of the answers right even on questions about Christianity. Atheists and agnostics didn't do all that much better - nothing to brag about, as I say - but then, it's not our religion, either.
Actually, none of this is new. It just reinforces what we already knew. America is a very religious nation and a very ignorant one. But then, in America, religion is valued while knowledge is not, or so it seems to me. In popular culture in particular, faith is always rewarded - over education, over knowledge, over pretty much everything else.
Watch any television show and, inevitably, the rational skeptic is either proven to be wrong or the implication is clearly in that direction. Movies are the same way. Sure, these are just entertainment, but they're part of American culture. Grow up in America and it might seem reasonable to just believe whatever you want to believe.
I got 87%, I forgot the Jewish Sabbath starts on Friday at sundown, so I'd answered Saturday.
ReplyDeleteand I didn't have a clue what the First Great Awakening was.
My guess is that Atheists and Agnostics did better because they would tend to learn a little bit about every religion, where as religious people focus on only one branch and ignore the others as "wrong."
Did they release what the actual questions were?
I had 2 wrong and a score of 93%. I missed the question about the First Great Awakening. I picked Hindu instead of Muslim for the question of which religion do most people in Pakistan consider themselves. I knew that was a 50/50 guess for me. Why do I know so much about religion? I didn't know about the First Great Awakening but I do now, at least a cursory knowledge. God Bless Al Gore. :)
ReplyDeleteOops...87%.
ReplyDeleteI scored higher than 93% of respondents.
I'd never heard of the First Great Awakening myself. Since it was multiple-choice, I just guessed the answer, but in a phone poll, I'm sure I would have admitted I had no idea.
ReplyDeleteI was confident in my other answers, although in a phone poll, I could have easily missed the question about the START of the Jewish Sabbath. (Since I have lots of experience with multiple-choice questions, I tend to read the questions carefully.)
Still, it's astonishing, don't you think, that the average American only got 50% on the phone poll? I guess the readers of this blog must be really exceptional people.
But I already knew that. :)