The Pew Research Center recently ran a religious knowledge survey in the US and the results show that atheists and agnostics know more about religion than adherents of various Judeo-Christian religions.
On average, Americans correctly answer 16 of the 32 religious knowledge questions on the survey by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life. Atheists and agnostics average 20.9 correct answers. Jews and Mormons do about as well, averaging 20.5 and 20.3 correct answers, respectively. Protestants as a whole average 16 correct answers; Catholics as a whole, 14.7. Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons perform better than other groups on the survey even after controlling for differing levels of education.You can take a sample survey here. Woo, 15/15
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Faith and Knowledge
From Kottke.org, Take the quiz first because obviously the results article has the answers. A little nervous but I matched Kottke score- the sample survey turned out to be relatively easy (though CCD and my history major may have helped).
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Pete and I both read Kottke. I hesitate to say anything about this because we have overloaded on religion recently, but I guess I will anyway. The results confirm my feeling that no one studies philosophy or religion, especially the religious, after 18. Atheists, who are probably smarter and can remember their grade school catechism, at least have more curiosity and enough interest in ultimate questions to do some reading beyond 18.
However, what is really strange about the survey is the belief by Pew Research Center (and perhaps the general public) that these questions reveal anything about religion other than a banality, simplicity and wrong-headed focus of current thinking.
It would be like conducting a survey among scientists and asking questions like, "Who proposed the helio-centric theory of the solar system?" I'm sure Einstein, Bohr, and Feynman would know, but it hardly reveals any scientific thinking or principles.
And don't get me started on the 'transubstantiation' question. Catholic theologians from Aquinas to Schillebeeckx have refuted the 'real presence of Christ in the eucharist' as magic and meaningless. But this is, apparently, how our current culture thinks of religion.
There is a wonderful video from one of the scientists, Philip Moriarty (the one with the great Irish accent), from the Sixty Symbols website. The question is, "Do you believe in God?" His answer is emblematic of our current thinking on religion.
He relates the story that, when he was 9 or 10 years old, his religion class was studying transubstantiation. He excitedly raised his hand and said, "Look! Look! I just got a new microscope for Christmas. We can do a really great experiment! We can look at the host before and after consecration to see what changes take place." He was sent out of the class room and a note was sent to the parish priest. He was told, "Those are the type of questions we don't ask." At that point, he says, "So religion and I departed."
I'm in your corner on this one with regard to what this survey says about our knowledge of religion. Basically: not much (besides, aren't these the types of facts we are taught now-a-days that we shouldn't memorize because we can simply look up?)
Actually, though the poll is overly general in the interest of brevity, it seems that the most interesting part of the quiz is not the distribution of scores but the percentages of wrong answers for each individual question (These are shown in the breakdown when the quiz is scored).
Considering the percentages of people providing a wrong answer, your analogy would be more interesting than you think. Yes, it would be boring for Pew to pose a banal, obvious question about heliocentrism to professional scientists-- until we discover that 40 percent of them got it dead wrong in a multiple choice format! That's the interesting part.
Again and again it turns out that large percentages of people who claim to know what can't possibly be known (and make decisions based on that flimsy knowledge) are unaware of the most basic history or tenets of their system.
If I designed a test on religion, this might be a sample question:
Which of these statements is FALSE?
A. Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature; but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapor, a drop of water is enough to kill him. But even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he knows that he dies and the advantage the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this.
B. Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
C. Man would kill for shadowy ideas more ferociously than other creatures kill for food, then, in a generation or less, forget what bloody dream had so oppressed him.
D. There are trivial truths and the great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.
E. Charity begins at home.
E.
No argument with James on his comment. Not only are they unaware of the most basic history or tenets of their system, but are completely clueless as to what is meaningful (and what a good test question would look like).
I'd like to add a sample question to our survey:
Eastern Orthodox followers believe that
A. the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.
B. the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son.
(Although we treat this as a joke, it is no joke that this is the major difference between the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Church. Institutions do crazy things.)
A couple more:
According to Karl Barth in his book, Church Dogmatics, the serpent had what in mind when he promised Adam and Eve that they would become as God?
A. The establishment of the Kingdom of Darkness
B. The establishment of nuclear free zones
C. The establishment of ethics.
D. The establishment of comedy.
For extra credit: explain the difference between consubstantiation and transubstantiation. Use examples.
Preaching to the choir here, I know, but another very common mistake I see writers make: Jesus's Virgin Birth is not the Immaculate Conception. The Immaculate Conception is Mary's being born without the stain of original sin.
James -- yes, some folks wonder how the feast of the immaculate conception (I'm sure one of your syblings was born on the day) could be Dec. 8 just a few weeks before Christmas.
Myk's last question and James's comment on the Immaculate Conception reminded me of why Christianity, despite all its abominations, is still interesting to me. The Judaic-Christian tradition begins with Genesis and the story of the Garden of Eden. Based on that story, Christianity came up with this fascinating idea of original sin. For me it is an incredibly meaningful concept that reveals two great truths. (in Myk's parlance, not trivial truths)
First, as Myk points out, it necessitates ethics. We eat from the tree of knowledge and immediately find a universe that is not black and white. For me original sin is not so much a condition of mankind, but the relationship between man and the universe. We don't exist in heaven or some static, omnipotent place. Original sin means it's up to us to make meaning out of the universe. This concept of original sin makes papal infallibility, right wing Christian dogmatic stances, and the Immaculate Conception meaningless.
Secondly, the promise was to become godlike. We eat from the tree of knowledge. We are trying to be like God. Our original sin is that, as humans, we try to be like God which brings us all the tears, yearnings, and happiness in life.
Jim, I suppose that you're trying to say the same thing in a different way, and maybe you've forgotten you course on Church Dogmatics. But Barths point is that "ethics," based on the idea that one can utlimately judge whether an action is good or evil, is essentially demonic.
As Bonhoeffer says,
The action of the responsible man ... is performed wholly within the domain of relativity, wholly in the twilight which the historical situation spreads over good and evil.
A little of both I guess. I agree with Barth that thinking one can ultimately judge an action as good or evil is demonic. But, as Bonhoeffer implies, the responsible man must make judgements all the time, but they are made "wholly within the domain of relativity, …."
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