Wednesday, September 29, 2010

American non-theists know more about religion than theists

According to a survey measuring Americans' knowledge of religion.  The survey by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life was done by phone, in both English and Spanish.  3,412 Americans took the survey.  

The results don't surprise me.  I mean, 1/5 of Americans can't even locate America on a map.  What makes you think that Americans would know, say, the preacher who participated in the period of religious activity known as the First Great Awakening?

However, I believe the fact that the survey was given over the phone may have something to do with the poor scores of the people who took the survey.  I've taken surveys over the phone before and my first priority was to get them off the phone fastest, not to do well.  

But still, some of the results are just embarrassing.  47% of protestants didn't know that Martin Luther inspired the protestant reformation.  88% and 83% of black catholics and white catholics, respectively, did not know that Mother Teresa was Catholic.  

Here's the ranking of how well the different religious affiliations did:


Some more stats:



I took the test and got 12/15 and I know jack shit about religion.  I only recall two of the questions being hard, the rest were stupid easy.   There's no reason to score less than 12/15 and if you do you should feel bad.  




See if you can do better than the American public.  



21 comments:

  1. What's funny is that most people (atheists) already knew this.....I mean, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that most theists are clueless!!!!!

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  2. Lol, being Atheistic-agnostic I am greatly pleased by this.

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  3. irony is a beautiful thing inst it?

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  4. that was interesting... can't wait to see what you post tomorrow

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  5. I like this blog. I'll check back tomorrow for a new update :)

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  6. poor guys believing in imaginary friends

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  7. I read about this in the news-paper. It was interesting. Don't the Muslims have phones?

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  8. Sounds about right. It's always struck me as odd how the most fervent believers don't care about their own faith's history.

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  9. You know, I'm kinda satisfied with my 10/15 score on this test, considering that I have never ever took any interest in any kind of religion..

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  10. Irony, irony. But atheists do this for reason. They try to show religious people how blind they are.

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  11. I scored a 13, pretty lame sauce America is.

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  12. It just goes to show that religion is more of a cult than anything else... The leaders are charismatic and they focus on people who are unhappy or easily influcened, promising them happiness and health if they follow.

    It's really unfortunate.

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  13. it looks great!
    i like it .

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  14. "1/5th of Americans can't even locate America on a map"....scary thought lol. very interesting info though, thanks for posting it!

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  15. hey great post! Mind if I link to it?

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  16. This didn't really surprise me at all. In fact I have a post about this planned.

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