Categories: Need to know

Atheists know more about god than believers do: survey

Conscious rejection of faith leads to knowing more, says researcher

by macleans.ca on Tuesday, September 28, 2010 4:36pm - 0 Comments

Atheist and agnostic Americans know more about religion than their religious fellow citizens, according to a new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. A survey found that self-identified non-believers answered questions about Christianity with better results than participants who identified as religious. For example, a majority of Protestants did not know who started the Protestant Reformation (Martin Luther), and 40 per cent of Catholics didn’t understand the concept of transubstantiation. Asked for his comment, Reverend Adam Hamilton told the LA Times, “I think that what happens for many Christians is, they accept their particular faith, they accept it to be true and they stop examining it.”

The Telegraph

LA Times

Tags: religion

AJR79

Watch atheist, free speech, and contraian warrior Christopher Hitchens, battle David Berlinski (idiot contrarian), while dying of cancer; in a perfect encapsulation of the atheist position.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-mS5nr-dU8&fe…

Enjoy the man while he's here.

Skip to part 2 for immediate Hitch.
Gary

Faith versus reason . You choose. What I find particularly amusing are those posters who compare atheism to a , belief system". Well that is just as silly as saying bald is a hair color. Atheism is the absence of belief in a mythical sky deity or deities. Atheist are prepared to embrace the supernatural provided someone somewhere provides some proof. Still waiting.

"Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from
some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument,
because you're using reason to make your case. And no, this isn't having
"faith" in reason (in the same way that some people have faith in
miracles), because we don't "believe" in reason; we use reason."

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Rev Kev

Gary? Atheism is a lack of any belief? Well then tell me what do you believe? Reason is non-negotiable?? LOL! Do you know how silly that sounds? So keep believing that theory Gary!

Jan Burton

It's all about the proof, Rev.

Got any?
Emily

Atheism is a lack of any belief in religion or deities.

Rational people use reason….and no, facts aren't negotiable.

hosertohoosier

I agree, but this isn't meaningful. In order to make choices we do not only need facts, we also need preferences. Our preferences are not generated out of some rational process. I don't like Brussell sprouts. Is this rational or biological? Well I wish I liked them, as they are pretty good for me. When I make choices about what to eat, I implicitly account for my dislike (or possibly presumed dislike – maybe my sense of taste changed) of Brussell sprouts. So while facts are non-negotiable, preferences are. When we think of ourselves applying reason we tend to take our preferences as a given, without thinking of where they come from (and how they almost certainly impact our ability to use logic).

Gary

What theory what belief ? Did you read my post ? Your premise seems predicated that it is beyond comprehension that an individual could function without a belief in the supernatural. Logic and reason are much more satisfying than blindly accepting myths and fables . It is quite simple. You have absolutely no proof of what you advance and the burden of proof is upon you Rev.

Jan Burton

No surprise at all.

Religious FAITH, by defnition, requires one to accept things without evidence. It's not a "skill" that bodes well for other topics.

Once you've been trained in faith, then you'll likely suffer intellectually in every other area as well.

And remember that most religious people are born into their faith. In other words it was never a belief they arrived at on their own – it was just something they inherited.

Rev Kev

Jan, You have to have faith in what you believe too… None of it is fact.

Jan Burton

The key here is evidence.

There's a difference between having faith that something supernatural is true vs. not seeing enough evidence that the former is actually the case.

JoeC

It's funny that people assume that having faith is about believing something without any proof, when there is a long history of people basing their faith on personal (or sometimes communal) religious experience. The fact that the experience is personal and not visible to all is irrelevant – it's a legitimate source of evidence for that person. And why shouldn't it be?

If you're depressed, happy, etc., should you discount your own experience because we don't have any evidence beyond your firsthand experience of it to prove its existence? That might make sense to us (even though I'd argue that would be a strange thing to do), but surely you wouldn't buy into our stance on your internal state…?

That's not to say that we should all believe in the religious experiences of others, rather that people often do base their beliefs on evidence. One of those sources is personal experience (others typically being scripture, tradition, authority, etc.).

Emily

Over the centuries people have thought they've seen fairies too.

hosertohoosier

Atheists are also engaged in faith. They have arrived at a definitive conclusion, even though they cannot prove it to be true. Only agnostics can claim to be engaged in something other than faith. However, I wouldn't hold that against atheists – faith is an absolutely valuable thing in life. Society is built, to some extent, upon faith in our fellow citizens, although in that instance we call it trust. Strong families and loving relationships, similarly, do not flow from reason. I know this because I have tried using game theory to inform my choices in relationships.

Humans cannot function solely as rational empirical analysts. When people's ability to employ emotions are damaged (but not their analytical capabilities), in fact, they lose the ability to reason effectively. Our analytical minds are like a computer program – they are only as good as the data fed into them. We need emotional experiences and subjective feelings from those experiences, in order to form preferences.

Lets say you are picking between two jobs. One offers more pay but less autonomy, while the other offers less pay but more autonomy. How do you make the tradeoff between the two? A purely rational person could tell you the pros and cons of both, but it cannot tell you why one value is inherently and objectively better than another.

Rev Kev

WOW! Well in this forum I may be stupid… However, I do know where I am going when this life is through… DO YOU?

Gary

send us a post card when you get there
Emily

Everyone knows. Six feet of dirt.
Eddie

SYOTOC! :-)

Kathybee

Before you leave a religion, you first question, then research, then check out other faiths that might appeal to you. Once you decide that they are all the same and operate as a corrupt corporations, you become a non believer. So of course you know more about your previous religion and all others, it is totally logical

JoeC

Every religious tradition in the world is "the same and operate as a corrupt corporations"? You might not be as good at research as you think…
Emily

Yes, they all fleece the sheep….the wonder is that there are so many willing sheep.

Harry Pothead

This is is trippy yo!
Emily

Yes, never fight against facts. It ruins your argument RR.
ColdStanding

What is Pantheism? Conviction that there are multiple gods.
What is Christianity? The process of being convinced that there is only one God.
What is Atheism? The process of convincing oneself that there is no God.
Therefore, I ask, "Who are we?" Answer: Not beings that imagine, not imaginative beings, but imagination being.
Jan Burton

Human history is littered with Gods that no one prays to any more – Ra, Thor, Zeus etc. Thousands of them!

Most, if not all, religious believers today are more than willing to concede that all of those previous Gods were false – as are all the Gods of today that they don't personally pray to.

But those same people are absolutely sure that THEIR god is true. Yup, all those thousands of old Gods are false, and the God(s) of other religions today are false too.

But not their God. That one's real. No doubt about it.

Not something I'd bet money on.

JoeC

Your train of thought is not logical. Whether or not people were wrong in the past (which remains to be proven or disproven) about religion, does not mean that people are wrong about what they believe now.

By your reasoning, the fact that science has been woefully wrong about things in the past (i.e. smoking is good for you, asthma is psychosomatic, etc. etc.) discredits anything a scientist might believe today, just by loose association of shared profession.

I'm not saying that I believe in a monotheistic creator god, just that the tired line of reasoning that you and others here have presented here is flawed, and not a good reason to be an atheist. An agnostic, maybe, but not an atheist.

Jan Burton

JoeC,

There's a big difference between the track record of religion and that of science.

Science has held incorrect positions in the past (and probably still does) but science has also gotten a lot right – so much in fact that science pretty much built the modern world.

On the other hand, ask almost any religious person about past Gods and you'll find that they consider the failure rate thus far to be 100%.

No Christian or Muslim would say that Zeus, Appolo or Thor were real. Nor would they agree that any God today other than their own is real.

So there is plenty of reason to believe that science is right on a given topic – science has hundreds of years worth of inventions and dramatic improvements in human life under its belt. But there is NO reason to assume that any of today's Gods are any truer than the thousands of discarded Gods that came before them.

At some point credibility has to be built.

JoeC

Your argument utterly fails to justify the logical gap in your original argument. Your counter argument is essentially ad homonym (against religious people), and is therefore not a valid line of reasoning.

Science's track record is actually pretty terrible. Having a bad track record is actually kind of built into the scientific method. Theories are disproven all the time. What scientists believe now will likely be almost completely replaced within a few generations.

And assuming that someone is right simply because they are a scientist goes directly against the method that scientists claim to follow. That professional association makes someone right is a logical fallacy.

And re: failure rates of religions: That's a pretty arbitrary and bad methodology for rating the track record of religion.

First of all, proving the existence of a god or gods is not some objective way of measuring the success of a tradition. That's just arbitrary.

Second, no one has disproven the existence of Zeus or anyone else. That's like saying if we all stopped believing in Jupiter that it would cease to exist.

Third, there are billions of people around the world who worship the same deities that their traditions have for thousands of years. There are also traditions who believe in all sorts of deities, and therefore have no difficulty with accommodating the deities of other traditions into their own.

I could go on, but I'm sure it's a waste of time. You are obviously a blind adherent of scientism, and just as blind and arrogant as the dogmatic religious followers you try to undermine. I suggest doing some self reflection and actual research on this.

Eddie

"Your train of thought is not logical. Whether or not people were wrong in the past (which remains to be proven or disproven) about religion, does not mean that people are wrong about what they believe now. "

are you serious, JoeC!??!? i mean, seriously!?!? WOW!!

JoeC

Have you ever been wrong about anything in the past? You probably have been, lots of times. By your reasoning, that means that anything you say here is also wrong. I hope you agree that that's not a very good way to go about doing things.

For all of the anti-religion people here's insistence that religious believers are illogical, they sure don't follow the most basic of debate rules: ad homonym attacks are not a valid argument.

Eddie

r u saying that past beliefs in God were wrong and now they are right?! i have been wrong in the past and i am willing to accept that as a learning experience. you seem to forget that learning also involves analysis. you would rather just say that past beliefs are wrong without asking whether present could be wrong too. that is what i am pointing out to. unfortunately, you are not into real analysis, just what someone else has told you as "analysed."

"For all of the anti-religion people here's insistence that religious believers are illogical, they sure don't follow the most basic of debate rules: ad homonym attacks are not a valid argument. " Convictions are bigger enemies of truth than lies. And sadly, the truth is not a valid argument for the likes of you. I rest my case. Cheers!!

Ariadne

Basing on myself, there is no correlation between faithlessness and intelligence. The faithless and the faithfull have dumbness and intelligence in both divides a plenty.

As for me , when I encounter something unthinkable, I do not bother stretching my mind connecting the unthinkables to make them thinkable. In short, I am a lazy thinker or political correctness aside – dumber than dumb. I actually take my hat off to those who have faith, it takes a lot of thinking and intelligence to make possibility out of impossibilities.
hosertohoosier

If you actually look at the quiz, it asks questions about many different faiths. While one would expect religious people to know more about their own faith, it is not clear to me that we would expect them to know and more/less about OTHER religions. When you look at the breakdown by question (something the many news reports have not taken the time to do) you get a very different story.

Lets take the trans-substantiation question as an example. Catholics, sure, did badly, with only 60% answering correctly. However, that was substantially better than any other group. Only 41% of Atheists got that one right (roughly in line with the general public).

Alternately, lets take the Joseph Smith question. Atheists did well on them (possibly thanks to South Park), with 71% answering correctly. However, Mormons did a lot better than Atheists, with 93% getting that one correct.

So what this quiz shows is that atheists have better general knowledge about different religions, but less specific knowledge about any given religion. Since atheists are more likely to be well-educated, young and urban (and thus exposed to multiple religions) we should hardly be surprised by these results. Of course it also gave Atheists the opportunity to act on one of their sacred commandments: thou shalt proclaim thine intelligence loudly.
delford t louis

knowing as a reality based thought mode is not entirely about intelligence as anyone of a woman or sperm or test tube etc is born from. it derives from using the grey matter and the idea of ability to reason as a trademark to smarts as any skeptic can attest to…it is the realm of science that reveals the capabilities of humans…

JoeC

Really? What novel capabilities of humans has science revealed? Have religions never revealed anything to us about what we are or could be?

Eddie

"Have religions never revealed anything to us about what we are or could be?"

Yes, among other things it have revealed our inner demons and our willingness to let them prevail. We have also learnt the various degrees of suffering we are capable of inflicting on ourselves. You would say that religion has contributed a lot of good stuff too, and I would agree, however, the negatives by far outweigh the positives as there are way more negatives and they are still fully evident in the present times. The positives are few and far apart, and mostly benefit the negatives! You will disagree with what I am saying, I know, but in order to understand what I am saying you need to be capable of objective analysis.

Gary

Students of anthropology of religion will advise that we can identify about 10,000 religions that have been created over time by man. Most have claimed to be the right one and its adherents of course the chosen ones. All are based on myths and fables. Any thinking person is an atheist or at the very least a militant agnostic. With the rise of science and education there will be a marked decline in religion. This is why historically religion has tried to suppress science and knowledge, i.e Controversy over heliocentrism with the R C Church and intelligent design as espoused by the born again crowd. These are but a few of many examples of deliberate attacks on science and the scientific methods by religion.

Forak

Your post make no logical sense. The fact that there are a lot of religious traditions doesn't disprove the existence of something that we might loosely call a spiritual reality. Nor does it prove it's existence. Humans have been grossly wrong about the causes of all sorts of things, but that doesn't disprove the existence of, say, lightning, earthquakes, etc.

And regarding the suppression of science by religion: you've cited the activities of ONE religion. No doubt there are others, but there are also many examples of religions embracing scientific discovery (though not buying into scientism, as previously defined in these comments).

The Dalai Lama, for one, works with scientists all the time on the nature of the universe, the mind, and so forth. When it was proven to him that the world was floating in space, not as described in Buddhist scriptures, he said that's no problem, and that science was right.

A bit more thought and research would do your understanding of anthropology and religion good.

Gary

I'm very content with my life without a so called 'God'. Because I know he, it, or however it is presented to us as kids is NOT REAL. The problem with religion is that it uses fear as a way to scare people into believing in nonsense. Fear is a very powerful weapon when you want to control the masses. I think tonight I will believe in my refrigerator. I will pray to it with all my might that if the sun rises tomorrow morning then it is proof positive that my refrigerator must be an all powerful being because my wish came true. Think for yourself and enjoy the experience.

Eddie

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

- Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear (From Frank Herbert's Dune)

Student

This article is technically true, but misleading . Atheists and Agnostics have more variety of knowledge, but the religious believers always know more about their religion, though not other religions.

source: http://www.abpnews.com/content/view/5750/9/