{"id":4839,"date":"2010-10-02T16:18:05","date_gmt":"2010-10-02T16:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=4839"},"modified":"2010-10-02T16:18:05","modified_gmt":"2010-10-02T16:18:05","slug":"knowing-my-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/knowing-my-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"Knowing My Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>An entertaining Pew survey<\/a> showing that atheists and agnostics are better informed about religion than their theistic counterparts has raised a few eyebrows. I’m not convinced it’s such a big deal. As Daniel Larison records<\/a>, there’s this detail:<\/p>\n

Data from the survey indicate that educational attainment \u2013 how much schooling an individual has completed \u2013 is the single best predictor of religious knowledge. College graduates get nearly eight more questions right on average than do people with a high school education or less.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fair enough, but then there’s also this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

…Atheists and agnostics also outperformed believers who had a similar level of education. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Most satisfactory. <\/p>\n

With complete absence of modesty I can reveal that I scored 100% <\/strong>on this test<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Again, most satisfactory.<\/p>\n

Superficially, my result may appear to be a triumph for the agnostic\/completely indifferent\/Church of England subset of the population but in reality it’s just a reflection of a very traditional (and, I suspect, largely vanished type of) English education. This involved a decade or so’s worth of daily (or twice daily) attendance at chapel and the inclusion of “scripture” as a regular part of the schoolroom syllabus. Spiritual speculation, the supernatural, \u201centhusiasm\u201d, meaning-of-life chatter and all the other clutter were kept to a bearable minimum. The gap (such as it was) was filled by rousing Victorian hymns, amiably absurd (and reassuringly traditional) ritual and, of course, a study of religious texts–more Joe Friday than Good Friday–that has proved an invaluable historical and cultural resource ever since. That’s the way to go, I reckon.<\/p>\n

After all, who can argue with 100%?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An entertaining Pew survey showing that atheists and agnostics are better informed about religion than their theistic counterparts has raised a few eyebrows. I’m not convinced it’s such a big deal. As Daniel Larison records, there’s this detail: Data from … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[9,10],"tags":[642],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4839"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4839"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4844,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4839\/revisions\/4844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}