As someone who went to a Catholic school that believed in educating its students on many different religions, I'd like to believe I would do pretty well on a religion test.
Then I took the quiz put together by The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and found on CNN.com. It is a quiz that most people in America failed.
I've been keeping my distance from organized religion lately, and I still did fairly well on the quiz. Then I found out that might not be such a coincidence.
Believe it or not, the people who did the best on the quiz were atheists and agnostics.
That means most people don't know much about...their own religion.
This isn't so surprising if you think about it.
Most religions preach tolerance and acceptance, and if most people knew that, they'd realize they're not allowed to hate or legislate against all the people they'd like to--and that just wouldn't go over well.
So instead, ignorance continues to be bliss.
The more you know, the less you can twist around to suit your own needs.
After hearing about the poor results, CNN posted an opinion piece stating that religion should be taught in schools.
My question is this: Why should religion be taught in school when most religions have weekly services where people are supposed to be taught about their faith?
What this survey shows is that a lot of people in this country attend religious services while retaining absolutely nothing.
So why are they going? To clock hours for their various Afterlives?
My religion teacher, a fantastic guy, used to say that too many people believe in what they believe in because of fear or superstition, and that faith is rarely the real reason people go to church or temple or what-have-you week after week.
Obviously, this would be the wrong reason, and yet clearly people aren't attending religious functions to develop or progress in any sort of spiritual way.
The survey results are just full of contradictions. Strong believers know less than non-believers. Bible belt Southerners were at the bottom. Most Catholics don't know that they're supposed to believe communion becomes the body and blood of Christ.
More than anything, the quiz shows that people who question their religion are better educated, and have actually sought to learn more about their belief system than people who just blindly accept whatever faith they were born into.
CNN reports that--"Only eight of the 3,412 survey respondents got all 32 questions right. Six got them all wrong."
Hmm, I wonder if one of those six will be sitting in a religious service this week saying their prayers along with everybody else...
Then I took the quiz put together by The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and found on CNN.com. It is a quiz that most people in America failed.
I've been keeping my distance from organized religion lately, and I still did fairly well on the quiz. Then I found out that might not be such a coincidence.
Believe it or not, the people who did the best on the quiz were atheists and agnostics.
That means most people don't know much about...their own religion.
This isn't so surprising if you think about it.
Most religions preach tolerance and acceptance, and if most people knew that, they'd realize they're not allowed to hate or legislate against all the people they'd like to--and that just wouldn't go over well.
So instead, ignorance continues to be bliss.
The more you know, the less you can twist around to suit your own needs.
After hearing about the poor results, CNN posted an opinion piece stating that religion should be taught in schools.
My question is this: Why should religion be taught in school when most religions have weekly services where people are supposed to be taught about their faith?
What this survey shows is that a lot of people in this country attend religious services while retaining absolutely nothing.
So why are they going? To clock hours for their various Afterlives?
My religion teacher, a fantastic guy, used to say that too many people believe in what they believe in because of fear or superstition, and that faith is rarely the real reason people go to church or temple or what-have-you week after week.
Obviously, this would be the wrong reason, and yet clearly people aren't attending religious functions to develop or progress in any sort of spiritual way.
The survey results are just full of contradictions. Strong believers know less than non-believers. Bible belt Southerners were at the bottom. Most Catholics don't know that they're supposed to believe communion becomes the body and blood of Christ.
More than anything, the quiz shows that people who question their religion are better educated, and have actually sought to learn more about their belief system than people who just blindly accept whatever faith they were born into.
CNN reports that--"Only eight of the 3,412 survey respondents got all 32 questions right. Six got them all wrong."
Hmm, I wonder if one of those six will be sitting in a religious service this week saying their prayers along with everybody else...
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