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  • thabet 10:41 am on September 30, 2010 Permalink
    Tags: , , , , , , knowledge, ,   

    (American) atheists know ‘more about religion than (American) believers’:

    The US Religious Knowledge Survey, released Tuesday from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, found atheists and agnostics know more basic facts about the Bible than either Protestants or Catholics. Among the other findings:

    • 57 percent of Protestants can name the Bible’s four gospels.

    • 55 percent of Catholics know their tradition teaches that sacramental bread and wine become Christ’s body and blood.

    • 15 percent of white evangelicals know Jonathan Edwards participated in the First Great Awakening.

    Here’s some responses to this story I have read from American bloggers: Daniel Larison, ED Kain, and S Brent Plate.

    You can take a truncated form of the the quiz at the Pew website.

     

    • razib, murtad fitri 3:30 pm on September 30, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      15 out of 15. of course. :-)

    • shams 6:52 pm on September 30, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      the survey is flawed.
      the experimental designers did not control for education level or IQ and g.
      it is well known that atheists have higher IQ.
      religiosity correlates with lower IQ.

    • razib, murtad fitri 7:53 pm on September 30, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      http://pewforum.org/Other-Beliefs-and-Practices/U-S-Religious-Knowledge-Survey.aspx

      “Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons perform better than other groups on the survey even after controlling for differing levels of education.”

      dumbass.

    • shams 10:51 pm on September 30, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      ok i didnt read it. tant pis.
      still no control for the negative correlation of religiosity and IQ.
      atheists have low religiosity, and are known to have higher IQ.
      this is actually more support for the emergent IQ gap in political affiliation isnt it?

      In the case of atheists/agnostics and Jews, their main knowledge advantage over Christians comes from their much higher levels of knowledge about non-Christian “world religions” (mainly Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism). Jews got an average of 7.9 questions out of 11 in this category, atheists/agnostics 7.5, and Christians a mere 5.0 (the Mormon average was 5.6). While Jews, atheists and agnostics also outscored Christians on knowledge of Christianity, the margin was much smaller.

      i would have rounded mormons down into the xian category– 5.6 is closer to 5.0 than to 7.5.
      I suspect the emergent between group IQ gap between liberal and conservative political affiliation….mormons and christians are largely conservative– agnostics, atheists and jews largely liberal. :)

    • shams 10:58 pm on September 30, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      oh and while PEW controlled for the QUANTITY of education they didnt control for the QUALITY of education.
      BYU != MIT
      Mormons are missionaries.
      they have to know more about other religions to proselytize them. :)

    • shams 11:03 pm on September 30, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      i guess the result of the survey is that smart people know more than stupid people.
      shockant! :)

    • shams 6:18 am on October 1, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      haha, i read the whole thing. that is two minutes ill never get back.
      the dumbest survey evah.
      smart people know more stuff.
      big whup.

  • thabet 2:07 am on February 20, 2010 Permalink
    Tags: , knowledge, ,   

    Seeing the post below by Arif on Pervez Hoodbhoy, reminded me of this rough-and-ready attempt I made to categorise Muslim approaches to ‘science’ (below the fold).

    (More …)

     

    • cbarwa 2:21 am on February 20, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Historically though, has the relationship between science and religion in Islam not been less antagonistic than in Christianity; we were taught at school at the displacement of Science within Philosophy owed much to the influence of the Church which was hostile to a lot of scientific thinking (eg Copernicus, Galileo, etc.) and that these conflicts didn’t arise to the same degree in other religions at the time (bascially late antiquity till the modern period of c.1500) I wonder if those more informed regard this to be true of science in Islamic societies over this time period? Would appreciate some comments on this.

      • thabet 3:55 am on February 20, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        Some of the liberal attacks on the Catholic church regarding science can be traced back to JW Draper. But I think the relationship has been shown to more complicated than that.

        But a lot of this debate has little or nothing to do with the ‘historical record’ as such; more about how people think about science and knowledge in general.

        • cbarwa 11:12 am on February 21, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

          Well I was more interested in the pre-modern period (ie before 1500 CE) I think it would be broadly accepted though that Science was in many ways downgraded relative to philosophy because of tensions with the Church; course things started to change with the Renaissance onwards. There is a tension here that seems to be absent elsewhere, at least from my impression.

          Still, I can’t think of a scientific thinker having the problems that say Copernicus had because of his theories – am I wrong here?

          • thabet 10:04 pm on February 25, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

            I think this debate begins at how we view intellectual disciplines. Did they even view and understand ‘science’ as a body of knowledge in the same we do?

            I agree there were tensions with the Church and ‘new’ knowledge — this isn’t unique to Catholicism, or even religious groups. Perhaps the RC church suffered a systemic/structural problem, rather than one with the creation/discovery of knowledge?

    • plimfix 3:41 am on February 20, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      It would be interesting to read a postcolonial Muslim analysis of science drawing on (Nikolas Rose’s) governmentality theory, exploring the impact of ‘scientific’ thinking on the construction of the Muslim self. Or has it been done? Anyone?

    • aziz 10:08 am on February 20, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      thab can i reuse this for COB?

    • Habib 12:12 pm on February 21, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Pan Arabism racism

      Arab racism against non-Arabs is huge, the tragic example of the genocide in Sudan is the bloody example.

      Then we have the Pakistani & Malaysian as slaves under the boot of the gulf & Lebanese racist Arabs…

      Not to mention the massacres on the Kurds by pan Arabism in Iraq or the persecution on them by Syria. or the Berber natives on North Africa by Arab settlers past & present (Morocco, Algeria).

      Or the anti Jewish racism by the entire Arab world, What else is the Palestinian-Arab conflict really all about, the Arabs can’t stand the better group in its midts (especially how Arabs live in free Israel, much better than in ANY Arab country – since all of them are oppressive), so they invent each season a new libel and (commit crimes against humanity, like) push the palestinian kids to die as human shields so that their hatred can have a “reason” of fake “war crimes”.

      Is one a better Muslim because he/she buys Arab Palestinian propaganda as if they are “natives” in Israeli/Palestine?
      What about the peaceful Muslims inside Israel, shouldn’t they be protected from Arab “brotherly” terrorism?

      Just take a look at the “queers for palestine” example, how is this a “dignity” or an honor for Islam?

      Did this entire anti-Jewish Arab genocide campaign for so many years bring any honor to Islam’s name? on the contrary! How many westerners do not link Islam with hatred today?

      Why does Islam’s image have to suffer because of palestinian Arab self inflicting wounds (and due to buying racist Arabism’s propaganda)?

      Who has given the right to the radical pro-terror pro-genocidal-Hamas group CAIR to represent mainstream Muslims in America?

      Why do we have to believe each and every lie the Arabs tell, just because they have the lobby oil power over the media (check out how much of US media Saudi billionaire Bin-Talal owns…) & the United Nations???

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