Another Point of View on Pew Poll on Religious Knowledge Among Americans

You may remember a few months back Pew published the results of a poll that showed Agnostics and Atheists knew more about religion than people of faith.   Quiz is gone on their site.

And here is the link to the Pew article on the results of their poll: U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey

Writing in the Scientific American Charles Seife disputes their methodology and analysis of the results.  The article is  The Science of “Disestimation”: The Shortcomings of Opinion Polls with a subtitle of Why we shouldn’t put our faith in opinion polls.

Mr. Seife is probably correct in his assessment.   Statistical analysis is way beyond my realm of knowledge.  I would assume, though, that an organization like Pew would have some statisticians on board…or maybe they should.

Anecdotally from my experience I would tend to agree with Pew.  Most of the Atheists that I personally know have gotten there after much study and thought.  It is not an easy thing to discard the powerful meme that is religion.  In my own case, I had a Southern Baptist upbringing.  For the longest while I thought there was something wrong with me because I had the damndest time believing.   In my 40s I decided to reread The Bible.  The more I read the more I felt there was a good reason I could not believe.  So I set about studying the other major religions.  Then I studied the atheist literature.  Then I read on religious history.  It was only after this study over a period of years that I came to the conclusion that I was an agnostic tending towards atheism.  Even now my Southern Baptist upbringing is screaming from me writing that sentence.

I have also found all too often that religious people do not care to study or know much about other religions.  Perhaps they are afraid it will test their faith.   I was in a  religious discussion with a particularly adamant religious person.  During the discussion it become clear to me that I was more familiar The Bible than he was.  I asked him if he had read The Bible, and if so how much.  His reply was that he did not need to, his pastor would tell him all he needed to know.  What do you say to that?

There are always at least 2 sides plus parallel universes to any issue.  You decide.