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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I love this. So now not only are religious folks ignorant to atheism, you also know more about religion than they do. [/quote]

Not more, no.  But likely just as much.[/quote]

Actually, research shows that on average, atheists [i]know[/i] more about religion than religious people do.

As noted above: https://www.pewforum.org/2010/09/28/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey/

"On average, Americans correctly answer 16 of the 32 religious knowledge questions on the survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life.[b] Atheists and agnostics average 20.9 correct answers. [/b]Jews and Mormons do about as well, averaging 20.5 and 20.3 correct answers, respectively. Protestants as a whole average 16 correct answers; Catholics as a whole, 14.7. Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons perform better than other groups on the survey even after controlling for differing levels of education".

[/quote]

NP. Clearly you didn’t read the survey you’re citing. Or, you’re being disingenuous and hoping nobody will follow your link.

This is not an in-depth survey of the tenets of any particular religion.  It’s a test of knowledge of very basic concepts of MANY religions. So, knowing that the Jewish Sabbath is on Friday, that Islam’s holy book is the Koran, that the Dalai Lama is Buddhist, that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, that Indonesia is mainly Muslim, that atheists do not believe in a god, and that that public schoolteachers cannot lead a class in prayer. This is most certainly *not* a test of whether respondents are familiar with complex theological issues like original sin, faith vs. works, or grace. Nor is it a test of in-depth scriptural knowledge for any major religion.

Doing well on this survey in no way suggests anybody is an “expert” in any single religion, far from it.  FWIW, as far as the questions on Christianity specifically go, Mormons and Evangelicals did the best—not atheists.

Anybody here can follow your link and see the disparity between the expertise you’re claiming and what the survey actually measured.

PS. I work at Pew, although on a completely different issue and in a different building.

[/quote]

PP never claimed anyone was an "expert" in anything and certainly did NOT misrepresent the survey - at all. It's even called a freakin "survey" so why would you assume it's anything in-depth?

[/quote]

Please. You know you’re full of it, as do others here. PP was going on about how atheists know more about religion than believers because “many atheists made a study of religion before leaving, so know more about it than many religious people.” Given that religious people can be expected to know a fair amount about their own religions, if only because they sit in the mosque/synogogue/church once a week, this certainly implies that atheists have a high level of knowledge of individual religions.

When it turns out that the survey wasn’t measuring that at all. It was measuring if respondents knew the most basic facts across MANY religions.

Also, for your edification, a survey can certainly be “in depth.” It all depends on the survey questions and goals. In this case, the survey goal was to measure broad knowledge of MANY religions (what’s the first book in the Bible? What religion was Mother Theresa? What religion are the people of India?) and not detailed theological understanding about any particular religion. [/quote]
 
Atheists’ ignorance of the finer points of Christianity is on display here on a daily basis. I’m not surprised they can answer questions about where Jesus was born or even name the four gospels. The survey didn’t ask what’s IN the gospels. So trying to repurpose this survey to make claims about atheists’ supposed erudition is silly. [/quote]

I am pp who cited the survey, quoted it and provided the link.  As pointed out by another pp, I did not misrepresent it or intend to misrepresent.  It described people's broad knowledge of religionS, not particular involvement in their own religions.  A person may be very devout and/or know the many rules of their own denomination very well, but that does not make them knowledgeable about other religions or religion in general.  The survey was measuring knowledge about religions, not level of devoutness in one's own religion. The survey shows that atheists, agnostics Jews and Mormons know more facts about religions - that's it.[/quote]

You definitely implied that atheists understand particular religions better than their adherents. You made a sweeping claim that “atheists often make an in-depth study of religion before leaving it,” and then you tried to back up your claim by misrepresenting the goals and findings of the Pew study.

Btw, that study is from 2010, and I’ve seen you use cite it several times before in similar contexts, so apparently you’ve been misrepresenting that study for a while. [/quote]

pp DID not "misrepresent" the data.

Also the only arguments against that data have been unsupported generalizations.[/quote]

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