Religious Knowledge Quiz

[dawbs]

15/15 - but the quiz is pretty basic. Sad thing is how scores seem to drop with religious affiliation. If pastors were doing their jobs, Christians would score as well as atheists do, rather than significantly worse.

It might depend on who they define as "Christian". Maybe it's where I live, but if someone has been to church once in their life and isn't athiest, they'd be likely to define themselves as "Christian"--it's the path/descriptor of least resistance.

I'd like to se a breaking apart of "active in their religion" and 'passive in their religion" for these sorts of things.

[bananacat]

Another 15/15 here. I found it interesting that Jews were the only religious group that scored higher than the atheists/agonstics (though there's a lot overlap between the two); not sure why that would be, except possibly that Jews are way more likely to know stuff specific to Christianity than Christians usually are about Judaism.

Incidentally, I'm visiting Harbin this weekend for the ice festival and was told by my tour guide that I have successfully doubled the number of Jews in Harbin by showing up. So, uh, go me, I guess.

I think that the atheist and Jewish groups scored highest because of education/income level, and the religion (or lack of it) is sort of coincidental. If you look at the scores by education, it's a very clear trend that higher education leads to a better score on the test, which makes sense because the more you know in general, the more you are likely to know about this specific topic. And atheist and Jewish people tend to have higher education as a group. This is one of those weird cases where to correlation that seems obvious actually isn't a causal relationship and they are both related to a third factor that is more important.

[kamcho_papio]

I use that quiz in the college classes I teach. The ones the students (Bible-belt state schools) usually miss are about the Sabbath and the Great Awakening.

In response to the results from the Pew survey, Nicholas Kristof posted two related religious knowledge quizzes in the NY Times last year:

General Knowledge

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/opini ... istof.html

Religion and Sex:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/opini ... istof.html

Both are a bit more nuanced and definitely more of a challenge.

[celestial]

Do you study Muslim and Hindu festivals at American schools? At my school we had children of those faiths so I knew about them aside from study anyway.

We didn't at my school. But I educated myself about different faiths later on. I can see how so many Americans would do poorly on this quiz, though. If you're not curious about other faiths, or even your own, you're not going to be exposed to a lot of this information.

[Kitty]

Atheist, got 15/15. Some of the questions were a bit tricky, and I completely guessed on #15. The rest were pretty easy though.

[Guest Anonymous]

I wouldn't have been able to answer many questions as a young Christian. The American bias accounts for some of it, but I would have failed on some of the non-Christian questions because there was no need to know about other religions. And I'd have failed on one or two of the Christian questions because they refer to a version of Christianity that was wrong. ;)

[celestial]

I got 100% on the sex and religion quiz, but many questions had more than one right answer. I missed #2 and #3 on the general knowledge quiz. Not bad, for me, I think! :D

[thoughtful]

I use that quiz in the college classes I teach. The ones the students (Bible-belt state schools) usually miss are about the Sabbath and the Great Awakening.

In response to the results from the Pew survey, Nicholas Kristof posted two related religious knowledge quizzes in the NY Times last year:

General Knowledge

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/opini ... istof.html

Religion and Sex:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/opini ... istof.html

Both are a bit more nuanced and definitely more of a challenge.

I did pretty well -- missed two on each of these. Some of what I knew, I learned here -- I'm tellin' ya, FJ is educational!

[2xx1xy1JD]

15/15, although the last one was a guess between two choices.

[maybeizfundie]

14/15. I was thinking of the wrong "revival". Didn't read carefully.

[LittleMy]

14/15 I had never heard of the great awakening, I guess that's because I'm English ?

[Guest Anonymous]

15/15. My old Sunday school teacher would be proud of me.

[Mama Mia]

14/15 All but the 'great awakening' one.

[ladypuglover]

13/15 The great awakening and one other that I already forgot are the ones to mess me up. As said before thanks to FJ I know about other religions other than my own. :D

[HOTW]

I got 14/15 #7 I got wrong I don't know much about Hindu or Taoism.

[Lillybee]

15/15 It shows that the hive vagina is smarter than the average bear.

[pimpom]

I know this makes me sound like Smuggy McSmuggerson Eurotrash, but 14/15 placing me in the upper 97& does confirm the European view of Americans as being a tad dim...

[Goyangi]

15/15 for the original quiz. And I think I did respectably well in the other couple of linked quizzes. Though, after taking them all, I'm pretty sure I've already taken all three before...

I don't think kids typically learn much about religion in U.S. public schools. Things change though - it's been a while since I was in school - and I imagine that in more diverse school districts, things might be different. That said, I actually took a class on world religion in high school (set up through the guise of studying religious literature. I seem to recall that it was impressed upon us that the class was somewhat at risk if someone got the wrong impression and complained.) We read some literature, but the class was mostly about learning about religion and culture. I basically attribute my interest in religion to that class and I hope someone is still teaching it at my old school.

[TinyDancer87]

14/15

I hope a fundy takes this, fails miserably, and thinks to himself "What?! FJers might actually know about RELIGION?"

Yup. We do. And apparantly more than you (test shows that white evangelical protestant only achieved on average 54% correct).

[xDreamerx]

14/15 I had never heard of the great awakening, I guess that's because I'm English ?

The Great Awakenings are American yes, but didn't the philosophies and ideas behind them begin in England? I could be wrong but I thought so.

I got 14/15. I thought the ruling on prayer in U.S. schools made it so that it was no longer mandatory in '63, but still optional if desired. My bad.

[slh12280]

15/15 although I guessed on the one about The Great Awakening.

[Letgo]

15/15 I looked through the results of which groups scored where on each question. It is interesting how much or little religious groups know about their own religions, or the religions of others. One would think that all Jews would know when the Sabbath begins or that all Catholics would know the church teaching on the body and blood of Christ. However, I'd guess that many people identify with a religion culturally or ethnically but are not and never have been, active members.

[LittleMy]

The Great Awakenings are American yes, but didn't the philosophies and ideas behind them begin in England? I could be wrong but I thought so.

I got 14/15. I thought the ruling on prayer in U.S. schools made it so that it was no longer mandatory in '63, but still optional if desired. My bad.

Having googled it, apparently yes the ideas did seem to start in England :oops: Thank you, I've learnt something today 8-)

[DCmilly]

15/15. Looks like those world history and european history courses at my godless public high school actually did some good.

[QAF_Rocks]

15/15. Not bad for a heathen! ;)

When this was first released, you could do the entire quiz online. I got all 32 questions right, so I guess learning about religion paid off.