Based on the recent Pew research, many stories published. This CSM story poses a question, that is, whether atheists' knowledge on religion is bad or not. Why should it be? Atheists and agnostics also tend to be relatively well educated that the survey found as I read it in original, and not surprisingly, that the most knowledgeable people were also the best educated. However, it said that atheists and agnostics also outperformed believers who had a similar level of education.

This was definitely relevant to me. I'm Lutheran, which falls under the Protestant scope of Christianity. However, I believe it should be relevant to anyone who claims to be religious. It's ridiculous to think that people are living their lives according to traditions and beliefs that they do not even know about. The article includes facts, sources, and provides testimony from both sides of the argument (whether this lack of knowledge reveals a shallow faith). I'd like to add that I received a 28 out of 32.

From the beginning of this article, I was mildly offended. As stated by MacDonald, "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." I immediately wondered what basic facts were and when he mentioned that "15 percent of white evangelicals know Jonathan Edwards participated in the First Great Awakening," I was even more concerned. Why are facts like this relevant and meaningful? However, as I read more into the article, my questions were answered and my heart was made to feel at rest. MacDonald wondered many of the same things I did. In fact, at the end of my reading, I wished ... More »

The article provides only a very brief summary of the Pew Forum survey. In summarizing the results by faith, it fails to mentions that Jews and Mormons were included in the survey and did almost as well as atheists and agnostics. The article quotes reactions from several people who seem unfamiliar with the details of the survey and ends up being misleading since their reactions are presented as if they reflected the content of the survey itself. A link is provided to a Christian Science Monitor quizz, "Are you smarter than an atheist," which reproduces questions from the survey, but not the Pew study itself.

I took the quiz myself and find the writer's assessment of it as an academic exercise to be quite appropriate. It is possible for an adherent to any religion to be a faithful member of that community without knowing the answers to some of those questions. At the same time, there are also questions that such a person really should know the answer to. The article explores both these threads evenly. The writer asks questions without jumping to rash conclusions about the results of the survey.