Are you smarter than an atheist?

[inverarity]

I have not posted a lot about atheism, because I'm not a "movement atheist," which is to say, I'm pretty unapologetic and can even be militant about my lack of belief, but I don't join atheist groups or go around mocking religious people (unless they annoy me). The reason I don't participate much in online atheism is that a lot of online atheists are also libertarians, which I consider the atheist version of creationism. The reason I don't mock religious people is, well, I'm not an asshole, and I do have friends and family who are religious. I don't think they're stupid for believing - just wrong.

However, one of those smug atheist truisms which I have generally found to be true no matter how smug it may be is that atheists tend to know more about religion than religious people. It's no surprise that most Christians have never read the Bible (even those who believe in Biblical inerrancy - I mean, holy shit, if I believed a book was the literal, absolutely true Word of God I would read every single word repeatedly like my immortal soul depended on it, ya know?), and that many American Christians have completely wrong ideas about what the U.S. Constitution actually says about religion, what you can and can't teach in school, etc.

So test your knowledge with the Christian Science Monitor's Are you smarter than an atheist? poll.

This atheist scored 30 out of 32. (I missed one I should really have gotten right, and missed another because I just didn't remember.)

(There is a shorter version conducted by the Pew Forum here which includes a report on average results nationwide, by religious affiliation or lack thereof.)

Hat tip to joreth for posting about this and pointing out legitimate issues with how the CSM is likely to use the results.

Comments

[momofquacker.livejournal.com]

I got 29 out of 32. I missed what people in Indonesia consider themselves (didn;t know!), the First great Awakening (I guessed Finney), and what Maimonides are (I didn;t know). Admittedly I was a 'born again Christian' for about 3 years, went to a private Christian school for 2 years, plus was raised Roman Catholic, though i quit going to the catholic church when I was 8. So I had a fair foundation in the Christian mythology, and going to a UU church for the past couple years I have learned more about other religions, since my church is made up of people from many different religions- we have Pagans, Hindus, atheists and agnostics (our minister is agnostic!), Christians, Jews, Taoists... so, I have increased my knowledge of these different religions simply from being part of an openminded church where 'To question is the answer'

[conuly]

Maimonides IS not ARE. He was a Jewish philosopher and scholar.

[momofquacker.livejournal.com]

oops, sorry! :( I had no idea! I feel dumb now, I should have looked the word/name up before posting.

[conuly]

If you aren't used to hospitals and schools being named after him, it does look like an odd plural!