So Many Gods, So Little Time

Americans have deeply held personal religious beliefs, but a recent survey shows that many of them don’t exactly possess a kingdom of knowledge about religion in general. In fact, atheists and agnostics, along with Jews and Mormons, handily outscored Christians on many questions about religion in a survey conducted in May and June 2010 by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

The widely trumpeted proficiency of atheists and agnostics was just one in a string of eyebrow-raising findings from the survey, which posed 32 multiple-choice questions such as When does the Jewish Sabbath begin? What is Ramadan? and Where, according to the Bible, was Jesus born?

The mainstream media covered the poll’s overall findings, but after the initial splash the story passed with very little comment. Parsing the findings again, some notable trends emerged:

Vishnu who? Fewer than half of Americans know the Dalai Lama is Buddhist, only 38 percent correctly associate Vishnu and Shiva with Hinduism, and only about a quarter know that most Indonesians are Muslims.

Read more: http://www.utne.com/Spirituality/Pew-Forum-Survey-Americans-Knowledge-Religions.aspx#ixzz1C9R303Su

Humans would answer questions about themselves in an extensive questionnaire, then be matched with the deity that best suits them. A link would then take them to that deity's Facebook page, where they could friend the deity or become a fan.

is altered state of mind / trance / religious experience - by your favourite means. Psychadelics has been quite popular recently. :)

Of course, the match-up program works both ways and some gods are very eager to grap your attention through mass hypnosis etc. Mammon, for example, the Consumerist Deity present in all those blinking and twinking symbols in streets, TV, etc...

...is belonging to a church. Sit through a few sermons a year with the family and be seen in public worship by your neighbors and that's all that matters. Religious in name, but not in practice. For the men, they are usually more devoted to sporting activities than religious functions. Today, religion is more like a club where one attends to socialize and meet and greet people and it doesn't matter which denomination one belongs to. To the uneducated and lazy religious they are all the same.

The atheists I know didn't just go and pick their point of view on the spur of the moment or to piss off mom and dad or whatever. They did the research, decided what they read was not consistent with their worldview, and became atheists. My friends' knowledge of Biblical passages is impressive to say the least.

TlalocW

http://features.pewforum.org/quiz/us-religious-knowledge/index.php

I got a 73%, without using Google and answering each question in five seconds. Not bad, but not as good as I'd hoped.

more than anything I would consider religious

Full credit if you guessed Near East. Full credit if you guessed Nazareth, full credit if you guessed Bethlehem. Plenty of Biblical support for both of those. Part credit if you guessed Jerusalem, a minority view gaining increasing traction.

Hard to go wrong. :)

Once again, atheists just know too much about religion.

Seriously, though, the only question on there that was somewhat difficult is the First Great Awakening preacher, because I always get the two mixed up. That's more of an American history question than a religious question, but then again, Americans' knowledge of history is abysmal as well.