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The average American only got half of the questions right in this quiz on religious knowledge. Can you do better?
The Pew Research Centre recently surveyed Americans on their religious knowledge "“ and for a country where religion is so prominent, the results were surprising. Self-described atheists and agnostics out-performed every other group, barring Jews. According to Pew:
Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions.
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. Atheists and agnostics average 20.9 correct answers. 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.
Part of the quiz is online and you can take it for yourself right here and see how you compare with Americans who took the quiz by gender, religious belief and education. A word of warning, at least three of the questions have an obvious US angle, making them tricky for non-Americans to answer. But what the hell.
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29 September 2010 5:26PM
87%. Guessed wrong on the last question.
Also thought the Jewish Sabbath was Saturday - rather than Friday evening to Saturday evening.
The others were fairly obvious imo.
Agnostic atheist - if anyone here didn't already know.
Not in the least surprised by the overall results.
29 September 2010 5:30PM
15/15 - phew!
On reflection, you can see why those who do not subscribe to a particular religious belief may score higher overall given that the quiz is on a variety of faiths. Someone in one community is far more likely (though by no means guaranteed) to be knowledgeable in the history of their own religion than that of another faith. So for example, a Buddhist is more likely to get a question on Buddhism correct than they are on Judaism (though I think Donella will probably get a clean sweep!).
29 September 2010 5:35PM
15 out of 15, though one was a total guess and another an educated guess.
http://furtherthoughtsfortheday.blogspot.com/2010/09/atheists-religious-knowledge-generally.html
29 September 2010 5:37PM
Being a fan of trivia contests, I took the test and, rather worryingly, got 14 out of 15.
Note to self:
You know too much useless stuff.Drink more beer.Yes, even more.
29 September 2010 5:41PM
14 out of 15 but the last was a lucky guess and I'll only claim 13. What I got wrong was the Jewish Sabbath. I thought Friday was an Israeli weekend kind of thing where they only do half a day's work.
I'm an atheist.
29 September 2010 5:41PM
14 out of 15, know nothing about the awakening. This really is a desperate afternoon. There is a general strike here in Spain so have nothing better to do than contribute to the interminable Andrew Brown blog and silly religious quizzes. I'm not sure which one is worse. Pathetic.
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