Atheist Know It All

Atheist Know It All.

Atheist Know It All

This is a blog I did back in September of 2010 from another host. I felt it was still fitting to use now and as a way to get started here. Enjoy!

I was reading an article recently that talks about knowledge of religion. The article hit on something that was almost not surprising to me. It said that Atheists and agnostics had more knowledge about religion then people of the religion.

The poll showed that most Protestant Christians couldn’t relate Martin Luther to the protestant reformation, while Atheists and Agnostics could. Also, most Catholics didn’t even understand the purpose of the their central ritual of drinking wine and eating bread. They felt it was merely to symbolize the blood and body of Christ, not actually transforming into them. I won’t go into my opinion on this ritual, but leave it to say that I’m not a Catholic.

So what does this all mean? To me it shows a few things about modern day Christians in comparison to those who are not religiously affiliated. First thing I see is that people really don’t even know what they believe in. People are accepting their faith mostly because that is what they were brought up in. They aren’t taking the time to know what they actually believe in or the history of their beliefs. This to me is rather disheartening to consider that some Christians are out there trying to live their life as a beacon of Christ and if questioned on their beliefs wouldn’t be able to answer. This is a root cause for so many “believers” walking away from the faith and believing that being a Christian did nothing for them.

The next thing this shows me about today’s Christians is they are uneducated. I’m not talking about they haven’t graduated high school or college, I am implying they lack education in their own beliefs. Even the bible tells them to “Study to show yourself approved unto God, rightly divided by the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:15) So if their own religion, and mine are telling them to get to know what you believe in why aren’t they? Simple, we are a society of now. We don’t want to work for knowledge, we expect for it to be at our disposal because of the expansion of resources. When I was growing up we had to look things up for school in an encyclopedia, dictionary, thesaurus, or other reference manual. Today its as simple as sitting in front of a computer or picking up your phone. Because of this people are less apt to study their own religion because they feel they can just “google it” if they have a question. However, this isn’t going to help them when faced in an immediate situation that could have been a life changing opportunity for someone else if only they had taken the time to learn some of the basic fundamentals of their own religion.

The other thing this shows me is peoples “inheritance” mindset. They feel that because they were born into something it makes them immune to the need for knowledge. A great example of this is natural born US citizens in relation to immigrants attempting to legally become citizens of the United States. Most legal immigrants can give you more information on the US and its history then people born and raised in the United States. I would challenge any of you to ask a few random people you may know if they can name the current Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Ask them if they can tell you the requirements to be eligible to run for President of the United States. If you want to get tricky, ask them who was the first president to be considered Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. These are just some of the questions that are on the test that a legal immigrant has to pass to become a US citizen. By the way the answers to these questions are easily achievable by looking them up, but just like in your religion wouldn’t it make you feel better to be able to answer these questions on the spot to someone asking them without having to “google it?”

I will conclude with this to consider, when it comes to the fact, that according to this poll and others that have been done over the years, Atheists and Agnostics seem to know more about religion then others lets take a look at current U.S. immigration laws.