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Showing posts from October, 2010

Weightier Matters

Anyone familiar with the Christian tradition knows that the scribes and Pharisees didn’t care for Jesus. From their point of view, he was an impertinent and unruly interloper whose words and conduct were blasphemous and subversive. From his point of view, they were … well, they were phony. Roman-occupied Palestine, in the first century of the common era, did not have a First Amendment, so there was no freedom of speech or even freedom of religion, at least not in the form of disestablishment of religion as we know it today. If one was Jewish, one had to do certain things and do them in particular ways; there was no room to allow one the choice of altering how things were done according to the dictates of conscience or personal liberty. Likewise, speaking up and speaking out against the authorities—civil and religious—could get one in a lot of trouble, so much so that it was much better to muzzle your mouth, stew in your juices, and keep a low profile—or join up with the revolu

And the survey says…?

It seems that most everyone is aflutter with the news that atheists and agnostics know more about religion than religionists themselves, according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Let’s put that another way: We now have evidence that disbelievers and unknowers have more information about other religions than do the followers of those religions. That’s the news coming out of Washington D.C. where the Pew Research Center has just released its findings from its study of religious knowledge in the U.S. For anyone who may be curious, the results suggest that the level of religious knowledge among adherents and non-adherents alike is not all that great. Sure, atheists/agnostics answer more survey questions correctly, but 20.9 correct out of 32 questions is still a ‘D’ on the grade sheet. And yes, on a scale where 60% is passing, only atheists/agnostics, Jews, and Mormons pass, while all types of Christians fail. Surveys have been trumpeting for years that American