{"id":2772,"date":"2010-09-28T17:55:57","date_gmt":"2010-09-28T17:55:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2772"},"modified":"2010-09-28T17:55:57","modified_gmt":"2010-09-28T17:55:57","slug":"wellinformed_he","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2772","title":{"rendered":"Well-Informed Heretics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Among the many misconceptions about atheists is the one that we are ignorant of the basic tenets of the major religions. I’ve been in situations where I’ve identified as an atheist and believers assumed I needed a primer on the differences between the Old and New Testaments or something equally basic. Of course, they don’t know that I went to a Catholic college and was required to take theology courses. I can’t quote biblical chapter and verse, but I have a reasonably good grasp of the core beliefs of the world religions. In fact, a recent Pew survey found that atheists may know more about the faith than some Christians<\/a>. For example, 53% of Protestants didn’t know that Martin Luther began the Reformation<\/a>. But Christians aren’t alone in their ignorance. Fewer than half of all respondents knew that the Dalai Lama is a Buddhist. <\/p>\n

That many of the faithful lack any curiosity about the historical context of their beliefs and posses a complete disinterest in other belief systems isn’t shocking news. I remember one of my college classmates expressing disbelief when I explained that Christianity spun off from Judaism. Our public schools have been scared away from doing any serious teaching of religion and it shows in the study’s results. And as long as Christian fundamentalists get apoplectic when anyone even mentions a sacred text that isn’t the Bible, that’s unlikely to change. Perhaps we atheists should start teaching some afterschool classes in comparative religion. I’m sure nobody will raise a fuss.<\/p>\n

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Among the many misconceptions about atheists is the one that we are ignorant of the basic tenets of the major religions. I’ve been in situations where I’ve identified as an atheist and believers assumed I needed a primer on the differences between the Old and New Testaments or something equally basic. Of course, they don’t […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-II","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2772\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}