Americans reach new levels of ignorance.
According to a new Zogby poll involving 1,213 people across the U.S., three fourths of Americans “can correctly identify two of Show White’s seven dwarfs while only a quarter can name two Supreme Court Justices.”
Asked what planet Superman was from, 60 percent named the fictional planet Krypton, while only 37 percent knew that Mercury is the planet closest to the sun.
Respondents were far more familiar with the Three Stooges — Larry, Curly and Moe — than the three branches of the U.S. government — judicial, executive and legislative. Seventy-four percent identified the former, 42 percent the latter.
This new poll reveals that many Americans are more comfortable with fiction than fact. We already knew this, of course, thanks to a December ‘05 Harris poll showing that 41% of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein had strong links to Al Quaeda and that 22% of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein helped to plan the 9/11 attacks.
These new Zogby poll results remind me . . . I’m looking for a poll on the extent to which practicing Christians are really familiar with the book they claim to be the most important book in the world: the Bible. In my personal experience, most practicing Christians rarely read the Bible and very few of them show any enthusiam for reading it more than they currently do. I find this exceedingly odd, in that Christians claim that the Bible was authored by God Himself. My encounters with Christians suggest that many believers don’t really believe in God, but rather, (as Daniel Dennett suggests) that they believe in belief. They think it’s important to believe, but they themselves don’t really believe in those things they claim to be important.
Most of the (numerous) Christians with whom I have spoken over the years are woefully ignorant of basic Bible facts. For instance, very few Christians realize that there are two conflicting versions of creation, both of which are contained in Genesis. Very few Christians realize that no Christian or secular writings created for 40 years after the purported death of Jesus (including the epistles) speak of the birth or miracles of Jesus of Galilee. If there is a poll out there that addresses Bible knowledge (and ignorance) by practicing American Christians, please advise.
highandmighty, i say you should unleash your rath on anyone who tells you that you are going to hell because you ar cursing or if a person says god bless you (although that may be taking it a bit far as this phrase has utterly no meaning anymore is simply what is said when you sneeze). so to those christians who throw it in your face, have fun, debate, ask questions, and make them look stupid if that is what you so desire. but my point is not directed at you when you are dealing with that kind of individual.
highandmighty- u are very passionate about this and i am sorry that christians have offended you in this way. i do think in some respects you are talking it a bit too far. i suppose under your theory we are almost in the don’t ask don’t tell policy of the military. we should worship in a closet and scatter like cock roaches when the general public presents itself. i think that maybe you are being a little bit too sensitive. For example, if you heard a person saying they are a yankees fan and you were a red sox fan, would you think it was your civic duty to tell anyone who was a yankees fan who let the public simply know he liked the yankees that the yankees stink and that he is completely stupid for having professed his love for the yankees? point being, if someone is not trying to ndoctrinate you into the christian faith, then why do you care what they think or they believe? If this person is not trying to push these beliefs into our governemnt and limit your civil liberties, then why do you give a darn? what purpose can your dialogue with this individual serve? why not have your learning sessions with the true jerk, the evangelical? for the evangelical is the one who really have to worry about, this is the person who is trying to convert others, trying to dictate how people vote, potentially dictate policy in america. to use an example, on the war on drugs, you think it is more effective to single out that guy who smokes dope in his apartment and never leaves his apartment or is it more effective to go after the drug dealer who is selling all the weed in the neighborhood?
deb- liberal, i did not mean being liberal is a bad thing in any respect and i consider myself one, using the non-republican definition of such word. however, you know and i know that the republicans have tried to define that word for a while and put all sort of negative spins on it and any democrat that they fear they label them as a liberal with the understanding that they are using the repulicans light on it. so i did not mean to offend you by using that term as an example. i apologize.
Both Deb & highandmighty touch on a point that I also find especially bothersome about fanatic religious Believers: the utter dishonesty of declaring one’s own religious beliefs to be absolutely true. Far too many Christians (and Muslims and others) declare that they “know” they are going to heaven after they die, but the truth is that these people don’t “know” anything more about death (or about any other metaphysical subject) than anyone else does. They might *believe* they are going to heaven after they die, but they cannot possibly *know*. To “know” something might apply to our beliefs about what city we live in or what we had for breakfast this morning, but it cannot apply to metaphysical phenomena about which we have no direct experience. Furthermore, for fanatics to apply this verb to metaphysical phenomena is to LIE about what they know (indeed, about what anyone can know) and what they don’t. The fanatic’s refusal to acknowledge this difference is, no doubt, a major source of the tension and violence we see among incompatible religious Believers: when two people have conflicting beliefs about something neither of them can possibly know to be true, and each falsely claims to “know” that it is true, they will never resolve their conflict. Unfortunately for the rest of us, fanatics spend so much time surrounded by like-minded people who reinforce their mythical “knowledge” that they become delusional about all sorts of mythical beliefs. They claim to be as certain about their spiritual beliefs as they are about the color of the sky, when any rational person would realize their claims are ludicrous.
“Once more unto the breach dear friends!”
Faith is the belief in something in the absence of proof. I am a Roman Catholic and recognize that the core faith issues of my religion were decided at the Council of Nicea which, in part, resulted in the Nicean Creed which we profess as our faith in the Mass every week. I am instructed that the Pope is infallible when speaking “ex cathedra” on issues of faith and morals, and that the only such pronouncements made to date relate to the facts that Mary, the Mother of Jesus, was conceived without sin and was also assumed into heaven. I believe these matters on faith.
As a practicing Catholic I am charged to live my life personally and in my family as expressions of faith and the Gospel. As a human being I have failings, make mistakes and don’t always do as I say I should or as I wish in my faith expressions.
We all as human beings aspire to things which maybe are unreachable but, make the effort anyway. Why? Perhaps it’s faith of another kind. We are free to choose. Good luck and God Bless you! (The blessing at a sneeze was an effort to keep the soul in the body when it was though it could escape and be caught by the devil-Middle Ages custom, I think).
The Weekly Standard reported on the lack of Bible knowledge by high school students. See the May 23, 2005 article here.