Pew Study on Religion.

Take the quiz before you read the thread(asks 15 out of the 32 asked):

http://features.pewforum.org/quiz/us-religious-knowledge/index.php

One thing I noticed was how knowledgeable Atheists and Agnostics were.

However, they do mention that the Atheists and Agnostics were an under-represented group.

Jews are smart. 🙂

Good stuff. I like these kinds of studies.

http://pewforum.org/Other-Beliefs-and-Practices/U-S-Religious-Knowledge-Survey.aspx

Any comments are welcome about this study.

I got 13 right, not sure how good that is. Though it is somewhat US centric with Supreme Court rulings and stuff.

I got 14/15, which is better than 97% of the public. The question about teachers leading classes in prayer got me. Course I only got that one wrong because that's what Jesus wanted.

93rd percentile /shrug, 13/15

it was the stuff on the intricacies of certain christian doctrine or historical figures that got me

the stuff on non-christian religions was really easy

From the atheist thread:

Originally posted by Digi
http://pewforum.org/other-beliefs-and-practices/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey.aspx

Some evidence that atheists/agnostics (and Jews) are more versed in religion as a whole than other religious demographics.

There's lots of other findings in the survey from the link, but that's the one most relevant to this thread.

...

Also of note for stat junkies, and less controversial in topic, is this link:
http://religions.pewforum.org/

It's specifically for the U.S. but is a nice way to break down adherents by religion, region, as well as other interesting factors. We talk a lot about world adherents on this forum, but I don't see much on specific countries (U.S. being most heavily represented by a lot here on KMC). The methodology and total numbers make it rather thorough, so the totals seem fairly reliable.

Of note for this thread: 16.1% "Unaffiliated" but of those, only 1.6% of the country is atheist, which is significantly below the world average (though the "unaffiliated" totals are similar to world norms). Men are also significantly more likely to be unaffiliated. It think it was something like 20% compared to 13% for women.

...

Though this isn't a dig to say "already posted it!" because this deserves its own thread. Just copy/pasting my comments so I save time.

The quiz itself is probably too short and culturally specific to be terribly informative, but it matches what we know from past studies as well.

13/15, missed "what day does the sabbath begin" (I actually knew the answer, but I misunderstood the question), and the first great awakening question (don't know a thing about it).

I'm surprised evangelicals scored as high as the did. The second highest christian denomination after mormons. Jews and atheists winning does not surprise me in the slightest.

I got 12/15

I guess I should have answered the Sabbath question with the popular view and not the actual day that it was meant to be.

I also didnt know who the great awakening person was.

aside from that I dont think i was wrong with the bible taught as literature in school. I know we are now teaching bible studies in certain schools across the state.

oh, well...

I did not miss any. I want to see all 32 questions because I think the quiz put in most of the easy questions and saved the harder ones for the "real deal". (I say that because they didn't want to make it too hard to get people interested).

Does anyone know where the real quiz is?

Originally posted by Digi
From the atheist thread:

...

Though this isn't a dig to say "already posted it!" because this deserves its own thread. Just copy/pasting my comments so I save time.

The quiz itself is probably too short and culturally specific to be terribly informative, but it matches what we know from past studies as well.

Ahhhhh crap.

I believe the Pew study was US Centric.

Also, it was a phone survey. So it would capture too many old people (from what one person said about the weaknesses in the study).

One thing that I noticed, and this is just my own opinion:

The reason Agnostics Atheists know so much about religion, in general, is due to how offensive and defenseive they have to be about their particular position.

That matches closely with why Mormons scored the highest on the Christian related stuff: they have to be fairly offensive/defensive about their positions, as well.

Jews doing well, overall, is not suprirsing because they are the smartest "religion" demographic from what I read.

For most studies of this nature, they weight the results to account for known bias in the sample data. They're able to narrow it down to an acceptable margin of error, especially for internet-discussion purposes. I don't think we need to fear much out of the methodology.

Originally posted by Digi
For most studies of this nature, they weight the results to account for known bias in the sample data. They're able to narrow it down to an acceptable margin of error, especially for internet-discussion purposes. I don't think we need to fear much out of the methodology.

It is difficult for me to still accept it as representative because of many other factors.

Finding a person, to answer, during business hours, on a home phone, has a plethora of polling issues.

For instance, based on the stats, only 20-35 mormons would have been used in the study. They even admitted that they did not get a good sample of atheists and agnostics (the lumped them in the same group).

But, are you saying that they actually collected thousands of more samples but threw out thousands of them to make it more representative? That's not what I read about their methodology. Scientific polling does not require that.

http://pewforum.org/U-S-Religious-Knowledge-Survey-Appendix-A-Survey-Methodology.aspx

There's the methodology for the data. There's an extensive section on weighting.

No one would say this is definitive, not me, not Pew. It's a valid data point though, and one that can be trusted in and of itself, but can't form definitive conclusions unless corroborated with numerous other data points and studies. As it happens, this poll isn't alone in finding such results. Atheists and Jews do fairly well from a cultural perspective in a lot of intelligence tests. I dislike those who then try to correlate intelligence with non-religiosity (there's too many other factors not accounted for in such a comparison) but the fact they perform better is corroborated.

I got 11/15, so, the worst in this thread. Still better than 80% of the pop though... funny.

I got 14, 11, 6 and 4 wrong. That's alright though, as most of my answers were based off of my Jehovah's Witness upbringing (sabbath is on Sunday, bread and wine are symbols). Teachers being able to lead prayers is retarded beyond all reasoning, hence why I got it wrong, and "Nirvana" just sounded more... Indian'ish than Buddhist.

I guessed on 15, so while I got it right, that shouldn't count.

I forget what my score was. I think I was 13/15. A thorough Catholic upbringing and a fact-finding world tour through religions once I left helped. But yeah, a couple random tough ones. I think I missed the Sabbath question.

If I was still Catholic, it probably would've been single digits. Didn't really get a worldly religious education.

Originally posted by RE: Blaxican
"Nirvana" just sounded more... Indian'ish than Buddhist.

afaik, Nirvana is also a concept in Hinduism

that one was tricky

Originally posted by Digi
http://pewforum.org/U-S-Religious-Knowledge-Survey-Appendix-A-Survey-Methodology.aspx

There's the methodology for the data. There's an extensive section on weighting.

No one would say this is definitive, not me, not Pew. It's a valid data point though, and one that can be trusted in and of itself, but can't form definitive conclusions unless corroborated with numerous other data points and studies. As it happens, this poll isn't alone in finding such results. Atheists and Jews do fairly well from a cultural perspective in a lot of intelligence tests. I dislike those who then try to correlate intelligence with non-religiosity (there's too many other factors not accounted for in such a comparison) but the fact they perform better is corroborated.

Representative is the goal.

But, yes, their methodology was much better than I thought. I like to point out that questions need to be randomized. They did that. They get a thumbs up from me.

And, that's awesome that you found the methodoloy. I was only able to go off of the comments of the polling and not their actual methodology.

I would like to see political polls this well done...

Originally posted by inimalist
afaik, Nirvana is also a concept in Hinduism

that one was tricky

Originally posted by RE: Blaxican
I got 11/15, so, the worst in this thread. Still better than 80% of the pop though... funny.

I got 14, 11, 6 and 4 wrong. That's alright though, as most of my answers were based off of my Jehovah's Witness upbringing (sabbath is on Sunday, bread and wine are symbols). Teachers being able to lead prayers is retarded beyond all reasoning, hence why I got it wrong, and "Nirvana" just sounded more... Indian'ish than Buddhist.

I guessed on 15, so while I got it right, that shouldn't count.

They had some tricky questions, some a bit random, like i did not think the u.s supreme court would be brought up.

I also got 11/15, but I did accidentally skip one question. The protestant reform question stumped me as well as the supreme court question.

I got 100% correct.

Originally posted by inimalist
93rd percentile /shrug, 13/15

it was the stuff on the intricacies of certain christian doctrine or historical figures that got me

the stuff on non-christian religions was really easy

I got Nirvanan wrong. Damn Buddhists. lol