A comment made at the LDS conference today

[Nickman]

One of the leaders of the LDS church made a comment without any supporting evidence today at theSemiannual Conference.

An Apostle of the church said that the LDS members, and mainly the missionaries, are the most knowledgeable when it comes to the bible. This made me ask the question,are they? When is was member I found the knowledge of the bible lacking considerably amongst the members and the missionaries. Here were talking about 19-21 year old males and 21-23 year old females.

I think that atheists that used to be christian know the bible better than most christians. On this debate site I have found atheists to usually be more knowledgable. Christians on here are highly knowledgeable as well, and the LDS I have debated are lacking that knowledge.

What do you say? Are the LDS more knowledgeable?

Who seems to have the most bible knowledge?

Do atheists have a leg in this argument?

[Ooberman]

http://www.pewforum.org/U-S-Religious-K ... igion.aspx

Sorry, I thought I already did. Must have slipped my mind.

Just from looking that the poll results it seems obvious that the groups that have more wealthy and educated members have higher scores, while those with less wealthy and and less educated members have lower scores. Thus the low scores from black Protestant and Hispanic Catholics.

Wow, it's hard not to feel a little smug being an atheist... We are consistently at the top, only trading a few points with the Jews.

Perhaps it's because we care about learning that makes us knowledgeable AND not believe?


The next time I debate a Christian, I'm just going to tell him to trust me that I know what I'm talking about! The Poll proves I have a good chance of being right!

[HiddenHand]

Great, case closed then. No need for this site any more then, right?

Cheers

[Danmark]

One of the leaders of the LDS church made a comment without any supporting evidence today at theSemiannual Conference.

An Apostle of the church said that the LDS members, and mainly the missionaries, are the most knowledgeable when it comes to the bible. This made me ask the question,are they? When is was member I found the knowledge of the bible lacking considerably amongst the members and the missionaries. Here were talking about 19-21 year old males and 21-23 year old females.

I think that atheists that used to be christian know the bible better than most christians. On this debate site I have found atheists to usually be more knowledgable. Christians on here are highly knowledgeable as well, and the LDS I have debated are lacking that knowledge.

What do you say? Are the LDS more knowledgeable?

Who seems to have the most bible knowledge?

Do atheists have a leg in this argument?

Intuitively, I think former Christians are probably most knowledgeable about the Bible. They are probably the ones who after a long, painful struggle of losing their faith, tried to look for any glimmer that the Bible might be true, but in the end couldn't.

I certainly know the vast majority of Christians know the Bible very little.

The more extreme or 'cultish' and 'Bible based' the more likely they are to take it seriously enough to actually study it. This is why ex christian non theists are well versed [including for the reasons you've mentioned] as well as Mormons.

I grew up in a small offshoot of the Methodist church, the Free Methodists [abolitionists]. They were very big on Bible study, Bible verse memorization, contests and the like. I've rarely met anyone who knows the Bible like the members of my childhood church.

But I think another factor is important as well as the ones mentioned so far in determining Bible knowledge; the size of the church is important. The smaller the church and the more insular they are, the more they are likely to have prepared to defend their faith against the onslaught of general secular society as well as the mainline churches with their watered down theology and importance of tradition [RC] as opposed to scripture itself.

[help3434]

But I think another factor is important as well as the ones mentioned so far in determining Bible knowledge; the size of the church is important. The smaller the church and the more insular they are, the more they are likely to have prepared to defend their faith against the onslaught of general secular society as well as the mainline churches with their watered down theology and importance of tradition [RC] as opposed to scripture itself.

Maybe, but that doesn't having anything to do with the poll since the poll doesn't show small chruches. What it does show is rather larger groups, and the groups that are all round more educated have higher scores.

[Danmark]

But I think another factor is important as well as the ones mentioned so far in determining Bible knowledge; the size of the church is important. The smaller the church and the more insular they are, the more they are likely to have prepared to defend their faith against the onslaught of general secular society as well as the mainline churches with their watered down theology and importance of tradition [RC] as opposed to scripture itself.

Maybe, but that doesn't having anything to do with the poll since the poll doesn't show small chruches. What it does show is rather larger groups, and the groups that are all round more educated have higher scores.

That is precisely the defect in the poll I chose to address, and why.

[Ooberman]

http://www.pewforum.org/U-S-Religious-K ... igion.aspx

Sorry, I thought I already did. Must have slipped my mind.

It's remarkable how low Christians score. It really exposes how religious belief has very little to do with knowing the religion, and just relying on Faith.

[Tex]

It's very interesting how high atheist score.
It's seems they really want to see if God exist. Not happy with just living life till death.

[Nickman]

It's very interesting how high atheist score.
It's seems they really want to see if God exist. Not happy with just living life till death.

I think this stems from the idea that we want to be sure of the claim we are dismissing instead of blindly dismissing it. This should show the Christians who claim that atheists just want to sin or hate god are wrong. We have studied the same book that you guys profess and to greater degree according to statistics, and yet we are not convinced. It also shows a trend that more knowledge and education leads to dismissal of myths.

[Ooberman]

It's very interesting how high atheist score.
It's seems they really want to see if God exist. Not happy with just living life till death.

I think this stems from the idea that we want to be sure of the claim we are dismissing instead of blindly dismissing it. This should show the Christians who claim that atheists just want to sin or hate god are wrong. We have studied the same book that you guys profess and to greater degree according to statistics, and yet we are not convinced. It also shows a trend that more knowledge and education leads to dismissal of myths.

Yep, and it shows that all the study and knowledge of Craig or Plantinga means nothing since an ignoramus with no knowledge of the Bible can claim to be a Christian with as much or MORE justification than they have!

Imagine someone claiming to know more about Quantum Theory than Quantum Theorists just because he heard his science teacher talk about it. This is the average Christian: they hear the story from their pastor and then declare they know enough to be Christian.

Since it's clear Plantinga, Craig, et al, rely on apologetics (and not unbiased scholarship), it's obvious that religion has nothing to do with logic, only emotion.

After all, why don't all these people who claim to have had revelations from God know more about God than the average Christian?

There are so many questions, that are all easily answered: Christianity is a myth, believed by emotional people prone to worship the God they grew up with. Any other explanation makes the findings of this study impossible to navigate.

[help3434]

It's remarkable how low Christians score. It really exposes how religious belief has very little to do with knowing the religion, and just relying on Faith.

But the survey was on world religions, not just Christianity. White Evangelicals got more questions about the Bible correct than did atheists/agnostics. Mormons did the best on Bible questions.