A NEW survey in the US has found that, while  Americans are by all measures a deeply religious people, they are also lamentably ignorant about the faiths they profess.
According to this report, researchers from the independent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life phoned more than 3,400 Americans and asked them 32 questions about the Bible, Christianity and other world religions.
On average, people who took the survey answered half the questions incorrectly, and many flunked questions about their own faith.
Those who scored the highest were atheists and agnostics, but two religious minorities – Jews and Mormons – also did quite well.
That finding might surprise some, but not Dave Silverman, president of American Atheists, an advocacy group for non-believers founded by the late Madalyn Murray O’Hair, who was murdered.
I have heard many times that atheists know more about religion than religious people. Atheism is an effect of that knowledge, not a lack of knowledge. I gave a Bible to my daughter. That’s how you make atheists.
Among the more startling findings were:
â– Fifty-three per cent of Protestants could not identify Martin Luther as the man who started the Protestant Reformation.
â– Forty-five per cent of Catholics did not know that their church teaches that the consecrated bread and wine in holy communion are not merely symbols but actually become the body and blood of Christ.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
September 29th, 2010 at 11:04 am
I’m not at all surprised at the findings of this research. Whenever I discuss religion with a catholic I always make some reference to transubstantiation just to test their knowledge. I’ve yet to meet a single one who knew what it was.
September 29th, 2010 at 11:06 am
This results of this welcome survey do not surprise me. I have often been contracted by christians on no more than the basis of, “You should be ashamed of yourself for saying that.” They have been fed selective and favourite bits of the bible time after time. They are conditioned to ignore contradictions, obscenities, cruelties and farcical statements. A major factor is that many fundamentalist christians are ill educated, unintelligent and recoil from reading a book or article that makes any demand on them.
September 29th, 2010 at 11:06 am
“Atheism is an effect of that knowledge, not a lack of knowledge.”
That’s why my freethinking parents didn’t let me and brother be excused from religious education classes at school!
When religious beliefs are examined, questioned and tested, they are seen for what they really are. And this is why faith must be blind.
September 29th, 2010 at 12:19 pm
To be fair, Atheists know more about religion because we tend to focus on the silly, nonsensical bits. Which tends to be most of it.
September 29th, 2010 at 12:33 pm
There’s an excellent and less than reverent (!) summary of this story by today’s ‘Daily Mash’ at http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/.....009293125/
September 29th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
I suggest we non-theists came out well in this study because we make an effort to know our enemy and we ensure that we have the correct facts at our disposal. It is well documented that the better educated and intelligent a person, the less likely they are to be religious.
September 29th, 2010 at 2:20 pm
Hell this survey is doing big time, just about every site I visit has something to say about it. Are we that good at this religion thing ? Go us.
September 29th, 2010 at 5:45 pm
Stuart H.
I have become a fan of the “Daily Mash”. And this item definitely hit the spot with me.
September 29th, 2010 at 6:00 pm
Following a link to an article about this from RD.net, there is an online quiz that includes fifteen of the questions. Yesterday the quiz website kept crashing, possibly due to the traffic caused by coverage of the story on so many rationalist blogs. I finally got to do the quiz today and scored 100%, this was partly because some of the questions had been discussed on various comment threads but even without that help I would have scored pretty highly.
I also loved the article in the Daily Mash, I was going to post a link but Stuart H has beaten me to it.
September 29th, 2010 at 6:14 pm
Where there is ignorance there is bliss.
September 29th, 2010 at 6:57 pm
“Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”
Isaac Asimov
September 29th, 2010 at 7:17 pm
“Where there is ignorance there is bliss.”
I wouldn’t call it bliss. When I was ignorant, I was tormented by the constant belief that I was going to hell. It wasn’t until I started to gain knowledge of religions, both my own and others, that I began to realise there was no more reason to believe in hell than Nirvana or Valhalla.
September 29th, 2010 at 7:19 pm
I’m not quite sure what to make of these results. Don’t forget that only 46% of adult Americans surveyed knew that George Washington had led their army in the revolutionary war! The vast majority of Americans consider themselves to be “Christian”, as did most Britons in a recent survey, but at least a lot of them attend church every week, as opposed to the Brits, whom we know only attend church three times in their lives! The Christians with whom I associated knew their Bibles back to front – and a lot of background history, geography, etc as well – and I think that most evangelicals would be pretty clued up in this country, as would many members of the stricter denominations in The USA. I don’t think that these results tell us a lot, personally, as we don’t know enough about the people who responded.
September 29th, 2010 at 7:22 pm
I read somewhere that about 20 odd percent of the U.S population don’t know that judaism is an older religion than christianity,i think that just about says it all.
September 29th, 2010 at 7:35 pm
The US christians also get uptight that their religion absorbed, stole, plagiarised from earlier pagan religions. As for the Emperor Constantine opting for christianity as a political decision they won’t have that. One reason being that most of them have never heard of Constantine. The bible, by the way, was written in English and Jesus was white.
September 29th, 2010 at 7:43 pm
Broga, That reminds me of a quote by Ma Ferguson, the first female governor of Texas. When asked if the bible should be taught in Spanish she replied “If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, its good enough for me”
September 29th, 2010 at 7:52 pm
@ JohnMWhite
Yeah, sorry I was being trite. You know though, the sort of people I was alluding to.
September 29th, 2010 at 8:01 pm
@Wurble
Great quote. Loved it. When I read it to my wife she choked on her coffee.
September 29th, 2010 at 8:17 pm
If anyone’s interested in seeing what the survey asked, I’ve uploaded a copy of the questions stripped of all the telephone-related and demographics garbage.
September 29th, 2010 at 8:27 pm
Every time the religious open their mouths it’s evident they have not got a clue about religion!
It’s so much easier to believe the heavily selected bits fed to them via their priests/ministers/imams than actually pick up their bible or koran and read it. Whereas I find that athiests tend to read quite a bit of both.
I’ll honestly admit that I look up a lot of bits online, but that is purely to help shoot down their purile arguments, and give myself a fit of the giggles at the inconsistances.
September 29th, 2010 at 9:16 pm
I posted a comment ages ago saying that I don’t altogether agree with the views being expressed here, and giving my reasons, but it has disappeared again, and I’m not going to try to repeat it all!
September 29th, 2010 at 10:24 pm
My wife’s studying theology at post-grad level, and even she hadn’t heard about my favourite part of the Bible, Elishah and the bears (look it up, folks). I had her in giggles of agreement the other day when I suggested all the grubby bits about Sodom and Lot’s family were some rabbi’s pornographic doodlings which accidentally got sent off to the printers.
September 29th, 2010 at 11:09 pm
@ David Anderson:
Yeah, I definitely see your point. My own mother has told me she wishes she never sent me to university. Ignorance certainly would have made dinners quieter…
@barriejohn:
What in particular do you disagree with? All that is being expressed is that it appears the religious tend not to know as much about religion as the non-religious, which is far from a shock and the article quotes a study supporting it.
September 29th, 2010 at 11:51 pm
Broga,
I’m not sure what you mean by the statement that ‘Constantine opted for Christianity’,the Edict of Milan stopped official persecution of Christians,however it also allowed tolerance for all religions. The emperor who made Christianity the state religion was Theodosius I,so he’s the one to blame for nearly 14 centuries of Church domination of Western civilization.
September 30th, 2010 at 12:09 am
@JohnMWhite: You’re not talking about the genuinely religious – ie those who take their faith seriously!
September 30th, 2010 at 12:17 am
@MrGronk,
Cheers,
Just when I thought the bible could not become any more stupid there is always someone who can point out more. I looked up this story and basically, because some youths laughed at Elisha’s baldness he called upon god who sent two lions to kill them.
I found this out on a site called ‘discovery magazine’ which claims to be ‘scripture and science for kids’ no less.
And the conclusion on this site? The kids deserved it as they did not show enough respect for this prophet.
Only christians could be so forgiving……….
September 30th, 2010 at 12:27 am
Barriejohn: I also posted earlier and had it disappear. I think it may be in moderation limbo due to me having used html to make a link.
The link I tried to post was to the list of questions used in the survey(as reformatted by me, skipping the demographics enquiries and phone-techniques). There’s certainly nothing in the questionnaire that limits it to those who are serious about their religion. It’s very basic stuff.
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/the.....onaire.htm
Tony e: It was two bears, wasn’t it?
September 30th, 2010 at 2:17 am
“@JohnMWhite: You’re not talking about the genuinely religious – ie those who take their faith seriously!”
No, barriejohn, you’re right, we should only talk of True Scotsmen.
September 30th, 2010 at 2:31 am
Yesterday the quiz website kept crashing
I would say this was a huge story in itself. The website was borked for a whole day because of the traffic. This story made it onto all the news sites, including Fox. It was really quite sensational.
September 30th, 2010 at 7:21 am
Perhaps, then, we should encourage the Gideons to continue distributing Bibles to hotels which, by this account, should be factories turning out atheists.
In one hotel where I stayed, there was a flat roof below a floor of bedrooms and when I looked down onto it, I saw several Gideon Bibles lying on it. People had apparently tossed them out of the window…
September 30th, 2010 at 7:24 am
If you take the results of this survey at face value, then you are also going to have to concede that only 1% of Britons are gay, and that over 70% are Christians, as the right wing are now crowing. Afterall, a survey has said so!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....stian.html
September 30th, 2010 at 8:43 am
“I’m not sure what you mean by the statement that ‘Constantine opted for Christianity’,the Edict of Milan stopped official persecution of Christians,however it also allowed tolerance for all religions. The emperor who made Christianity the state religion was Theodosius I,so he’s the one to blame for nearly 14 centuries of Church domination of Western civilization.”
A mere technicality; paganism and Christianity were never equal under Constantine, and the Edict of Milan was effectively a dead letter once Constantine was victorious. Theodosius merely finished the process that Constantine himself had initiated. Christianity was the de facto state religion from Constantine to Theodosius (except for the brief interruption under Julian); Theodosius merely dispensed with the pretense of religious tolerance which Constantine himself had not practiced anyway: Constantine granted special privileges and favors to Christianity not granted to paganism, and Constantine began the official state persecution of Christian heretics in the name of Orthodoxy. This isn’t the action of someone who believes in religious toleration.
September 30th, 2010 at 9:18 am
The gay study sounds as well grounded as the one which that bloke in the vatican cited. Someone you don’t know phones you up and asks if you’re gay. Sure, that’s not suspicious at all. Kinda like all the times I’ve told off my ISP for phoning me and asking for my password. They’re not gonna get it.
September 30th, 2010 at 9:19 am
Daz,
Sorry, it was 2 bears not lions.
September 30th, 2010 at 9:27 am
Russell W
Thanks for the correction. However Theodosius 1 merely adds to the problems of the christians. At least with the name Constantine they might achieve a vague awareness that such a name existed.
September 30th, 2010 at 9:33 am
@dave
I’m going to have to sort myself out on this. My view had been that Constantine found the christians a total pain in the butt and for political reasons decided to go with christianity as this seemed likely to cause him fewer problems.
September 30th, 2010 at 9:48 am
Now we hear that Barack Obama is being “guided by God” in making his decisions! Does it get any more ridiculous than that?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....tions.html
September 30th, 2010 at 10:01 am
barriejohn, at least the new Labour leader chappie shows a bit of sense.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....rried.html
September 30th, 2010 at 10:17 am
Maggie: I notice that he is now in an (un)holy rush to tie the knot! What’s the betting that his child attends a church school, I wonder?
September 30th, 2010 at 10:19 am
@Broga “I’m going to have to sort myself out on this. My view had been that Constantine found the christians a total pain in the butt and for political reasons decided to go with christianity as this seemed likely to cause him fewer problems.”
If so, he miscalculated badly.
IMO Constantine went way beyond merely using Christianity for short term political gains. He actively intervened in Christian theology to work out a unifying Orthodoxy for the entire faith (the Nicene Creed); he actively persecuted Christian heretics (the Donatists); he gave the Christian clergy tax exemptions and built lots of Churches, etc., and he was baptized on his death bed (which was not unusual to wait that long for many believers in that era). IMO these are the actions of a believer and not merely a manipulator of the religion for political purposes. No doubt Constantine could have started out as a manipulator and eventually became a believer; its hard to know something like that for sure, now, with the evidence that we have.
September 30th, 2010 at 10:20 am
I see that my comment of yesterday has eventually appeared (above). Perhaps that will clarify my position somewhat.
September 30th, 2010 at 11:03 am
So now we have all those christians? What isn’t explored or even questioned is the nature of their belief. What do they mean by god? Is it something in their image? That could open up some interesting issues.
Whatever the positive response, as reported in the Bigot’s Bible (Daily Mail to its readers,) the answer is no more than a vague, shallow, ignorant yes. They neither know nor care what they are agreeing to and if questioned, or confronted with much of the cruel, poisonous nonsense in the bible, would back away.
September 30th, 2010 at 11:08 am
They’re cock-a-hoop over those results, Broga, and are going to be stuffing the figures down our throats for evermore!
September 30th, 2010 at 11:20 am
@Wurble: “Broga, That reminds me of a quote by Ma Ferguson, the first female governor of Texas. When asked if the bible should be taught in Spanish she replied “If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, its good enough for me—
To be fair, that kind of ignorance isn’t as widespread as you’d think just from quoting anecdotal evidence like that – there’s far too much of it, but it isn’t universal even amongst fundamentalists. Having been raised in Protestant Churches (not the really narrow minded fundamentalist types, but definitely conservative Churches), I was, from a fairly young age, well aware of the origins of the Bible, the various languages it was written in, and the many and varied translations and some of the textual problems. They really do teach you that sort of thing in most American Protestant Churches (well the mainline conservative ones at least; maybe not in the fundamentalist ones), if you engage in any kind of serious Bible study at all.
Of course, they also carefully make you do selective readings, to avoid those “problematic” verses that are hard to explain away. I remember that lovely verse about the exiles arriving in Babylon “by the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion”. Inspiring and often quoted! But, funny how the verse right next to that, about bashing in the heads of the Babylonian babies against the rocks, is never studied by Bible study classes or quoted in Sunday morning sermons! When I first discovered this Babylonian-baby-brains-bashing-verse, I could not believe that it was actually in the Bible, it seemed so out of place from what I had been taught. This kind of selective reading is universal amongst believers; the verses are seldom read in context but usually read to make a pre-determined point.
They also try to obfuscate or ignore translation problems that expose the origins of the Bible in non-monotheistic religion – ie, translating as “God” or “the Lord” various names for god or gods which aren’t identical: El (and its many variants), Yahweh, Adonai, Elohim (literally plural, “the gods”), etc. Likewise they try to pretend that God drawing “the circle of the Earth” is a reference to the sphere of the Earth, when it is clearly a two dimensional circle drawn on a flat surface with a carpenter’s compass, and translations often try to obfuscate the many flat-earth assumptions that are literally written into the text in plain, non-allegorical language. This is easy for translators to do if they are not honest and have an agenda; but our cultural presumptions about what the Bible is “supposed to be saying” are so deeply ingrained that even honest Biblical translators often can’t help themselves and end up falsifying the translation through inability to see what is actually in the text as opposed to what they expect the text to mean in English. And even the readers can’t seem to see what is obviously there even in English: “thou shalt have no other gods before me” = other gods; God creates the Heavens and the Earth, but not the Deep (ie, the Ocean) which is pre-exists God’s creation, etc.
When pressed those who understand these problems will use the “figurative language, not literal” dodge. But, if you don’t ask, they don’t tell. The Churches prefer to leave most believers in the dark about these kinds of problems, because they know if people ask these kinds of questions, the more they learn the higher the probability is that they will lose their faith. Thus, better to keep the flock ignorant. And sadly most are happy not to ask too many questions. So its not surprising that their religious knowledge is limited.
September 30th, 2010 at 12:09 pm
barriejohn.
I think it was Richard Dawkins’ that suggested when someone says they believe in god the initial response should be “What do you mean by god?” I have tried this a few times myself. They don’t get very far. Some replies I recall:
“I mean the same as everyone else believes.”
“What it says in the bible.”
“The Spirit that created the world.”
On one of these exchanges I asked a fundamentalist USA christian how she knew her god was the right one and not one of the many other gods which were believed in with just as much certainty as herself.
Answer: “Because only Jesus says he is god. And he would never say this unless it was true. The claim is too huge. The others are only prophets.”
September 30th, 2010 at 12:23 pm
Broga: I laughed out loud at that! I heard this constantly from evangelicals: “Jesus claimed to be The Son of God.” (Not true, of course). “Either this was true or he was the greatest fraud and liar who ever lived. Therefore he must have been The Son of God.” Simples!!
September 30th, 2010 at 1:37 pm
Liar or Lord… what, no room for the Lunatic?
September 30th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
The fundies have gone to great lengths to justify the actions of Elishah and doG @ 2 Kings 2:23-25. I particularly like reason 6: “There may have been elements of public safety involved”. Classic.
http://www.christian-thinktank.....lisha.html
September 30th, 2010 at 2:53 pm
It’s all right, folks, it wasn’t an atrocity because these young men were between the ages of 12 and 30 (The term for ‘young man’ can be stretched to 30 in the biblical era? Really?) and as everybody knows, only people under the age of zero are not allowed to be killed.
September 30th, 2010 at 2:57 pm
All begging the question as to why G-o-o-o-d didn’t just strike them dead. Why bring bears into it?
September 30th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
I did the shorter test they’ve put on their website, got 93% (i.e. 14 out of 15 right), and two of the questions (which I got right) were US-specific and I’m a Brit. So probably not bad for a heathen savage. It’s good, then, to compare your score with those of the various cohorts – e.g. Catholics, Protestants, all the rest – and you’re bound to see just how pig-ignorant many of them are about their own religion, let alone the others!
September 30th, 2010 at 3:23 pm
JMW: If Jesus was a liar or a lunatic, as you suggest, how do you explain the miracles, which we know he performed from the gospel records? This might help you:
http://www.informedfaith.com/r.....son-of-god
No room for doubt there!
September 30th, 2010 at 7:14 pm
@barriejohn
Absolutely. No room for doubt. I liked the bit about the 500 witnesses all being intelligent well educated people. Wishful thinking doesn’t get close to explaining this nonsense.
In 2000 years, leaving aside the previous aeons, there has never, not once, been an obvious piece of evidence for god. Why is belief made so difficult, so obscure, communication with god dependent on demented priests and a nonsensical bible, that only the least intelligent and pathetically ignorant fall for this scam?
Another “explanation” I got from a fundie was, “Well, there has to be something there.” From that she jumps to her detailed description of her god.
September 30th, 2010 at 7:16 pm
I knew you’d like that, Broga. The bit you mention was my favourite part too!
September 30th, 2010 at 8:03 pm
The tomb was empty? Well that PROVES Jesus was in it once.
September 30th, 2010 at 8:27 pm
It has occurred to me that the Pew Forum deserve a bit of praise.
I have read some of their reports and surveys before. They do not seem to have any kind of axe to grind or any kind of agenda, they simply do their surveys in what appears to be a very scientific way and then report the results. On following various links, I was impressed by the way the data was presented in various different ways so that anyone could study it and draw their own conclusions.
September 30th, 2010 at 10:09 pm
Pew Forum was one of the sources Ronald Aronson used when he showed that, properly interpreted, polls show that 36 percent of Americans are nontheists. A further 32 percent, while claiming to be believers, basically don’t give a shit.
September 30th, 2010 at 10:37 pm
Re Barriejohn’s link: ( http://www.informedfaith.com/r.....son-of-god )
Yep, urban myth. By the reasoning shown on that web-page, we should also believe in; vicious roaming gangs of kidney-thieves, alligators in the sewers, alien-made crop-circles, and little old ladies microwaving their dogs.
Oh but wait, 2,000 years old = ancient = mystical = somehow truer than evidence based enquiry.
September 30th, 2010 at 11:09 pm
So true, Daz.
We know Jesus existed, and was crucified at the hands of Pontius Pilate. How? Because The Bible says so?
We know that the first Christians believed him to be raised from the dead (cf. the letter of Pliny the Younger, the descriptions of Josephus). Oh, no! Not THOSE two “pieces of external, corroborative evidence” again! Nothing else then?
This is the sort of thing that might convince a gullible thirteen-year-old that these myths are historically accurate, but in reality none of his arguments have any validity whatsoever, as he’s just using The Bible to verify The Bible again. Millions of Christians think that this is all good stuff, however!
September 30th, 2010 at 11:34 pm
Indeed Barriejohn. Their reasoning is so circular, one can’t but help wonder why they don’t disappear up their own arses.
On a lighter note, thoughts of the opening of the tomb made a mental association with …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Sih9OVokuQ
Which was much more fun.
October 1st, 2010 at 12:18 am
@dave,
You’ve made a good case for Constantine as a genuine Christian,however I also suspect that he favored the ‘better inside the tent pissing out’ technique in regard to Christians,he was a politician after all trying to save a faltering empire.
October 1st, 2010 at 8:41 am
@Broga “Another “explanation†I got from a fundie was, “Well, there has to be something there.†From that she jumps to her detailed description of her god”.
Another good one is “but there has to be something, millions of people believe in [insert irrational belief system], they can’t all be wrong” Oh yes they can!
October 1st, 2010 at 10:32 am
I did the test and only gave the wrong answers at the questions pertaining very American stuff; I’m proud of myself. As for discussions with believers: they paint themselves in a corner in no time, just proving it’s all bollocks.
October 1st, 2010 at 12:01 pm
Angela K
I’ve had that one too and they sometimes add “So you know better than all these millions of people.”
Numbers don’t mean something is true. Most people used to be convinced that they earth is flat. Some still do.
October 1st, 2010 at 3:21 pm
There’s millions of Christians, millions of Jews, millions of Hindus, and millions of Muslims, and that’s before we start breaking it down into sects. Clearly at least some of them are wrong…
October 1st, 2010 at 6:39 pm
Daz
Not the way they see it. I got the impression that they believed the entire population of the planet believed in god with one, single, aberrant exception: me.
October 1st, 2010 at 8:49 pm
Broga:
Ah well, you’re an evil satanic child-eating* godless atheist. What did you expect?
*I recommend Tesco’s Value BBQ Sauce.
October 1st, 2010 at 9:56 pm
memo dave: The Protestant Bible Correctly Translated renders Exodus 20:3 as, “You’re to admit no foreign gods into where I gaze.”
As explained in God, Jesus and the Bible (page 120), what that meant was that, while a Jew was not expected to antagonize the Babylonian gods by refusing them due honor when his business took him to Babylon, he was not to tolerate the worship of any god but Yahweh in Judah, where Yahweh would be subjected to the indignity of having to watch. Passages that unambiguously affirm the existence of other gods include Exodus 9:14; 12:12; 18:11; Numbers 33:4; and Deuteronomy 3:24.
October 2nd, 2010 at 11:15 am
@John M White: Liar, Lord, Lunatic…. or Legend?
(I pinched that one off Steven Novella).
October 2nd, 2010 at 12:47 pm
Daz.
Indeed. I’ll give the sauce a try.
October 2nd, 2010 at 9:13 pm
“You’re to admit no foreign gods into where I gaze”
Totally unrelated but set my thought processes running. I live in an Asian area and virtually all of my neighbours are Hindu. One chap has an absolutely enormous Hanuman sticker in his car’s rear window. I don’t think he can actually see a thing out of the back window, it’s really massive. I regularly look down into the street before going to sleep and see a giant monkey with a splendid crown looking up at me. It’s rather surreal and rather fun and rather interesting. What’s weird is that I’m about the only person to think this is somehow out of place or incongruous.
We don’t get many monkeys round these parts, nor elephants – although I can see plenty of Ganesh’s (Ganesha?) on window sills when I walk along the street.
What stops people from realising that their faith is just animism? Their ancestors have looked at this big, scary and confusing world and then conjured up explanations using things they encounter in their lives – especially those things that are alive, striking in appearance and portray certain behaviours.
Why don’t Hindus have Penguin gods or Koala gods? Or a god with a microbe for a head?
Hasn’t this occured to them – all of their Gods who are either animals/part-animal themselves or associate with animals are involved with animals found in the geographic region where the relgion sprung up?
I know a lady with two post-graduate degrees who feeds a Ganesh statue milk. I mean she literally gives it fresh milk every day. She’ll tell you he drinks it. When our backs are turned, of course. I’ve watched and nothing happens, perhaps some evaporation over 24 hours but no – it’s not drinking the milk. Catholics aren’t so different with their transubstantiation but come on – it’s a fucking china ornament.
To her it’s actually a living God. If an atheist did this they’d be sectioned.
she also has pictures of Jesus and doesnt find this incompatible
*Apologies for thread hijack*
October 12th, 2010 at 10:01 pm
“You’ve made a good case for Constantine as a genuine Christian,however I also suspect that he favored the ‘better inside the tent pissing out’ technique in regard to Christians,he was a politician after all trying to save a faltering empire.”
I agree, but looked at objectively, his strategy was a miserable failure that did more damage than could be justified in terms of political expediency.
Firstly, it necessitated a historical lie that put Christianity at odds with the entire historical legacy of the Roman/Hellenistic world. This resulted in vast destruction of ancient literature, art, science, learning, architecture, etc., as Gibbon and others have pointed out. This undermines the claims of Christianity as being necessary to “save” the Empire; apart from the power of the Emperors and the Bishops, what exactly was being “saved”?
Secondly, the attempt to achieve political stability by creating a unified religion failed, because the religion immediately split up along theological fault-lines (Gnostics, Donatists, Marcionites, Arians, Nestorians, Monophysites, etc., etc.). The resulting centuries of warfare and persecutions and unrest made the Empire less stable, and in the end made it vulnerable in wars against Persia, and finally, made it easy prey to the Islamic conquests. A Christian Empire by definition was unstable. We confuse the solidity of the later Byzantine rump-state with the vast chaos of religious sectarian divisions and hostilities that Constantine’s successors were forced to rule over thanks to the decision to impose a uniform religious orthodoxy on everyone.
Compared to the burdens of official Christianity that was imposed by the Empire, a pinch of incense offered to the image of the Emperor doesn’t seem like a very onerous “loyalty oath”. Without Christianity paganism might have evolved into a kind of Western Hinduism: a single religious tradition with no single authority but a vast array of different “schools” and traditions.
Constantine’s mistake, IMO, was to assume that imposed religious uniformity would bring political stability. It did no such thing.
October 12th, 2010 at 10:16 pm
“memo dave: The Protestant Bible Correctly Translated renders Exodus 20:3 as, “You’re to admit no foreign gods into where I gaze.â€
As explained in God, Jesus and the Bible (page 120), what that meant was that, while a Jew was not expected to antagonize the Babylonian gods by refusing them due honor when his business took him to Babylon, he was not to tolerate the worship of any god but Yahweh in Judah, where Yahweh would be subjected to the indignity of having to watch. Passages that unambiguously affirm the existence of other gods include Exodus 9:14; 12:12; 18:11; Numbers 33:4; and Deuteronomy 3:24.”
Yes that was my point.
We’ve also got archeology: many unambiguous offerings to “Yahweh and his Asherah” (Yahweh’s wife: Asherah, Astarte, Ishtar, etc) and polytheistic idols in the pre-2nd temple period in the supposedly monotheistic Israel and Judah, and the Elephantine papyri from upper Egypt showing that Jews were still worshiping at least 5 gods in the 2nd temple period under Persian rule.
Actual monotheism in Judaism didn’t start to come into vogue until the Hellenistic period, no doubt as a Jewish response to Greek philosophy which was becoming implicitly monotheist.
October 20th, 2010 at 11:50 pm
Your all going to hell for your absence of faith.