Rational Religious Ignorance?

“Now consider: If people sincerely believed that their eternal fates hinged on their knowledge of religion, their ignorance wouldn’t be rational.”

Most religions demand belief and obedience, not understanding. That means there is another rational ignorance explanation. They do not care why their religion does what it does because it has no effect on their salvation.

I would be interested in the response rates for though who attend church regularly. Add into it how much money on average the knowledgeable verse unknowable people give to their confessed religions institutions. I think though who give and attend regally will have a much higher rate. Many people call themselves a specific religion but very few of them are persuaded in that religion that is they try to live and understand the religion they profuse to follow. So the response does not surprise me at all. Unless one gives their time and money to the religion, I would say they are religious in name only. Time and money show you actually value something.

There’s a third option, that most believers don’t truly believe that their eternal salvation depends on specific doctrinal knowledge. I think this is consistent with the fact that most religious people recoil instinctively from the thought that all 6 billion people who aren’t members of Sect X are doomed to damnation, even if that’s formally part of their church’s doctrine. Also consistent with the popularity of evangelical religions that claim that simply accepting Jesus is enough to save you, even if you don’t know anything about doctrine.

I can’t speak for other religions, but I don’t think most Christians think their eternal fate hinges on their knowledge of religion, but on their acceptance of faith.

I read the entire poll (link via MR commenter). There was exactly 1 question that had to do with Christian faith (two, if you lump in biblical a question about literalism). Most questions were about religious trivia (what denomination was Sister Teresa?).

Questions that have to do with faith, at least for Christians, produce different correct answers based on sect. Grace or works? Purgatory? Original Sin? Born again…ism? They don’t make for good, objective sounding poll results about understanding in a population.

I’m wondering what the commenters say Christians think their eternal fate hinges on. OK, so it’s not knowledge of religion.

Is it adherence to the lifestyle Jesus insisted they adhere to?

Or adherence to commands of the Bible?

Because 99.9% of American Christians don’t do these things either.

Hmmm…

Religion makes me laugh. Think about a poor peasant from 2000 years ago and what he knew about the world. Assume that he is a Christian. Today, virtually everything he “knew” we know to be wrong. The only beliefs that any person today shares with that peasant are absurd and counter to everything we have ever observed about the universe, yet by calling those beliefs “religion,” we give them some kind of exalted status, as though they did not reflect horrible ignorance.

It seems to me that the reason that agnostics and atheists know more about religion than believers is that knowledge of religion is a precondition to rejecting it. The more you know about religion and its absurd claims, the harder it is to reconcile those claims with reality. To be more than a child and maintain any kind of faith, you simply cannot inquire deeply into theology. You just have to ignore it and take the C.S. Lewis route (“Mere Christianity”) to which RobertB alludes.

You’re really reaching here. RobertB is right

“If people sincerely believed that their eternal fates hinged on their knowledge of religion..”

Strawman!

Some religions teach that eternal fate hinges on their belief in that religion. As long as you believe it, why do you need to learn about other religions?

Other religions teach that eternal fate hinges on living a good life and not turning away from God (knowing the truth of God but then rejecting it.) This leaves room for the ignorant.

You’re better than this. Rational ignorance is your hammer, everything in this world and beyond looks like a nail

Brian Clendinen has it right I think. The results from the quiz note that individuals who attend service at least weekly outperformed those who seldomly or never attend service (52% to 49%). Presumably never attends captures atheists and agnostics, and not just lapsed religious.

I agree with the other comments that your choices are way off base. Either they are utter morons or “most religious believers believe that death is the end.”

Really? Only an adamant atheist would choose that as the only alternative explanation. How about, “most religious believers believe that their fate won’t hinge on knowledge but faith” or “most religious believers believe that there is little they can do to change their fate” – or some combination, or something else similar.

As an “agnostic” or non-atheist with no formal religion, I would not say that I think that “death is the end” so I doubt many more religious people believe that either. Yet, with so much uncertainty and so little assurance that any number of hours will really help, it isn’t surprising that people choose to focus on the things they think are most likely to help, if anything might help, such as being a decent person, perhaps going to church sometimes, trying to have some faith perhaps, etc.

Controlling for education isn’t sufficient. You need to control for IQ. If you do that most of the differences disappear, except for Mormons, who end up looking even more impressive.

Incidentally, nonbelievers are actually broken up into two categories in the survey: “Atheist/Agnostic” and “Nothing in particular.” People in the “Atheist/Agnostic” category know a lot. “Nothing in particular” not so much. If you look at data on IQ you find the same thing. People who describe themselves as atheists or agnostics tend to be fairly smart; people who give some other description of themselves that amounts to agnosticism are much less so. I suspect that the survey data makes atheists and agnostics look smarter as a group than they actually are, because stupid agnostics don’t know what the word agnostic means.

“Not surprisingly, those who said they attended worship at least once a week and considered religion important in their lives often performed better on the overall survey. However, level of education was the best predictor of religious knowledge.”

that sounds about right to me. people who just nominally “believe in god” but don’t make it a big deal in their lives (probably a large minority, if not an outright majority of americans would fall into this category) tend not to dig very deep, and therefore don’t attain much knowledge. people who make it a commitment in their lives did well in the survey. people in the atheist/agnostic camp often feel as if they’re taking sort of a renegade position compared with most of society, so they often try and arm themselves with some “debunking” knowledge — they’re certainly more concerned/interested with the information than the great mass of merely nominal “yeah sure, I believe in God, but whatever” believers. that’s what this poll seems to reflect.

I agree that in many ways most religious people don’t really “believe” what they profess, but I don’t like the argument of point 1.

I don’t think it’s fair to accuse religious people of hypocrisy because they are sad around funerals. Sadness in the face of death is an instinctive, arational reaction that all people have and for which religious doctrines serve as palliatives. Indeed, consoling the bereaved is one of the primary functions of religion. Most religious believers acknowledge that logically they ought to be happy—so their state of mind can’t be fairly labeled as hypocritical. Also, one could just as well argue that atheists ought to be happy at funerals if the death eased pain.

Exceedingly few Catholics or Protestants believe that knowing when Mormonism was founded will allow them to get into heaven. Nor whether or not teachers can read the Bible in school as literature, according to the Supreme Court.

These questions and more like them are on the actual survey. You are wrong about the survey’s implications.

Another interesting (but less dramatic) corollary of “Belief saves” is “Satanism saves.” Kid Satanist who insult Jesus and performs blasphemous rituals in his garage with (boring) sounds of Gorgoroth in the background is on the safe ground. Only at the moment he says “oh, those things do not exist, and Lady Gaga is way sexier than this freaky singer“, he is doomed to eternal death (or kinda.)

Hi Kurbla,

In my opinion, Protestant Christian cannot defend his lack of knowledge with simple idea “Oh, I know that belief saves, not knowledge, so I’m over with this.” Why not? Because that simple idea hides horrific truth: the best thing he can do in his life is – to kill his children while they still believe in Jesus. If they grow up they might become atheists.

It is not clear what happens when children die.

1. All children go to heaven. But God wants everyone to be saved. Would killing children lead to effective evangelism over the long haul? The answer is almost certainly no. It would repulse non-believers (it is worth noting that pagan religions in Canaan routinely practiced child sacrifice, something that Jews and Christians rejected).

2. God judges children based on counterfactuals. If they lived until adulthood would they believe in Jesus?

3. The Catholic doctrine of limbo is actually pretty compelling, and I say that as a Protestant. God punishes sinners based on their deeds but also based on their knowledge of the law, including what is written on the heart. Small children have original sin and cannot have faith in Christ, but they are essentially innocent in terms of intentionally sinning. They have done nothing to merit punishment. Limbo is a term that conceptualizes the “outer reaches” of hell. It is a separation from God, but without any punishment. Instead it is a perfectly pleasant place, but without oneness with God.

Any of these positions answers your challenge. In my experience, the vast majority of atheists live in an echo chamber and have not seriously engaged Christian thought. They may read Matthew Yglesias when they want to understand progressive, but when it comes to Christianity, they seek out the most ignorant believers they can find.

Wouldn’t the survey have been a better jumping off point for your notion if it, say, asked Catholics whether they believed in the affirmations in the Nicean Creed, instead of Historical Trivia questions?

As an agnostic and former Christian, let me pile on Brian with most of the rest of you: knowing who Martin Luther was has NOTHING to do with getting to Heaven according to ANY version of Christianity.

It really was a silly thesis, and Brian desires the piling on. You remember Devon’s old joke about how economists would “study” a horse? They wouldn’t observe them. They’d go into their offices and ponder the question, “What would I do, if I were a horse?”

This is just Brian’s “What would I do, if I were a believer in Religion X?”.

That said, even as a Christian, I wondered why Christians, good and mature Christians, feared death. Sure, no one wants to leave your wife and kids behind, but the fear of death seemed to go way beyond that.

And to take a leaf from Kurbla’s book, I still wonder how they don’t see what a good deal, worldwide, abortion is. The aborted die in innocence and go straight to Heaven. In fact, the number of people who are going to Heaven because they were aborted must rival or exceed the number going because they accepted Jesus!

All this is a subset of one basic fact: very few evangelical Christians live like you think that they would if they really believed their religion (and had a planning horizon commensurate to it).

It’s like someone once said: there’s really only one good arguement against Christianity: Christians.

Bryan, are you sure the test doesn’t control for education?

The Pew site’s server is too busy now so I can’t check the original study, but the NY Times quotes someone from Pew as saying, ““Even after all these other factors, including education, are taken into account, atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons still outperform all the other religious groups in our survey”.

Add Obama to the list of the rationally ignorant.

According to what Obama tells people, the President believes that the core doctrines of Christianity are based on a phrase in William Tyndale’s translation of the Old Testament story of Cain and Abel story, and a 1950’s version of the Golden Rule.

I have to pile on here too, Bryan. Like Steve Landsburg, you don’t seem to be thinking very hard about this. The only two hypotheses you can think of, are that religious people are liars or stupid?

As others have said above, evangelical Christians don’t believe you need to know who Martin Luther is, in order to get into heaven. I admit I was surprised by your statistic; I would like to know exactly what the population was. I would be stunned if fewer than 75% of the people who attend my church at least once a month, don’t know who Martin Luther is.

(For example, would you be willing to test the validity of free-market economics by polling the knowledge of everyone who identifies him or herself as “a believer in the free market”?)

In any event, why such hostility? Look at how you worded Door #2:

“Most religious believers are so stupid and/or impulsive that they’ll knowingly give up eternal bliss for trivial mortal pleasures.”

Was it really necessary to use such strong wording? Is that the way a disinterested Bayesian goes through the set of possible beliefs?

If you were really being careful and neutral, we readers wouldn’t be sure which side you were on, right? And yet I would be willing to bet the farm you aren’t a believer.

“Secondly, your assertions are empirically wrong. I know of the Barna studies and whatnot, but they are flawed. If you look at better studies like the General Social Survey and the Pew Religious Landscape survey you find that Christians do indeed have lower rates of things like divorce. See Christians are Hate-Filled Hypocrites for an accessible tour of the survey data.”

Justin,

In the Bible, Jesus commands his followers to renounce all material possessions and personal wealth. The Bible also strictly forbids sex outside of marriage and for any reason besides procreation. The Bible could not be more clear. How many Christians do you know that follow these commands? I know thousands of Christians and zero who do so.

This is a classic example of confirmation bias.

My father gave the eulogy at my Grandmother’s funeral. He was in tears as he explained that what we miss is not having the person with us anymore. He said, he was (by extension, human beings are) selfish. He would no longer have his mother sitting there at her table when he came to town. He would no longer have his mother to call and tell about his new grandchildren. He would no longer have his mother to visit and to hug. She has parted from his life. He then explained it is ok to be selfish.

A funeral is a parting, and we morn no longer having that person to be with. Imagine your best friend were to take a long trip to China and you would probably never see them again. Would you be moved to tears?

The real question is, why do atheists morn? Atheists believe we are the byproduct of random chemical reactions. Atheists believe we have no inherent value, and those who logically follow their own beliefs realize that under atheism, mankind means nothing. We are no more valuable than an ant. Any value we assign ourselves is made-up value. Irrational and stupid people morn the death of their Sims (video game) characters. Why would intelligent atheists morn anyone?

Actually, none of the above. Reread the study, then think about it for a moment. I took the questions , and found the study doesn’t test if you know more about YOUR OWN religion than Atheists do, just if you know more about “religion.” It had questions about all sorts of religions in it. So, you can’t make the conclusions you did from the study. Sorry, Bryan.

Btw this is a pretty huge mistake! I’d appreciate it, if you made a retraction.

I wrote:

Thus I would predict that in a society where atheism was the norm, religious people would have more knowledge about the atheism-religion debate than the atheists would.

I just thought of a partial confirmation of this: among academic philosophers, atheism and agnosticism are the norm; and it’s my impression (I don’t know that any polls have been done) that, by and large, theist philosophers know a lot more about the theism-atheism debate than atheist philosophers do.