Pew Forum survey: Atheists and agnostics outperform the rest in religion test

Interesting results. I think atheists/Jewish people perform best because these are the two groups most likely to encounter defensive conversations on the subject of religion? I know I learned a lot more about other religions and the concept of religion in general after becoming atheist, probably incentivised by increased likelihood of debate.

The link provided by ascuttlefish is only to a portion of the test. The full list of questions can be found at [0].

Overall, I found the survey questions to be unsatisfying. Most of them are what I would categorize as religious trivia rather than true religious content. The questions were along the lines of "what is an atheist", "what religion was Mother Teresa", or "what's the name of Islam's holy book". These are the sort of questions I would expect any college-educated person to nail, regardless of religious affiliation.

Only two of the questions required any religion-specific depth of understanding: the questions on Catholic communion and on salvation by faith alone. There were no deep or doctrinally interesting questions about Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, or Buddhism. The test is presented as "questions about the core teachings [and other stuff] of major world religions" but there's really very little here about core teachings.

Atheists, Agnostics, and Jews performed very well on the "religion and public life" and "world religions" questions, by about 2.5 points over any Christian subgroup. Mormons and white evangelicals scored highest on the "Christianity and the Bible" sections, by about a point over Atheists/agnostics and Jews [1]. The headline is technically correct, but I've seen people draw some far-reaching and mistaken conclusions from it.

[0] PDF file: http://pewforum.org/uploadedFiles/Topics/Belief_and_Practice... - note that demographic and general knowledge questions are interspersed with religious questions.

[1] http://pewforum.org/Other-Beliefs-and-Practices/U-S-Religiou...

Take the quiz here: http://features.pewforum.org/quiz/us-religious-knowledge/

I got 93%, but I really don't see the value of this survey. It was a set of meta religious questions more than religious questions. If you choose Religion as a Jeopardy topic, these are the kind of questions I would expect.

Does HN really have to go down the same path as reddit and digg? I was hoping it wouldn't happen. I've found that reddit/digg have become, whats the word, an echo chamber for those with left-wing views. I'm here for the tech news, not that stuff.