The Truth of Religion and Non-Religion

Quote of the day:
“Americans are both deeply religious and profoundly ignorant about religion.... One of the most religious countries is also a nation of religious illiterates.”
--Dr. Stephen Prothero, chair of the religion department at Boston University.

Percentage of Americans who:
--Consider themselves Christian: 71%
--Believe the bible is the actual word of God: 31%
--Believe it’s the inspired word, not to be taken literally: 47%
--Believe it is legends and history: 22%
(from a Gallup poll and the American Religious Identification Survey)

It is a frustrating but unshakeable situation. Most religious people and non-religious people are ignorant about religion--its history, theology, and wide variety of practice.

Not just that, but people seem perfectly fine with being ignorant. They do nothing to change it. They’d much rather stereotype both individual religions and their adherents.

Then they wallow in the stereotype, relishing every minute of it. Or they are “above it” and take great delight in smugly sniggering at the unbelievable stupidity of it all.

There is no desire to learn more than a few narrow precepts, which are routinely taught to 7-year-olds.

This refusal to not be ignorant results in dozens of assumptions that are completely wrong. For example:

“Western religion is left-brained, eastern religion is right-brained.”

“Buddhism is contemplative, while Christianity is doctrinal.”

“Atheists are narrow-minded and evil.”

“Family was the most important thing to Jesus.”

“The most important thing in the bible is the ten commandments.”

“Religion is the same as superstition.”

“Religious people think they have the answers.”

The truth is that there is just as much variety of opinion, belief and knowledge among religious people as there is among non-religious people. We are all people who occasionally wonder if there is something going on that’s bigger than us.