Well, that’s embarrassing

According to a Pew research study, atheists and agnostics scored better on a religious knowledge survey than other denominations, and Jews and Mormons scored higher than Christians:

Credit: Pew

Credit: Pew

Overall, the three groups that perform best in this survey are atheists and agnostics (who get an average of 20.9 out of 32 questions right), Jews (20.5 questions right on average) and Mormons (20.3 questions right). Looked at another way, 27% of Jews, 22% of atheists and agnostics, and 20% of Mormons score in the top 10% of all respondents in overall number of correct answers to religious knowledge questions, getting at least 26 questions right. As will be discussed in detail later in this report, these groups display greater religious knowledge even when education and other factors are held constant.

This report was from 2010, so it’s not clear how agnostics and atheists would fare today, but it’s probably safe to say that they would still score higher than all religious groups in answering questions for a similar survey.

I’ve found that in many cases, one reason that nonbelievers reject Christianity or Judaism is because they have actually read their religious texts and studied them more closely than evangelicals. For instance, while a believer, I can’t say that I had ever heard about the crude little story about 42 children being mauled by bears for the minor offense of making fun of a bald guy. Too silly for God’s special book? Nope. Right there it is in 2 Kings. Nor did we ever spend much time retracing the moral lessons behind Lot’s daughters getting him drunk and then sleeping with him. Or, that time Noah got plastered after landing his ark. Or, that part about stoning women believed to be witches. Or, that part about stoning gay people or the commandment against eating shellfish or … You get the picture. By and large, believers are so enamored about what they perceive to be the “good” parts of the Bible, they willfully ignore the absurdities that drip from nearly every page.

Enhanced by Zemanta

NY Times: Romney the revisionist

In my opinion, here is one of the best editorials about the election, or possibly on any topic, that The New York Times has produced in quite awhile: Mr. Romney Reinvents History.

I found it a solid read because it juxtaposed two important ideas: that Mitt Romney’s speech at the Republican National Convention was his most important to date and that said speech was most noteworthy for its utter failure, both in presenting a truthful account of the GOP’s general direction these last four years and in mapping out a pathway going forward if Romney wins the election.

 

As the editorial pointed out and against what Romney claimed, the GOP didn’t rally behind Obama after the 2008 election; Republicans played a four-year long game of cockblock, proving that they are more concerned with Obama failing than America succeeding.

Senate Republicans blocked Obama’s jobs bill. Not one single Republican voted in favor of providing 30 million Americans with health care and have offered no plan of their own. They tried to shut down Obama’s stimulus plan that has helped erect millions of dollars worth of infrastructure across the nation, with only three Republicans voting in favor, one of whom (Arlen Specter) later changed party affiliations. Drive anywhere in Boston, for instance, and signs are up everywhere showing how the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has provided support for various roadway projects.

So, that’s one myth. Another was that Romney has any plan whatsoever that may be different than Obama’s, other than proposals that may lead us into messy ordeals in places like Iran and Russia. According to The Times:

… no subjects have received less attention, or been treated with less honesty, than foreign affairs and national security — and Mr. Romney’s banal speech was no exception.

It’s easy to understand why the Republicans have steered clear of these areas. While President Obama is vulnerable on some domestic issues, the Republicans have no purchase on foreign and security policy. In a television interview on Wednesday, Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state, could not name an area in which Mr. Obama had failed on foreign policy.

For decades, the Republicans were able to present themselves as the tougher party on foreign and military policy. Mr. Obama has robbed them of that by being aggressive on counterterrorism and by flexing military and diplomatic muscle repeatedly and effectively.

Yet another is that Obama is soft on his support for Israel. The editorial concludes:

The one alliance on which there is real debate between Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama is with Israel. But it is not, as Mr. Romney and his supporters want Americans to believe, about whether Mr. Obama is a supporter of Israel. Every modern president has been, including Mr. Obama. Apart from outsourcing his policy to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on settlements, it’s not clear what Mr. Romney would do differently.

But after watching the Republicans for three days in Florida, that comes as no surprise.

In fact, it’s not clear what Romney would do differently on anything involving domestic policy. A recent report from The Washington Post highlights some of the “facts” that Romney present during the convention speech, including one of the more ludicrous ones about creating 12 million jobs.

News flash, Einstein: the economy will add about 9.6 million jobs between 2013-17, according to the Congressional Budget Office, regardless of who is president. Moody’s Analytics estimates 12 million by 2016.

Romney’s atheist father-in-law

So, yeah, Ann Romney’s family posthumously baptized her atheist father, Edward Roderick Davies, into the church with the understanding that his “soul” had the option of accepting or rejecting the “offer” of salvation. If there were any doubts left about how odious Mormonism is, I think they can resoundingly be silenced:

Edward Davies, shown here in his youth, was a staunch atheist and believed organized religions to be 'hogwash."

Edward Roderick Davies was Ann Romney’s father and died in 1992 after living as a staunch atheist all his life.

Recently-discovered records show that, in keeping with their controversial tradition of posthumously baptising non-Mormons, a ceremony was held to invite Mr Davies into the Church of Latter Day Saints one year after he died.

The practice of performing baptisms for the dead has drawn criticism after the Mormon church began doing so for well-known Catholics- including former popes- and Jews- including Holocaust survivors.

According to the religion’s official website, the baptisms are seen as a way to offer those souls an option of joining the Church even once they have died. A key point is that it is seen as an option- as the souls are believed to have the ability to either accept or reject the baptism.

All this just in case Davies “soul” had a change of heart.

While alive, Davies viewed religion as “drudgery” and “hogwash.” So drudging, in fact, is religion that his legacy can’t escape it even in death. Religion poisons everything.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2093241/Mitt-Romneys-family-baptized-Ann-Romneys-atheist-father-Mormon-church-year-AFTER-death.html#ixzz25FBbLxIm

A Mormon on Mormonism

J. Spencer Fluhman, an assistant professor at Brigham Young University, has a piece up on the New York Times website about the backlash from both the evangelical right and the “secular left,” as he terms it, against Mormonism. He said that despite years of persecution, the church has continued to grow in numbers and influence. He claims that

Making Mormons look bad helps others feel good. And because it’s so easy. By imagining Mormons as intolerant rubes, or as heretical deviants, Americans from left and right can imagine they are, by contrast, tolerant, rational and truly Christian. Mitt Romney’s candidacy is only the latest opportunity for such stereotypes to be aired.

In the article, Fluhman, who is a Mormon, described the nature of the various criticisms that have been leveled at the religion. I can’t speak for the evangelic right’s position on Mormonism, but I will address what he has to say about the critiques coming from the secular left. I can only assume he means progressive, non-believers.

Here’s what he had to say, with my comments in red:

For the left, Mormonism often functions as a stand-in for discomfort over religion generally. Discomfort? This religion was invented in the early-1800s in upstate New York by a semiliterate opportunist who wanted to be the next Muhammad for god’s sake. I think “discomfort” is putting it mildly and is not really accurate to begin with. “Distrust” and “contempt” are better words. It doesn’t serve so much as a “stand-in” for the critique of religion in general so much as it simply offers another example of what happens when the imagination is mixed with meaningless ritual, power and man’s seeming unending capacity and willingness to believe anything at all (i.e. Scientology). Mormon religious practice offers a lot of really, well, religious religion: ritual underclothing, baptism for the dead, secret temple rites and “clannishness” (a term invoked in the past in attacks on Catholics and Jews). Any religion looks weird from the outside, but the image of Mormonism seems caught somewhere between perpetual strangeness and strait-laced blandness.  Not “weird.” An unnecessary and gross misappropriation of human time and energy.

When a perceived oddity is backed by Mormon money or growing political clout, the left gets jumpy Again, there’s nothing odd about it. What is odd is that people supposedly as intelligent as Mitt Romney and Fluhman could really — I mean really — believe that the end of the world is actually going to take place specifically in Independence, Mo., or that Smith can be trusted in the first place. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell and HBO’s Bill Maher have resorted to caricature, stereotyping and hyperbole in their anti-Mormon attacks. Because the ridiculous deserves just that. Ridicule. Liberals were outraged by Mormon financing of Proposition 8, the 2008 ban on same-sex marriage in California. They scoff at Mormonism’s all-male priesthood. I didn’t really know that, but there’s another strike against it. and ask why church leaders have yet to fully repudiate the racist teachings of previous authorities. And why haven’t they?