April 20, 2014 By: Juanita Jean Herownself Category: Uncategorized
The Pew Research Center has a religious knowledge quiz with 15 questions. I missed one. See how you do.
At the end, you’ll enjoy seeing how Fox News has had an influence on the answers.
I missed an easy one so I’m embarrassed to tell you which one it is.
Welcome to The World's Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc.
My name is Susan DuQuesnay Bankston. I live in Richmond, Texas, in the heart of Tom DeLay's old district. It's nuttier than squirrel poop here.
I am honored and privileged to know Miss Juanita Jean Herownself, hairdresser extraordinary and political maven. Since she does not have time to fiddle with this internet stuff, I type her website for her and you can read it if you want to. If you don't, she truly does not give a big bear's butt.
A lot of what I post here has to do with local politics, but you probably have the same folks in your local government.
This ain't a blog. Blogs are way too trendy for me. This is a professional political organization.
My guess is that education level is also closely related to getting correct answers. Could we get Rick Perry to take this quiz? Peace
1Education level or just plain reading. I got 100% and I would have gotten 100% when I was in junior high, if not earlier. Thank you, Highlights and Scholastic Books.
2A couple of interesting observations:
Those that attend church regularly barely did better than those that never attend.
Atheists/Agnostics did better than Christians.
3I got 100% and my formal religious background is fairly minimal. I didn’t see any reference to Fox. Can someone direct me? I also read the entire original survey and there was only one question I was unsure about. It’s strange to me that people in general are so incurious? I do have advanced degrees and a pretty good IQ but I don’t consider myself particularly special because of that. I just don’t understand why people don’t ask questions, or seek answers.
4Missed the final one. Thought they were referring to Edwards the ghost guy.
5Perfect score 🙂 Nice Jewish girl knows more about religion then almost everyone!!
6100% but hey I read all kinds of materials.
7I got them all right and I’m an atheist with Buddhist tendencies (though to be fair I was raised Episcopalian). I thought most of them were easy, though I can see how a lot of those who aren’t Roman Catholics might not understand transubstantiation and I know most Americans are confused by the school prayer decisions. The last one was tricky, though.
8Also 100% here. I got the last one because I knew who Jonathan Edwards was–had to study the great Puritan preacher in a public school literature class and knew that he was the one who coined the phrase “weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth” in one of his fire-and brimstone sermons–and that Billy Graham didn’t have anything to do with any great religious movement. Never heard of the middle guy.
Why am I not surprised that JJ’s fan club are a rather knowledgeable lot?
9I got them all, but I’m an agnostic mixed white/hispanic Catholic-educated boy with an advanced degree so I had the unfair advantage of being in several of those groups.
10Shoot this not the first time I’ve missed the boat when it came to someone named John Edwards! Oh well if missing one puts me in the same company as JJ, I’m okay with that.
11Give me points for obstinacy. Although knowing the correct answer, missed the one about the blood and body of Christ. My thick four cornered head would prefer that it was symbolic, so my hand could not be prevented from selecting the incorrect answer. So, 14/15.
12Only go to religious institutions for weddings and funerals. 14/15 missed the Jonathan Edwards thing. Looks like I’m in fair company. Just a plain ole high school grad but I do like to read encyclopedias and love the OED. 😉
13Got them all. Not bad for someone whose family went to a Baptist church sporadically (I was never baptized though my older sisters were).
14I got all 15 which is due to my history degree. I did find it interesting that atheists and agnostics percentage wise did better than most others. I was shocked that more Catholics and Protestants did not understand transubstantiation. Excellent quiz.
15We had a mandatory 10 segment comparative religion class sophomore year which was supposed to teach us something about what other people believe. Not whether any were ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ just these are the differences eg Theory of transubstantiation. What it taught me is the differences do not seem enough to kill each other over. Can’t see that ever happening in the areas of the USA which need it the most
16OK, I impressed myself by getting 100% with no Catholic school or college. Not sure what this means though… Oh yea, I do, it means I’ll never work for Fox.
17Walking around a town with many churches, I pointed each one out to my newly-adopted daughter (age 8) and told her a little bit about each denomination/religion. At the Church of the Immaculate Conception, I said, “This refers to the idea that Mary was born without sin. But some people think it refers to the Virgin Birth.”
My daughter said, “What’s the Virgin Birth?” I replied it was the idea that Mary became pregnant with Jesus without ever having sex, and quoted the line from “Silent Night.”
My smart little girl thought a moment and replied, “I don’t buy it.”
18I got 100% but guessed at several of them. Good quiz. I do think that there should be some kind of elective about comparative religions taught in public schools simply because of how folks’ behavior is so strongly attached to what kind of religious beliefs they were raised with or are reacting to.
19The quiz I’d love to see right NOW is, what super rich/powerful person(s) have been harmed by the Koch brothers, seeming that if we had that kind of information we might could make good use of it.
100% correct which nicely mirrors my 0% church attendance. The only tough one was the body & blood one.
20Well, I missed one, and the one I missed actually grosses me out about drinking blood, etc. Guess I am more into symbolism.
21I missed the last one. Not bad considering I’ve not seen the inside of a church in over 30 years.
22Congratulations to all my letter perfect posters. I did an undistinguished 10-15.
2315/15 but I did make an educated guess on Edwards.
24Guess I’m an atheist who like to know what he’s up against.
100 percent correct for another Jewish Atheist, here. Its a terrible quiz, though. Completely lacking in coherence or interest or integrity of any kind. You could get 100 percent and not know anything substantive about any non Christian religion, for example. What was the point of the Mother Teresa question, btw? Maybe the point was to get everything wrong?
25Also 15/15 with a bit of guessing on the last one; I’m atheist but was raised Protestant and took a Comparative Religions class in high school.
It amuses me that only 67% of Evangelicals know what’s in the 10 Commandments that they want to impose on all of us.
Also wondering about JJ’s Fox News reference, unless it’s about people who watch Fox being less informed than if they didn’t watch news at all
26I missed three. Before I was an atheist I was actually quite devout at thirteen years old and tried to read all I could on
27different religions.
Aced it. Natch. I still remember when we stopped praying before classes started but many of my classmates continued to pray before exams.
28I got all of them. Does this mean I am religious? I am 1%er,too bad it’s not money. This quiz is mostly about mainstream knowledge. It doesn’t get into the stuff that makes people do crazy horrible things.
29Missed the last one, but I shouldn’t have. “First” Great Awakening, drat it, “First!” I read a lot of religious history before I decided I was a pagan.
30Got ’em all. Too bad there was nothing on Greek/Roman/Norse gods and goddesses.
31This high school dropout (who has had three jobs that require an MA or MS) got 100%. There was a tiny bit of guesswork involved in getting the last question right, but that’s the only one on which I hesitated at all. I’m among the atheists-agnostics, although I consider myself spiritually inclined. I credit my love of history and watching of PBS.
32Knowing and spouting religious facts is not the same as being a religious person. Too many rwnj’s don’t know the difference.
33Missed the last one (Johnathan Edwards) but I think that’s simply due to the fact that I pay very little attention to the convoluted evangelical movements.
They’re rather like bowel movements in many respects…
34I got them all but did guess at one of them.
35Aces, straights and flushes – 15/15. I did flip a coin after eliminating Billy on the last one in all honesty. Not bad for a third gen atheist high school drop out. I’ve been generally interested in mythology since grade school so I put the good score down to that.
I’m mildly fascinated that less than 60% of Catholics got the transubstantiation question right but then I realized the quiz is for American Catholics. There’s a large minority here that reject doctrine and still consider themselves Catholic, sorta like the cohort of completely secular Jews who still identify as Jewish (pass the bacon).
36I missed only the last one. I knew there was nothing great about Billy Graham except his ability to amass money. Never heard of the Great Awakening or the other two gentlemen.
I was surprised I knew as much as I did, but, in hindsight, I’ve either been born into or have spent some time being observant in a few of the religions. Serial religiousness.
37I clicked on the link and a flame showed up on the screen. I took that as a sign not to take quiz.
38Total guess on fifteen, although I knew darned well it wasn’t Billy Graham. So, I had a 50/50 chance of being correct. I’ll take a 14.5 any day. It’s a shame that most of the Faux watchers will never have a chance at the same.
39Since y’all are bragging, I might as well join in. I don’t know that I can call 15/15 any kind of accomplishment as I am an ordained minister with an English degree. But I would sure have been embarrassed to score any lower!
40My wife and I both got all fifteen right which about our only chance to be in the top one percent now although we always were in school. Our background is mainly Episcopalian with some Baptist thrown in.
41I got them all, too. Probably because of a background where I was urged toward church membership at age 13, but had a very skeptical humanist upbringing before that.
42Since the hubs has theological alphabet soup after his name it would have been rather embarrassing if I had missed one.
43Everywhere I have ever been, if you want to use the Bible as an example of literature you have to go through your principal to the school board attorney and abide by their decision no matter what SCOTUS may have said on the subject anyway. the usual response was a big fat NO. For one thing, school population these days not only has atheists and agnostics and every religion historically represented in this country but now Muslim, Hindu and some stuff I have never heard of before. School board does not want to hear from any of these people on this subject. Also, in some public schools, you cannot use the Book as an example of literature but only for preaching, which if you are in a tax supported school, is against the law but they do try to do it anyway.
44I got 14 of 15 – missed the Edwards question. I knew who he was but I didn’t really know enough about the “great awakening” so I guessed Finney.
I am an atheist, but was raised a Methodist.
45Good quiz. I did better than average, but by no means perfect! I wonder (with a shudder or two) what the results for the general public – broken out by age group, political affiliation, gender – would be on a quiz about the US Constitution. I bet the average among RWNJs is about 20% correct.
46I missed one too — I had the people in Pakistan being Hindu instead of Muslim. I hope not TOO bad for a cradle Episcopalian!
47The only thing that made me decide to send my kids to Anglican Day school was the amazing amount of reference in literature to Biblical stories, and I wanted them to have the advantage of that knowledge…I would have never sent them to the kind of church I was raised in..too nasty. Missed question 15, knew it wasn’t BG–fake and fraud, Ronnie’s best buddy–yuck!
48Join the club, Marion. I have a Pakistani friend who happens to be Hindu. How was I supposed to know that he was the only Hindu in all of Pakistan? I mean, other than education, reading, and world history. I mean, outside of that, how was I supposed to know ?
4915 of 15 for this atheist Baylor alumnus.
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