American atheists are more knowledgeable about Christianity than American Christians.

[elfs]

In today's news, Americans don't know much about religion. Out of 32 questions about religion, atheists got an average of 21 correct, while mainline Christians got an average of 16 correct.

For the record, I got 31 out of 32. I missed the "Great Awakening" question. I knew Charles Finney was a major figure in American Christianity in the early part of the 19th century, but so was Jonathan "Sinners in the hands of an angry God" Edwards. I guessed wrong.

At least I know the Dalai Lama is a Buddhist. 74% of atheists and Jews got that right, compared to 45% of Christians. But really, 43% of Jews don't know Maimonides was Jewish? WTF? (6% of Jews don't know when the Sabbath begins; 6% of atheists don't know the definition of atheism. 6% of the population is just dumb.)

And I would disagree vehemently with the wording for the atheist question. The wording reads, "An atheist is someone who does not believe in God." An atheist does not believe a god or gods exist; it's a binary state. An agnostic is someone who believes we cannot know whether a god or gods exist. I can't help it if some of you are confused on this point.

Comments

[tagryn]

As regards the post title, actually the article says Mormons and evangelicals scored higher than atheists/agnostics when it came to questions on Christianity; the overall scoring difference was in breadth of understanding of other religions:

On questions about the Bible and Christianity, the groups that answered the most right were Mormons and white evangelical Protestants. On questions about world religions, like Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism, the groups that did the best were atheists, agnostics and Jews.

I also note that "nothing in particular" was among the lowest scoring groups on the survey.