As many of you may have heard, the Pew Research Center has just released a poll testing Americans' knowledge of basic religious questions. The questions they ask are not fine points of eschatological debate, but pretty basic stuff in the main. How did we do?
Americans as a whole answered 16 out of 32 questions correctly. As one would expect, correct answers correlated strongly with overall educational achievement. But the religious breakdown is interesting. The number one-scoring group? Atheists and agnostics, answering 20.9 questions correctly. Jews came in second, at 20.5, and Mormons scored third, at 20.3. Protestants came well behind, ahead of Catholics, though overall scores are broken down by race for reasons that are unclear. Last came "nothing in particular" with 15.2 correct answers.
Interesting that those who know the most about religion subscribe to none of them. While the obvious conclusion may not be correct, at least it says that atheists and agnostics are not unfamiliar with the topic. How would you do?