If you have a question about religion, you want to find yourself an atheist and give him or her a quiz. If you can’t find an atheist, then turn to an agnostic. Strangely, in a recent Pew Forums survey about religious knowledge, atheists and agnostics scored as knowing the most about religion. Despite not believing, apparently they’re very curious about religious matters, if the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey is to be believed.
“These are people who thought a lot about religion,” said Pew’s Alan Cooperman. “They’re not indifferent. They care about it.” In fact, atheists and agnostics outperformed religious believers of all stripes with a similar education level. Among believers, white evangelical Protestants were the most knowledgeable group about religious matters, followed by white Catholics, white mainline Protestants, people who were unaffiliated with any faith but not atheists/agnostics, black Protestants, and Latino Catholics. Other religions, like Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, and Buddhist, were included in the survey, but weren’t groups large enough to break out into their own categories.
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