All of us did pretty well on the pathetically easy religion quiz, but don’t get a big head. Over at All Things Wildly Considered, there’s a tougher quiz on how much you know about atheism. I haven’t yet taken it, but let’s post how well we did. I particularly like question 10.
I’m sure there will be some gripes about the questions.
14 out of 15. Question number 15 wrong!
Is it indeed, I got that one wrong too but I’m not American so I had an excuse.
I missed 5 out of 20: #s 5, 7, 8, 10, & 22.
heh, I only got #22 from process of elimination. I know Russell Blackford is a non-cognitivist, but I never really knew what it meant. Luckily, I knew what all three of the others meant! 🙂
No I’m not. If anything, I’m an error theorist. Error theorists are cognitivists.
I mean 5 out of 25.
84% (I only missed one on the religion quiz)
OK, I didn’t know 7 and 10 (sorry!). Otherwise, fairly easy.
13/15
Er, I mean 23/25. I claim jet lag as an excuse for poor counting.
21/25. Moreover, all four off the ones I missed were ones that I *knew* I didn’t know, and just guessed.
That included #10. 🙂 Sorry Jerry!
I missed 2, 8, 10, and 11. 10 was trivia (again, sorry Jerry!) and the rest I missed were historical, with history not being my strong suit. My historical knowledge is leaps and bounds beyond the average American, obviously, but it’s very gappy. The only two I’m really ashamed not to have gotten were 8 and 11.
I got 18 correct out of 25. I pray next time I do better! 😉
Blew out on questions 10, 11 and 22. But I missed none on the religon quiz! Go figure. I wonder how religites would do on this quiz?
I got a result close to yours. 100% on the religion quiz and I missed 10, 11 and 13 on the atheist quiz.
Definitely a harder quiz than the Pew but it also contains some trivia questions that don’t really address the issue of understanding atheism. However, a fair number of the questions were on target and answering them correctly really does mean you understand what atheism means.
Score: 22/25 (I got 15/15 on the Pew.)
Got 23/25 (15/15 Pew).
The two I got wrong is 2 and 10 and I think there is a fairly easy argument why one can get that wrong (10 is very specific domain knowledge).
I got question 15 correct, but I disagree with it. I’ll postpone that discussion until after people have taken the quiz.
No complaints, I thought most of the questions were quite good, actually. The most important thing, I think, is knowing what atheism is and what it’s not. If the average person in the US of A were able to get that question right, I’d be happy as a clam.
I missed #2, #3, and #7…I guess I’m not up on the history of nontheism in the Eastern religions.
As to #7, there goes the theist notion that we’re all in lock-step with one another. If I can’t even name our putative “leader”, that says something…if only about the impossibility of herding cats or hugging Jello.
I admit that on question 11, I did not know the answer but deduced it by eliminating those who I definitely knew were not Greek, and then choosing the most-Greek name among the remaining two.
Still and all, not a bad result.
I wrote in Jerry Coyne as the answer to 7.
24/25.
15/15 on the Pew quiz.
80%, 20 out of 25
I missed #’s 3, 8, 10, 11, 13,
Missed 5,7,11,22,24 I’m such a bad atheist.
13 / 15
and then
22 / 25 on the atheist quiz, which surprised me because I found it much tougher than the Pew poll. I guess I have a few embers still glowing deep in the ol’ grey matter.
I think people here will generally do pretty well because most atheists arrive at their conclusions by evaluating numerous hypotheses and accepting the most rational answer. A little background work is mandatory if that’s your path.
There are of course easier and more arrogant ways to non-belief such as political orientation or ethnic/religious indoctrination. I’d bet those people as a group would do about as well as the avg. Catholic or Protestant in these polls.
14/15 on the Pew quiz,
20/25 on the Atheist quiz.
Interesting that q15 on the Pew quiz is a 3-choice question and only 11% got it right. The subgroup scores range from 8% to 15%.
22/25 by way of a fair amount of educated guessing! Missed questions 5, 11 and 23.
This was tough. I missed the questions about the far east. I should need to take another look at the book I recently read, “the New Atheism” by Victor Stenger.
But it was a good quiz.
22/25 for this one and 32/32 for the full Pew set.
This quiz was notably tougher that the Pew quiz.
Scored 15/15 on the online Pew quiz included in the report about the Pew survey, Scored 31/32 on the reposted questions actually used in the Pew survey.
And scored 22/25 in the atheism quiz. However, I do concur with the reservations about several of the questions made by commenters on the allthingsconsidered.com posting.
But it is useful nonetheless to guage your familiarity with your philosophical viewpoints. Few things should be more cringe inducing than being ignorant of the viewpoints you claim to hold.
Few things indeed, CJ, but that doesn’t seem to bother politicians.
BTW, 15/15 on the Pew quiz, but had to guess on one question. 22/25 on the atheisim quiz. I don’t have to turn in my card, do I?
Read it. I’m not impressed. Relies on pop-culture references, such as the last question.
I mean, I just don’t care what CNN thinks… Heck, I don’t even get CNN, I don’t have cable, satellite or even a digital antenna/converter box.
There is virtually nothing TV that I’m interested in. As goes for the rest of our family.
But when you return to your planet, what will you tell them about the human species?
Oh. Got 15/15 on the Pew test. Got 10/10 the first time I linked to it (through a different source). About half the questions were the same.
I got 21 out of 25 in the atheist test.
I missed #s 8, 10, 11, 22
Ditto!
Bummer. I only got 20 correct. But one was a brain fart that I really did know the answer to.
I missed 4 questions including the quote from Coyne! (Sorry, Jerry!)
I picked Cicero not knowing any better but my second choice was the correct answer.
And, I guessed on a couple of names like the lady who wrote the Women’s Bible. So, lucked out, thank god.
I had no idea who that Greek guy believed or said but I could tell the difference between a Roman name and a Greek one. So, I got the answer correct but for the wrong reason.
Well, I was going to go with that, too. I knew Cicero was a Roman poet and the Greek was close to Diogenes, looking for an honest man. My heart was with the Greek!
I’m fine on the classical history but weak on the modern social history.
20/25
As with the religion test, it’s probably best not to read too much into the questions.
Hmmm… 23/25, vs. 30.75/32 on the religion quiz.
I have a distinct distaste for trivia questions on quizzes of any sort, though — much as I despise the use of obscure proper names in crossword puzzles.
21/25. Some of the personalities I did not know (history of N American atheism). I didn’t read number 1 closely enough to see “deities” for some bizarre reason. Otherwise, I would have scored 22/25.
Just scored 14/15 on the Pew quiz. The only question I missed was the name of the preacher involved in the “Great Awakening” and I’m rather glad I did miss it! I did not pick Billy Graham.
22/25. Missed 11, 22, 24. And I didn’t even study.
I missed #7 and #10. (Sorry, Jerry.) In fact, if you asked me #7 right now, I’d probably miss it again.
Hey, 22/25. Does this mean I can now be taught the secret handshake?
Pew: 14/15
Atheist: 23/25
Passing grades!
Pew: 15/15 (ex Catholic, you know)
Atheist: 20/25 (I am a moron 🙂 )
23/25. Though two of answers I got right were educated guesses.
14 / 15 on the Pew quiz. Missed the Great Awakening question. I know in general what the term means, and that there was more than one, but have never known the names of preachers involved.
The atheist quiz was more difficult, but some of the questions were also poor. I got 21 / 25. Two were survey results trivia, 10 and 25 (I answered a). Number 3 and 22 were just clean misses, though I should have gotten both by process of elimination. Went too fast.
I got 22 out of 25 right. I guess a B isn’t bad considering that I didn’t study. 😉
OK, regarding the two quizzes. My opinion is that generally educated people and people who believe in learning for a lifetime will do well, except on questions about pop culture and I include the result of polls.
I don’t pay attention to polls, but I have been interested over the years to read the classics, follow research in many different fields and acquaint myself with things I don’t know much about.
Now, my personal experience with a “very religious” co-worker is that he just had no curiosity about other religions or even other denominations. No interest whatsoever what the Methodist creed was or the Episcopalian and Buddhist or Taoist was strictly off the reservation. It’s no wonder that the most deeply culted people, Hispanic Catholics, for example, scored worst on these kind of polls. They’re not encouraged to have curiosity. Sad.
I’d put this more strongly, Doc Bill: not only are they not encouraged to have curiosity, they’re actively discouraged from it.
32/32 on the religious test (guessed on the Great Awakening one).
24/25 on the atheist test. Missed #11 (I better study up on my Greeks!).
Having read “The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief” and “The Dictionary of Atheism, Skepticism, and Humanism” last year helped on several of the questions.
I think that there should be only one question on an atheist quiz. Get that one right…you’re in.
I’m kicking myself for missing #11 btw. Even if one doesn’t know a lot about these guys, Cicero and Lucretius are Roman names. Diagoras was the only Greek name of the bunch. Duh!
Full marks on the Pew. (I checked the 32-question version they actually used as well as the shorter online one.) 23/25 on this one, with a couple of lucky guesses and one — the first question! — wrong because I’d failed to read it correctly. Far too much trivia in this one, I think. (Also — and perhaps this is just my eyes or my web browser — I found it very difficult to read: boldface text, not enough white space.)
Also: #3 gratuitously clotted wording, #7 important missing capital letter, #14 inaccurate translation, #21 undefined term “modern atheism”.
22/25. Some of these were tough … at least for me.
(I got 32/32 on the Pew questions – obviously I know more about religion than I do about atheism. lol)
Thanks for this quiz – some historical curly ones there!
Hah! I only missed the first question (went too quickly). Somehow every wild guess I made (7, 8, 10 and 22) turned out right. I give all credit to Providence.
Pew 15/15, with an educated guess on 15.
23/25 on the atheist quiz, which of course has a N American provincial bias.
I would have got most (13/15) of the Pew questions when I was 15. Education about religion is woefully inadequate IMHO.
14/15 and 21/25, in both cases I missed ones about the US. I am not American. Stuff like what percentage of Americans believe crap, I don’t feel the need to know, it’s far too high regardless.
Why? I mean why would I take a quiz on atheism as if it were a creed with established answers? I have no idea what other atheists *believe*, and, honestly, don’t really care. But I do know what they don’t believe. At best, such a questionnaire could have one question, and we would debate the exact wording until the cows come home (actually, cows play no role at all in this).
Question 21 is wrong. Modern atheism began with Machiavelli at the height of the Renaissance, not the Enlightenment.
God, before Machiavelli, dispensed divine right to princes and morality to their subjects. After Machiavelli, God was seen for what He is: an instrument of princes or would-be princes to use or not use as necessity dictates.
And Machiavelli’s blasphemous gems—amplified by their indirect understatement—are unsurpassed in literature. The Prince is worth reading for its unceasing blasphemy alone. Ask yourself: from which foreign invader is it that Machiavelli wishes to free Italy? The French? Or the Church? Machiavelli’s double entendres should leave you pealing with laughter. Here he is in the final chapter, referring to both Savonarola (whom Machiavelli replaced) and Jesus (whom he seeks to displace) in the very same sentence, with the identical meaning:
Leo Strauss is a wonderful source for some of Machiavelli’s blasphemies.
14/15 on the Pew
19/25 on the atheist quiz. I can settle with that, my ADD gets the best of me sometimes and I misread some of the questions.
23 out of 25 on the atheist quiz. Didn’t take the pew poll.
23 out of 25
Not exactly on topic, but LOL GOD had an interesting comparison of militants )http://lolgod.blogspot.com/2010/10/perspectives-christians-vs-muslims-vs.html)
I wonder which one is the worst, according to the likes of Shook, Mooney, Plait, and others?
22/25 for me, though that includes correct guesses on three questions on US topic – I’m European!
31/32 on Pew – guess which one I got wrong?
I made 14 on 15 on the Pew poll (missed the great awakening).
Got 22 out of 25 on the new atheism quiz. Missed #s 8, 20 and 21. All related to american civil history, which I was not that familiar with.
only took a subsample of the Pew (6/6)
(on a CNN site, perhaps).
on this, I got 21/25 – missed 8, 11, 24, 25
totally goofed on 24, and did not process “according to CNN” on question 25 (and even if I had, I may have still missed the gist of the question). I really should have gotten 8 correct – but only dredged up the name later from the memory banks after finding out I got it wrong (guessed Susan B). And my knowledge of ancient Greek thinkers ain’t as good as it should be. If Epicurus had been one of the choices, I would have picked him.
All in all, not too worried about my score. I am a crappy test-taker, really.
100% on the religious quiz. And a sorry 20/25 on the atheism one. I got all the ones I guessed wrong. 😐 I also guessed that Jerry would have said that 75% of people hold views that are incompatible with science.
“president of American atheists”
WTF? Since “atheists” is not capitalized as in an organizational name, this sounds like American atheists in general have their own special president.
I got 14 out of 15 ha! – I was wrong in thinking that I wasn’t smart enough to get a good score on this – lol
*pats self on back*
I got the jewish sabbath question wrong –
I assume the reason for this quiz is to highlight the fact that you don’t need to know anything about atheism in order to not believe in a god, just as you don’t need to know anything about theology in order to not believe in a god.
If so, it’s a good point well made.