This time it’s in the New York Times, and it’s a 13-question multiple choice quiz by Nicholas Kristof. You’ll get where he’s going from the very first question:
1. Which holy book stipulates that a girl who does not bleed on her wedding night should be stoned to death?
a. Koran
b. Old Testament
c. (Hindu) Upanishads
His aim in making this thing?
And yes, the point of this little quiz is that religion is more complicated than it sometimes seems, and that we should be wary of rushing to inflammatory conclusions about any faith, especially based on cherry-picking texts. The most crucial element is perhaps not what is in our scriptures, but what is in our hearts.
What it really does, though, is show that religious dogma is bad, and this isn’t the first time Kristof has made that point.
I got 9 out of 13. Interesting quiz.
I got 11 out of 13 but I was guessing a bit.
Same here. I think 11’s a score to be proud of!
I got them all right, but some of the questions are misleading, and all of them, so far as it goes, tend to show, not that dogma is bad — is this what he wants to show? — but that the reality of religion is so very complex that we shouldn’t rush to judgement about it. What it proves is that religion is so full of contradictions that you can prove almost anything you like from it, and therefore underwrite liberalism as well as the most reactionary stone-age cruelty. The conclusion to draw is that ‘holy books’ are a danger to us all, and should be side-lined as quickly as possible so that we can get on with living as human beings, instead of pretending that some human beings were once gods (which is what you do when you ‘sanctify’ the utterances of some of them).
I got 11 out of 13 – missed #s 8 and 11. Although i guessed on the Muhammad question.
There are enough hidden ‘jewels’ in the holy books of all religions, that if they were systematically compiled and properly attributed, most people would be too shocked or ashamed to identify themselves with their religions. At least I hope. Problem is, religious scholars can never be trusted to compile unbiased lists, and irreligious ones can barely get through and last long enough to make a list.
Since “all of the above” was not an option it was impossible to get them all right while staying within the options provided. That alone makes it a stupid quiz. I didn’t get them all right, or even keep score, but I knew most of them. The “all of the above” issue makes it possible to provide an actual score. Bloody stupid.
However, the point is taken that there are bad things in all religions, including Christianity … as if that wasn’t obvious. (Then again, since so many people couldn’t get many right in the ridiculously easy Pew quiz I suppose the average for this one would be little better than chance.)
I missed four. I know pretty well what the bible says, I’m just not that good at remembering the particular part of the book it’s in (I blame the nuns). When answering the quiz I kept saying, “It’s all of the above, this is stupid”, so I counted those correct.
* oops, I meant “impossible to provide an actual score”.
As Erp says below, there is the option that more than one might be right. And it is not clear that Kristoff himself gets them all right, since for his question about Muhammad and the Jews to suggest that he married a Jew, when she was a war prize, is not altogether correct (though I knew that too). The thing that I found stupid about the quiz was the idea that the answers show that we should not jump to inflamatory conclusions about religion. Well, we shouldn’t jump to inflamatory conclusions about anything, really, unless there are good reasons for doing so. Unfortunately, the history of Islam shows that we should regard it with some unease, at any rate, since it is, in expression and history, explicitly imperial, even if the Qu’ran, in some abrogated verses, does seem to show moderate good sense.
I agree with stvs (below) that we should stop bigoted and anti-American (or anti-liberal) responses to anyone, but I also think that we ought to be wide awake to some of the dangers that are presented by religion, and in particular by Islam (though of course all religions are suspect). I think Kristof’s attempt to suggest that Islam is a peaceable religion, at least as peaceable as Christianity or Hinduism — and I think that is what he is suggesting — is what is really stupid here. It may be — Christianity is wallowing in blood, after all — but a comparison of verses from so-called ‘holy’ books won’t show it. As a piece of historical or cultural analysis it is hopelessly shallow.
Okay, I must have read it too quickly coz I didn’t see that option. It’s still not the best – normally we’d expect one of the options provided to be “(d) All the above” if that’s the answer. I would, in fact have got those two (?) questions right, but it was confusing.
But mea culpa, I suppose, for doing the test with preconceptions.
Up until a couple hundred years ago, there was no distinction between “marrying” a woman and forcibly possessing a woman captured in war, so it’s accurate to say Mohammed married a JEew.
I’m calling foul on you here, Jerry. The intent of Kristof’s article is clearly a call for tolerance of Muslims in the US during an ugly time when they are under attack merely for their Islamic background. Kristof should be lauded for this, not implicitly criticized.
Kristof is right: religion is more complicated than it can seem, especially when identity and belief are conflated. All the recent attacks on US Muslims are attacks on Muslim atheists too.
Through immediate family and my network of friends, I know personally many faithful Jews, Christians, and Muslims, as well as many atheists that have strong Jewish, Christian, and Islamic backgrounds. At a basic level, you can’t tell any of these groups apart from how they conduct—good or bad—themselves and their family lives.
Yet Muslims today are the targets of a fundamentally bigoted and anti-American campaign to impugn them simply brcause of their religious beliefs and/or heritage. There on the air right now political attack ads against anyone who might support Park51/Constitutional/property rights. Sharon Angle just said that Dearborn MI is under Sharia Law. And our own alma mater just accepted money to found a professorship in the name of an ugly racist.
This has to stop. Don’t criticize people like Kristof who are trying to stop it.
Actually he stated that more than one choice in any question might be correct so you can’t complain that all of the above wasn’t provided.
The comments btw make interesting reading on their own.
Why, exactly, should their beliefs be kept from criticism? We (those people who are likely to be reading this blog) are not attacking them physically, and we are not attacking the people at all, only their beliefs–which are irrational, without evidence, and dangerous. Beliefs do not deserve toleration simply because somebody’s feelings might be hurt. That’s the point. They don’t get special treatment because they are religious. We vehemently oppose global-warming denialists, but who is going around saying that we are inciting violence against them or making feel as though they are in physical danger? Stop with the special treatment.
Also, we are not criticizing backgrounds or heritage, just bad beliefs.
You appear to be off in the weeds. Kristof doesn’t deserve implicit criticism when he promotes tolerance of a minority that is being attacked.
Changing the subject from attacks on an entire community to stupid beliefs that in fact very few of them actually hold is a non sequitur.
This issue is a concrete example where simply dismissing the stupidity of all religions will not help anyone because this will be ignored by the mainly Christian attackers. It is much better to make the Christian appeal that people in glass houses mustn’t throw stones. That will be heard.
But please do carry on ridiculing religious belief in other contexts.
“You appear to be off in the weeds. Kristof doesn’t deserve implicit criticism when he promotes tolerance of a minority that is being attacked.”
It depends how he promotes it.
“It is much better to make the Christian appeal that people in glass houses mustn’t throw stones. That will be heard.”
Based on past experience, no, it will not be heard.
Uh … what’s a Muslim atheist?
Same as a Jewish atheist. But Muslim.
You think that Islam is just so compelling as a faith that everyone with a Muslim background is a believing Muslim?
Well, OK, that was a friggin’ trainwreck. And I did so well on the other quizzes. Making the point that, for me, why should I bother learning any religion’s made-up rules?
Enough already with religion quizzes. I do not care what the stupid trivia answers are, and I already know that all religions are equally stupid.
What is “complicated” about religion? The Bible says people should be executed for just about anything, that the world is going to end with a battle between angels and devils any day now, and that a god can be loving while regularly murdering thousands of his people. This book should be relegated to the garbage can of history. The only thing complicated are the self-contortions a believer must go through to convince themselves it’s okay to believe in this abomination and still consider themselves a civilized human being.
I’m waiting for the quiz that has questions like, “Which religious figure learned how to use a magic wand from a talking plant?” and “Which religious figure rode into the sunset on a flying horse?”
Something tells me I’ll be waiting a long time….
Cheers,
b&
Compare it with another blog http://blogderah.blogspot.com/2010/10/nicholas-kristofs-quiz.html
I only got about half. Now if the Pew study had asked these sorts of questions rather than the most trivial questions on religion, perhaps the godless would not have done much better than the christians. After all, many godless folk don’t really care to know much of the detail of the religious texts.
Disappointed with myself, I got 8 & 1/3 but I know little about the mohammedan religion & too much about the christian & jewish (ex-choirboy!). These religions are all out of date & deluded.
I’ll admit to getting the questions on Judaism right although I would also admit that I know next to nothing about Judaism; I always learn new religious trivia whenever I hang out with my Jewish friends (most of whom are not religious). Maybe I’ve heard some things multiple times – I’m rarely attentive when the conversation turns to religious trivia.