Almost half of adults didn't know that the story of Noah's Ark was in the Bible

[3bunnies]

According to this news story. I know that this sample will include people from other cultures and I guess that my knowledge of their religions isn't perfect, but when 65% of the population say that they are Christian I find it surprising.

Many people confused plot lines from Harry Potter as being in the Bible and a third of children (8+) didn't know that the nativity was in the Bible and had never heard of the crucifixion.

Evolution is "the process by which different kinds of living organisms are thought to have developed and diversified from earlier forms during the history of the earth." The definition does not include "by random chance".

But the mechanism of evolution has at its heart the replication and random mutations caused by the mechanisms of DNA inheritance.

"random chance" is what that- and evolution is all about.

One of the mechanisms of evolution is natural selection (the most important), this relies on random chance. To think that evolution can be given a helping hand by a deity is to demonstrate a lacking of understanding of how evolution has happened.

I can't link right now - I will later. An embarrassingly large number of the US population do not accept evolution at all. Apparently, more are convinced that Obama is a Muslim than that we share a common ancestor with primates.

I'm not embarrassed and I'm an American. However I do believe in evolution. And God. And do not think that Obama is a Muslim. And would have voted for him regardless. :o

And yes I understand what you mean, obviously I've read the Origin of the Species and all that. But if you believe that evolution occurred, as in, we arose from single celled organisms, etc, if you believe that but also believe in Something who knew it would happen (for lack of a better term)...well, it doesn't mean you don't believe in evolution. To me, anyway.

I think it's not just embarrassing, it's positively shameful.

But there are, what, 250 million of you? Like any statistic, it becomes a bit meaningless when you try to apply it to individuals.

For balance, American freethinkers are just about the most brilliant, wonderful people on the planet.

Americans produced Breaking Bad and Johnny Depp.

Overall, I heart Americans.

Just think your science education is a bit shit. But so is ours.

I'm not an atheist and am still brilliant and wonderful. :o (I think "freethinker" is an odd term; I came to religion on my own and my regular churchgoing bemuses my parents, so my religious beliefs are a result of my own free thoughts.)

Just think your science education is a bit shit.

I'd have said it was the US religious education that was worse than in the UK - our kids nowadays are perhaps less likely to have come across some particular Bible story but are more likely to have had some attempt to given them some knowledge of religious beliefs other than those of their parents.

I don't know if my DD heard about Noah's ark at school - she did at home and OTOH also about the Greek flood myth ... reading that to her was the first time I'd come across it, which I found a rather shocking gap in my knowledge.

We don't have religious education in our public schools at all, so you could be right. :)

Yes - it's unconstitutional to have RE in state schools in the US. Most people are educated in this area in church, by their parents or by some bouffant haired evangelical nutter on the TV.

I do think that science eduction is lacking too - both sides of the pond. So few people really understand what science is and why we can trust it. This is part of the reason why bullshit flourishes, IMO.

Cheerful - "Free thinkers" goes back a long, long way and refers to people who use logic, reason and empiricism to determine the nature of reality. I know that lots of Christians claim that they use these tools too! but I have genuinely never seen any evidence of this. It all seems to come down to faith - which is the polar opposite of free thinking.

Literal LOL at bouffant haired evangelical. "The higher the hahr, the closer t'Jaysus!" :o That's actually what I tell my friends when they go overboard with the backcombing..."it is a bit Southern Baptist preacher's wife, might want to calm it down a bit."

I know that freethinkers is a really old term. I just personally find it odd and a bit twee, like "Brights". I guess, for me, it's irritating as I'm often told how sad it is that I have been indoctrinated, when I wasn't/haven't been. I was not raised as a religious person. But if people want to identify that way it's none of my nevermind. :)

It's a term used far more in the States than here, I think - as far as I can tell, more for groups than individuals.

Brights is yuk. Glad that never took off.

Atheist works for me.

I reckon the term 'freethinker' has to be judged by the context of the times in which it arose. In times when blasphemy was a crime, and in England you needed to be a member of the CofE (not even a Nonconformist Christian!) to enter a university, I doubt it was something to call yourself glibly. (unlike 'brights' which is decidedly )

Yes - but being an atheist in America is very different (in places) from being one here. Here, who cares? In the US, coming out as an atheist can be a very big deal, and you can risk your job, family and friends...obviously, depending on whereabouts in the country you are. So, I can see why they use the term.

Yes - more of a need to identify with a group. Same thing with 'united Unitarian churches' perhaps (sorry, wandering OT).

I was thinking something fairly similar the other day with regard to studying classics.

I know there were many, many things wrong with the traditional 'classical' education, but one thing it did give people (and I guess biblical education is a bit similar) was a sense of just how long we have been here and been making the same mistakes for! When I hear things like "oh it's fine, there's enough oil for at least another 200 years" I sometimes wonder whether the speaker realises what a phenomenally short period of time that is.

I guess I just don't understand why so many people call themselves Christian but don't know basic stories from the Bible (or maybe where they find the people for these surveys). It is like a Muslim not knowing about Ibrahim stoning the devil or a Hindu not knowing about Lord Rama building a bridge to Sri Lanka. I do know that other cultures and religions have flood stories, but they weren't asked to name the source, just whether this story was in the Bible or not.

Fwiw I have read the Bible from cover to cover and go to church and ds (4) knew where the story was from but I don't actually agree with faith schools - RE yes but selecting a child for a school on the basis of a child's parents' faith seems wrong (even though we are likely to benefit from the policy). I think that if people were clearer about what they believed then maybe there would be fewer assumptions about the role of for example faith schools. I think that some people maybe call themselves Christian when actually they mean that they believe that there is a God of some sort but don't necessarily follow any particular religion.

I do think that there are benefits of knowing stories from many different cultures and looking at the lessons they were wtitten to teach us. It also surprises me how little other people don't take in - as one of the pp said surveys sometimes say x% couldn't name the prime minister etc. Short of having a neurological condition it surprises me how many people seem to go through life with such little awareness of everyday things I would consider to be general knowledge.

Perhaps a bit of 'classics' - not the languages but the content - should be added to a Religion, Philosophy and Ethics course. Partly for similar reasons to the story behind this thread - providing cultural context.

Perhaps we should be looking a bit more at our own history and culture- the reasons behind why we celebrate christmas and easter perhaps and the widespread European cultures that marked these festivals- and i am not suggesting christianity here.

3bunnies - ITA. Especially 'I think that if people were clearer about what they believed then maybe there would be fewer assumptions about the role of for example faith schools'.

As far as I can see, a large proportion of our population are Apatheists but there's no box for that on the census.

Errol - hadn't heard the term apatheist before. I like the conversation between Ryan and Susan in the first urban dictionary definition:
www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=apatheist

It's perhaps a little more glib than my feeling on the matter, but I think I identify more with that than the spittle-flecked angries (of which there are too many on both sides).

Yes I think that some people would say that to say that they were atheists would be risking the wrath of a God if their was a God, but they don't believe in anything specifically themselves. They also haven't particularly looked at the issues so don't know what is in the Bible.

No, I'm happy to say I'm an atheist without fear of anyone/anything's wrath as it's obvious to me that there's no such thing as a god. It's nonsense and I can only assume people who do believe in such a thing in today's world have been in some way indoctrinated or are looking for something to believe in. As Mark Twain said, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so".

As for not knowing what's in the bible; I went to a school that was nominally CofE, did RS all the way through to GCSE (A grade), and am pretty happy with my general knowledge of Christianity and to a lesser degree, some other religions.

Not sure what you meant by 'not looked at the issues'. What issues?

I've not sat through a church service in decades, but it seems to me that churches don't teach the bible so much as quote passages to support a lesson. Probably the same passages repeated over the years.

I suspect for the vast majority of Christians in the UK their knowledge consists of those verses and little else.

Most people wouldn't have the time or inclination to research it on their own and instead just broadly support their denomination.

I was surprised though that people didn't know where the common stories such as Noah's Ark came from. I suppose they have just encountered them in children's books alongside Thomas the Tank Engine.

3bunnies - I totally agree. We have a very skewed idea of how important faith is to the general population & faith schools survive because of that. The reality is that there are very, very few genuine Christians in this country now - most of the people who ticked Christian on the census form admitted later that they don't believe in Jesus! They consider it a cultural thing - their parents were CofE, so they are.

I asked my DS last night where the story of Noah came from. "The Bible". Did he learn that at school? "No, that Steve Carrell film"!