Here is the last article for October blog entries. Please don't write responses to the previous articles for your October entry.
This article reports the results of a US survey which says that Christians don't know much about their religion or about others' religions. There are a few explanations. Are they convincing to you? Why do you think this is the case? You can also follow a link and take a short version of the quiz. Do the questions seem appropriate to you? What is missing? What questions would you put on a quiz aimed at Europeans or even more specifically Slovaks?
What should be the role of religion and religious instruction in schools? Do students get enough education about other religions (and about the majority religion) here in Slovakia? Is it important enough that it should be made a required subject for all students? Is it possible to teach it in a fair and critical manner? What are some reasons why people should know more about religion than they do? If it is not important, why not?
Although I was raised as a protestant and chose to be an atheist, I still know a thing or two about christianity. America is a very religious country and a majority of the people living there claim to be Christian. There’s nothing wrong with that but they don’t take it seriously anymore. They follow all the rules (at least they claim to do so) and they go to church when they have to, but it seems to me that they are doing these things just to please someone other than them. It looks like it doesn’t matter to them that much and that they do it just to prove to themselves that they believe in something like a proper american citizen should. It’s already a stereotype, children walking into Sunday school with their best clothes on or the whole family in the church, praying together. I’m not saying there aren’t those who truly believe in God, and who value their christianity and adress it with great respect. But I think those are hard to come by these days.
ReplyDeleteIn the question of atheists knowing more about christianity than Christians, I think it’s fairly logical. As they have already mentioned in the article, atheists are often people who had put great effort into thinking over their beliefs, and the positives and negatives of being, and not being a Christian. Therefore they know enough about christianity to claim that they don’t believe in any of it.
On the other hand the feeling I got from the quiz was really dissapointing. There was far too much unimportant information and it lacked the rather more basic questions which are far more important than ‘’What was what was Joseph Smith's religion?’’ kind of questions. In my opinion when you truly believe in something you don’t need to know every last detail and ounce of it’s history by heart. You just need to know a few major things that are essential for you. Furthermore if they would propose the same quiz in any other country I still think the results might be just as well the same as in America, because ignorance is not just a local problem.
In Slovakia we lack the knowledge about other religions just as much as people in America do. But there’s not much we can do about it because making it a permanent and mandatory subject in school doesn’t seem right. You can’t push onto preople what they don’t need to learn. Also there would be a big problem with choosing the right person to teach this subject. There is always a certain point of view, a stance the teacher takes towards a certain religion and this stance can affect the opinions of his/her pupils in many ways.
Mária Dudáková
This U.S. survey is very interesting. It shows us, that atheist know the most about religions generally. I think that the theory behind atheists’ high score is true. People who are more educated and searched for more information about religions often give up their own religion, as they see that some of the sayings just don’t match with reality. On the other hand, people believing in one religion often don’t care about other religions and even about their own, as their belief is as much as they need. However, the highest score on questions about Christianity got the Mormons followed by Evagelicals. This is understandable, as both of these are Christian religions. It is unexplainable though, that forty-five per cent of Catholics didn’t know that church believes communion wafers and water represent the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Forty-two per cent of Christian quiz-takers couldn’t name the first book of Bible. This shows us, that even though they scored the highest on questions about their religion, they still lack a lot of basic information.
ReplyDeleteAs I took the quiz I realized that most of the questions make the quiz suitable also for a survey in Europe or other continents. There were only two questions, which I could not answer and these were about teaching religious education in the States. However I think that this test was just too short to make a reliable statistics and more questions are needed for better results. For example if I had to choose questions for a religion-quiz, I would put on some questions from the history of the religion. This would not only show us, what everything people know about their religion, but also if they understand the true meaning and history of their faith. I think it is very important that people fully understand their faith, because as written in the text, they often make decisions upon their beliefs. A faith is also a motivation for most of the believers to act in a good way with good manners. Therefore it is also important to educate our children about religions. I also think kids should be informed about religions generally and be free to choose their own.
In Slovakia, the religious-education is not very popular amongst the students. However I know a bunch of people who are religious and took religious-education in primary school. But the reason why they did that was that their parents forced them to do so. They had no true faith, still they had to go to church every week. This is bad, because when people force their kids to believe in something, the kids often hate it and will stop believing soon. Parents should be more liberal about the interests of their kids and if they want them to believe in their religion, they should explain it to them in a concise and clear way.