Friday, October 1, 2010

Penn Jillette: Atheists Are Better Educated in General


September 28, 2010 on MSNBC

12 comments:

  1. <span>Reading and hearing this at different places, I am stunned at how easy these questions are. It's really very easy and basic questions!</span>

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  2. If every question has 3 possible answers on average, then you'd expect to get about 33% correct if you answer purely at random. Makes you wonder how Hispanic Catholics only got 36%...

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  3. It just goes to show that  most religious aren't really that religious.

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  4. Oh they're pretty religious, they're just ignorant of their own teachings.

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  5. If you look at the breakdown of the data on the Pew site, you can see that the results hold even when they controlled for education level.  So while it's true that educated people are more likely to be atheist, Penn's wrong that that necessarily skews the data.  We seem to know more than equivalently educated theists.  (This does not surprise me.)

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  6. One way to do it, would be to offer alternative choices that include common misconceptions. That way you get an effect that could lead people to be more likely to choose the wrong answer than a pure chance guess.

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  7. To reinforce Stu's point about the results being driven by educational level, I'll point out that the Pew survey threw in a few questions on general knowledge of non-religious topics.  The atheists did best on those, too.  So the interesting issue (missed by the mainstream media reports) now becomes one of causality.

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  8. LoL! I love how Penn is happily milking this cow. What atheist/agnostic isn't cracking up over this whole issue? Are we now going to see pissed-off religious folks start forcing their children to learn general facts about all the major religions? I seriously hope so...

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  9. LOL I got a 100%! Awesome! I really did de-convert after I had time to actually study the Bible so I think the claim that reading and studying the Bible makes Atheists is very correct.

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  10. I'm always amazed at how stupid Christians are.Truth is the only thing that sets one free.

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  11. I agree with Penn that atheist are generally more educated than religious people, but I am always skeptical of how these surveys are conducted.  I wonder HOW this survey was conducted? Was it done at a well respected university? Would the results be different if the survey was conducted at a Walmart parking lot?

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  12. If I had a book which I believed explained the universe, was an infallible moral guide and guaranteed an eternity of bliss, I'd read it. It's amazing how many christians have just had the nice bits explained to them when they were kids and are happy to leave it at that.

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