Posts tagged religion

Text 2
Notes
Posted 10 months ago

Quote of the Day II - Guilt by Association

Now you know how it feels, Ms. Geller. When the terrorist is a Christian—in his own words, a “Crusader” for “Christendom”—and when the preacher to whom he has been linked is you, you suddenly discover the injustice of group blame and guilt by association. The citations you didn’t create, the intermediaries you didn’t recognize, the transactions you didn’t know about, the violent interpretations you didn’t condone—these exonerating facts suddenly matter.

William Saletan via Slate (Christian Terrorism: If Muslims are responsible for Islamic terrorism, are Muslim-bashers responsible for the massacre in Norway?)

Link
Posted 1 year ago

Atheists Outdo Believers in Survey on Religion

Pew Research study suggests a majority of devout Americans know little about world religions, and some can’t answer basic questions about their own faith. Many Americans also have dramatic misperceptions about religion in public life, particularly in regards to public school classrooms — an interesting statistic considering the amount of political activism that gets fired up around this issue.

I’m not going to speculate as to why atheists / agnostics outscored followers of every other faith on this survey, but speaking as one of those myself, I’m glad to see it. A frequent criticism leveled at nonbelievers is that we simply don’t understand what we’re talking about when we talk about religion; in my experience, however, that’s very rarely the case. Any study that helps to challenge that stereotype is a welcome development.