Atheists Know More Than You!

When I say "you," I'm referring to the whole lot of you who are Jewish and Christian and whatever else you might call yourself. That is, according to a Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life study, reported on in today's New York Times.

Mad props to those who identify as Atheist/Agnostic. But what explains why the A/A group seems to know so much more about religion than those who identify themselves with and profess it? I've got a simple answer, and no offense to my good buddies who are A/A, but I find most atheists and agnostics to be fairly, well, defensive about their stance. In my experience, they know a lot more than anyone else because they have to or need to in order to stand up in arguments of why exactly being religious is wrong, ridiculous, or just straight pointless. Without a religion to dwell on, knowledge on world religions is pulled from every corner of the earth in order to understand and explain away its ideas. Maybe that's a radical view, but from my experience, you have to be educated about something if you really want to argue it. Religious individuals are firm in their faith or beliefs set and often don't question anything because belief and faith are enough; in the end, there's no need to defend anything. It's a sort of false confidence that often leaves religious individuals befuddled when asked about basic big questions of their religion. When I say this, of course, I'm referring to everyone: Jews, Christians, Muslims, you name it.

Here are some of the surprising (and embarrassing) statistics with my thoughtful commentary:

+ Fifty-three percent of Protestants could not identify Martin Luther as the man who started the Protestant Reformation. This is just ... wow. This is really sad. It shows you how much people in the modern period pay homage to the big dogs of the religious past. 

+ Forty-five percent of Catholics did not know that their church teaches that the consecrated bread and wine in holy communion are not merely symbols, but actually become the body and blood of Christ. Seriously? Really? I wonder if this alters how any Catholics feel about the rite/ritual. It also reminds me of the amusing (to me anyway) TV spot on some thief who stole the body and blood of Christ from a church in Pennsylvania. The people quoted in the spot kept saying "Someone stole the body! How could someone steal the body?!" Which just made me giggle. Anyone who just turned on their TV would assume that someone picked up a body from the morgue or something.

+ Forty-three percent of Jews did not know that Maimonides, one of the foremost rabbinical authorities and philosophers, was Jewish. Oh wow. Really? Maimonides! Thirteen Principles of Faith! Probably the greatest mind of his time! This is embarrassing, and probably relates to a lack of education on the big dogs of Jewish history and memory. Shame shame shame my yidden!

+ The question about Maimonides was the one that the fewest people answered correctly. But 51 percent knew that Joseph Smith was Mormon, and 82 percent knew that Mother Teresa was Roman Catholic. Okay, so maybe I can dismiss the Maimonides thing. Mad props to the people who answered it correction (I wonder which group managed to get it right the most?). Glad to know that so many are familiar with Joseph Smith and Mother Teresa. It shows how far back our religious memories go -- they pretty much stop pre-1800 it appears. 


(Interestingly, they didn't get enough Muslims to really be able to say how their knowledge compared. This seems really, really bizarre.)

Once Upon a Time, I Was Agnostic.

Let's get personal. I don't know that I've blogged about this specifically before, but I figure now's a good of time as any. I was inspired to write it after all the hullabaloo re: an earlier post on a certain rabbi who shall remain nameless.

When I was a kid, I didn't go to church. My parents weren't big believers (so far as I could tell), and we were raised on the Golden Rule (do unto others, etc.) and I got a small Precious Moments bible at one of my early birthdays. The only church I ever went to was with friends. This time of year, I'd be gearing up for Vacation Bible School, full of home-made ice cream and bible tales that I never retained. These characters, these Marks and Pauls and Johns and the Jesus guy ... well, I didn't believe.

I was a child, and I didn't believe. Jesus, to me, was a mythical creature, a fake person, a non-existent fabrication. A man to color in a coloring book. Religion didn't exist for me beyond something to do during the summer, and I never spoke to G-d, I spoke to my dead grandparents who I had never met and the stars in the sky (Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight ...). And then?

When I was about 10 years old, I experienced an incredibly scary crisis of reality: I realized that we die. I realized that at some point, life stops, and what comes after it I didn’t know. For two weeks I was awake every night in my day bed, the light of the moon peeking in my curtains, and I cried. I felt silly in the morning, and I never did tell my parents about it. I didn’t ask them. I felt as though I should know what happens when we die. But all I could picture in my mind was darkness, pitch black nothingness. I would talk to my grandparent’s (my father’s parents who I never knew) in the dark, asking them to ask G-d for a sign of what I needed to know, what death was about. And then, for some reason, I went to bed without tears. I’d realized that death didn’t matter, and what came after it certainly didn’t matter. Our life here – both how we live it and how we choose to live it – were what I realized are most important. Suddenly I understood. (From my conversion essay.)

This was when I started believing. At least, that's when I remember believing. In something bigger than us. There was something, someone, sitting somewhere, guiding our thoughts and our hopes and our deeds, and that was all that made sense. The here and now being so important, someone had to be expecting something of us, right?

I spent the next nearly 10 years floating in and out of Christianity, clubs and getaways in high school geared toward "being saved," and anticipating the "big reveal." I was waiting for the moment when I'd believe all the stuff I was being told, that I had been told for so long. But it never came. In high school, I decided it was all a sham and I couldn't do it anymore. I declared myself an agnostic -- I believed in something, I just didn't know what it was, but I felt it at my core. I couldn't define it, no matter how hard I tried. I was agnostic, I denied praxis entirely, and maintained that there was something, but that was it.

One day, I outlined my principals of belief. One Higher Power (HaShem?), a focus on this life, living for the good, doing good things and not focusing on only doing them for a someday entrance into eternal life, wherever or whatever that was, being more conscious of the world around me, and figuring it out. I was on the search. That thing at my core was yearning, hungry, trying to crawl out of its cocoon, and as I grew, it grew, and in the early years of college, over a conversation with a friend, I discovered what it was; it was Judaism, haShem, the Jewish people.

I was once a non-believer, then I was some kind of believer, I was a Christian faker at one point (and I gave that up pretty quick, believe you me, I felt like I was misleading my friends), I was another kind of believer, and then I found what I was looking for. Will I always be so healthy in my relationship with HaShem? No. No one is. We're all imperfect. If we were perfect living in a perfect world then I'm pretty sure Mashiach would be enjoying this coffee with me right about now. The point is to search and inquire and ask questions in the hopes of developing a more well-rounded and clear answer to all of the BIG QUESTIONS out there, including whether HaShem is, was, will be, and whether Judaism is the right response to an individual's neshama.

I have no direct line to the answers, but this works for me, even as an ever-curious academic analyzing tough and contradictory topics within academia and Judaism. But the inquiring and searching -- Judaism DEMANDS it! I like to think of myself as one in a long line of individuals who have been able to inquire, think, and insist on exploring while also believing, wholeheartedly, in this big, great, amazing thing we call Judaism.

I don't think it's easy for everyone, but I'm proud that I can seek and believe, that I can ask and brim with faithfulness. My academic inquiries, truth be told, have brought me closer to my belief. Maybe I'm an anomaly.