The news that the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life conducted a survey and found that Americans are woefully uninformed about religion is not really news. Not to me, anyway. Whenever I want to find out what Americans know about anything, I conduct my survey of one, quizzing the only American who can’t ignore or refuse my demand for answers – Me.
And when I ask myself what I know, I never fail to be amazed at how clueless American are.
I took a short version of the survey and had just one wrong answer, but that was after I had read 2 full articles about the results that recounted in breathless detail the remarkably wrong choices other people had made. Yes, most of the questions are multiple choice.
But the survey is flawed anyway.
In the first place, it is only a survey of people who –
Will answer the phone even though caller ID says “Pew Forum”
Will agree to participate in a survey
When told, “it’s about religion,” will stay on the line.
This is a very small and distinguished group of Americans.
Plus, the questions are clearly lacking the one thing Americans need to enjoy a good survey – joke answers that can be chosen to distract from the disturbing truth that I don’t know the right answer.
Here are a few from the survey that I’ve taken the liberty to improve.
Which Bible figure is most closely associated with leading the Exodus from Egypt?
Job
Elijah
Moses
Abraham
Charlton Heston
Which of the following is NOT one of the Ten Commandments?
Do not commit adultery
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
Do not steal
Keep the Sabbath holy
Thou Shalt Not Ask Trick Questions.
When does the Jewish Sabbath begin?
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Exactly seven days after the last one.
Is Ramadan…?
The Hindu festival of lights
A Jewish day of atonement
The Islamic holy month
A Rama Lama Ding Dong.
Which of the following best describes the Catholic teaching about the bread and wine used for Communion?
The bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
The bread and wine are symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
It’s not the bread or wine, it’s the cheese that will really turn on you.
In which religion are Vishnu and Shiva central figures?
Islam
Hinduism
Taoism
Unitarianism
According to rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court, is a public school teacher permitted to lead a class in prayer, or not?
Yes, permitted
No, not permitted
Yes, but only if she has a megaphone so they can hear her in the back row of the auditorium.
And the one essay question was a stumper.
What was Mother Teresa’s religion?
All I know about Mother Teresa is that she did everything she could to help desperately poor people. A person like that probably doesn’t have a lot of time for religion.
Even the New York Times struggled with this one. In their first online report, they spelled Mother T.’s name wrong.
Every so often there is a new survey that reveals how surprisingly little we the people know about (fill in the topic). In case you didn’t glean it from everything I’ve said so far, my self-esteem is a little damaged by this latest one. What I really want is a survey that we can all succeed at, so I can start to feel better about ourself.
But what topic would allow us to hit one out of the park?
Grammar?
Music?
Sports?
Snack Food?
How can we begin to feel smart again?
Trail Baboon 
got 100% (i confess i guessed on the last one) but i can’t say that test is about religion – it’s more about cultures, it seems. and it was too easy. for example, i think a better question would be:
1. what term describes the belief that the bread and wine become the body and blood?
a transcendental meditation
b antidisistablishmentarianism
c transubstantiation
d transactional transfer
i like yours better, Dale. how can we be smarter? be more observant. don’t think that will happen.
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Well, I am impressed with your quiz! All those big words are spelled rite.
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To get smarter we need to drink more goat milk.
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Rise and Shine Babooners:
I don’t have a clue of what to do to feel smart again. Recently I just feel overwhelmed a lot, which flies in the face of feeling smart. And I’m the one that spawned the crustaceous Kohlrabi (rather than cruciferous) which does not garner points for “smart.” I read an article this week that says that walking for exercise makes you feel smarter than Yoga. But that is my only thought on this topic. I’m not sure that a quiz on religion is a great measure of smartness, though. So many people don’t know much about that or have any interest in the topic. And many people who are enthusiastic about religion, alienate me with a self-righteous approach. And I go to church! ‘Nuf said. Dangerous topic.
To the gym.
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remembering and being smart aren’t necessarily a pair, Jacque. i like crustaceous kohlrabi – describes that hard, outer shell that one needs to strip (with teeth, if can’t find the stolen knife as you said). cruciferous (meaning “cross-shaped” now that we are talking about religion) describes the flower on all of those types of vegetables and we don’t usually let them go to flower (well, some of us do, she said with a blush). i hear broccoli-gone-to-flower tastes sweet – the person who told me this put the flowers on pizza.
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I would say that knowing and understanding religion are two different things.
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Nice distinction, Anna.
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I guess I don’t have a lot of trouble with feeling smart, I just find I get very little respect for it. After all, how smart can I be if I don’t have just pots and pots of money and all the stuff that makes for greatness (iPod, flat screen tv, new clothes, big house, blah, blah blah).
As to being the inspiration for a great blog, Jacque, I’m going to take Garrison’s line on this and say that it is sometimes better to be entertaining than correct.
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It was a lot of fun wasn’t it! I felt quite entertained yesterday.
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Greetings! I like to feel smart (and a bit smug) when I watch those silly “man-on-the-street” type of short bits — I don’t even know what show it’s from — but they ask a fairly easy question of someone on the street. Of course, I know the answer, but the morons they’re asking don’t have a clue.
When I feel like a bad mother, wife or housekeeper, I like watching “Married with Children” or something like that to remember that I actually do OK. Why is this need to feel superior so strong?
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Joanne: I won’t answer that last question, but the show you reference is Jay Leno, specifically his “Jaywalking” series. It scares me when he asks some bimbo who the US fought in World War II and she guesses “Canada.”
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ok then which war was it where we fought canada?
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I once asked my mother what significant thing happened in American history in 1776. Her best guess: “Was it the War of 1812?”
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i think of jessie venturas line he stole from stalin that religion is a sham and only for the weak minded. speaking of weak minded i wonder about jessie and this years crop of candidates.
religion is a good topic. i went to catholic school and learned all the rote stuff they offer there so i did ok on the test and i think if the teachers would have offered the smile answer as an option it would have made life better.
to feel smart i recite the alphabet. i get it right every time.
when talking sports i think of my son who is a sports trivia guy who knows every atheletes college record, where he placed in the draft and who he replaced in the lineup. amazing
art, my art buddies know the history and the artists to group together the museums and galleries that are worth knowing and the ins and outs of the biz
when talking grammer i talk good enough bit i don’t feel smart
music , the morning show left me a mile wide and an inch deep. i know what i like and thats all that really matters. hey loudan wainright is coming to hopkins in a small wonderful venue in november. had a choice of 10 row center or 2nd row left yesterday. go get em. 23rd i think.
kids sales food alternative medicine…open my mouth and remove all doubt i am a novice compared to the knowledgable. but i find that as long as you don’t profess to be a know it all people are pretty forgiving. we are all in the same boat. karass and granfalloon are grouped together for a reason. stamp collectors, beer connoisseurs and vegans unite. not all together but with your own kind so i guess its not unite its divide isn’t it.
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Tim: your lower case rants are just fascinating as they wander from topic to topic dropping pearls of wisdom and confusing statements in an unpredictable sweet flow. I can learn so much from you. karass and franfalloon? are they a kind of cheese? “stamp collectors, beer connoisseurs and vegans unite. not all together but with your own kind so i guess its not unite its divide isn’t it.” Only you could have written that line, and I mean that as praise.
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stream of consciousness!
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granfaloon and karass are vonnegut groupings of people with similar interests forming groups to feel engaged.
A granfalloon, in the fictional religion of Bokononism (created by Kurt Vonnegut in his 1963 novel Cat’s Cradle), is defined as a “false karass.” That is, it is a group of people who outwardly choose or claim to have a shared identity or purpose, but whose mutual association is actually meaningless. from wikipwedia
thanks for the comments. its not always succunct but its consistantly inconsistant
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Clearly, it is time for me to re-read Vonnegut. Hermann Hesse too (they are temporally linked for me, as is John Updike, but don’t need to re-read him so much).
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three of my fav’s
i was in a high school english class where i was obviously was not enjoying the typical 10 or 11 grade screwing around. the teacher offered me the opportunity to do independant study for the course and write my own cirriculum i chose hesse and he wanted me to do twian or some american author faulknr, tennesee williams, and i fought like hell to get to do hesse. it was perfect fort me at the time. when else do you get to read 10 or 12 books by te same guy do a report and tie them all together. it was great. like doing a doctoral thesis in 11th grade. vonnegut was a similar deal over a two year period on my own 5 years later. updike was less addicitve to me but i like his ability to transport. and the wordsmithing is a treat. got to meet updike. he was a nice man.
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I confess, I guessed the answer to the last question of the survey…
Some people would say hang around stupid people to make yourself feel smarter, but I’ve always found the opposite to be better–hang around smart people enough and you pick up all kinds of knowledge, plus the conversation is much more interesting. Barb is right, intelligence and memory aren’t the same thing. My roommate is as intelligent as I am, but she has the worst memory of anyone I know, so I’m her external backup RAM disk and portable dictionary/thesaurus. I’ll be getting defragged and rebound one of these days.
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Fun way of describing it! My brain is a RAM drive too, but every year the Memory part seems to gray out and the Random Access part becomes more of an issue.
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watch out . sometimes that defragging leaves aftereffects
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I just want a USB port installed behind my left ear so I can insert thumb-drives with situation-specific data (e.g., names of people I know, art history, the name of that actor who was in that show back in the 80s…).
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Great idea!
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I’d like that, but mostly so I could take stuff OUT and make some room. Can’t remember my current cell number (never call it), but my childhood phone number-684-2425.
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In the movie The Devil Wears Prada, that was Anne Hathaway’s role–a living thumb drive.
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they have that but you need the smart phone or ipad to access the stuff
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I stay feeling smart by skimming though the books that my husband brings home from all the libraries he frequents. He is the sort of reader who has several books going at the same time. The upside of this is that he is really well informed on any number number of topics like philosophy, history, biography, and literature. The down side is that our home is full to the rafters with library books. He goes to the public and college libraries in our town, and also has library cards for the North Dakota State Library and the Bismarck Public Library. Its sort of a compulsion with him, I’m afraid, and he renews the books quite often. If he really likes them, he buys used copies of them. Lately he’s been reading Karl Jaspers General Psychopathology, two volumes of stories by Melville, and The Western Impact upon Tsarist Russia.
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the radio fuse popped on my car the other day and i don’t know wehre to find the little box with all the fuses in it. i will get it today or tomorrow but the punchline is that with the radio off the brain turns on. i never sit in silence anymore. if i do fir a second i have a thought and jump up to act on it. email, phone calls, research, i am feeling overwhelmed and the radio turned off is a sure sign things have gone too far. its like listening to silence.
overloaded circuits. why smart people underperform is a fascinating look at too much syndrome here in 2010. check it out. google “overloaded circuits” hallowell is the author
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Renee – tell your hubby he is not alone. I also am a “serial reader” – currently 21 books out from the library and 33 on my request list. I even have my library card number memorized for keeping my account straight online! Of course, I also have to have a spreadsheet of what books are not finished when they have to be returned to the library and what page I was on, so by the time I get the book checked out again, I’ll remember where I was. Sad!
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If only he would keep them in one area of the house!
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wow, a spreadsheet. I only wish I were that organized about it.
I am the mom who was looking at a cd-rom in a recorded book, and managed to return my son’s math workbook on disk instead.
I’m sure the teacher believes it, because who could make up a story like that?
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You mean EVERYONE doesn’t have their library card number memorized? I still remember my undergrad student ID number from the College of St. Catherine, and never mind how long ago that was, but I can’t seem to remember my license plate number.
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I was severely ticked when I was forced into getting a new library card a few years back. I had my bar code number memorized! I didn’t want to learn a new one! Well, that new one is now memorized, too…along with my library hold/pickup number.
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i feel that way about my drivers license number. i had it it was great now i have a 666 in the middle and cant remember it at all. and then i wonder why my life is going to hell
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Good Morning to All,
I think we are smart when we realize we are not very smart. The world is in terrible shape and I think that much of it may be due to the actions of people who think they were being smart, such as some of the people we have elected and people they have taken on as their advisors. It certainly isn’t smart to not learn from our mistakes as seems to be happening a lot these days. No one has all the answers and it is better to be humble and not assume some smart person can solve all our problems. Okay, I am being kind of a “smarty pants” myself by saying the the answer is to be humble. What is the other part of that phrase – “it’s hard to be humble when …………………….” ?
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Are you thinking of the old country favorite:
OH Lord, it’s hard to humble, when you’re perfect in every way.
I can’t wait to look in the mirror, I get better lookin’ each day.
To know me is to love me, I must be one hell of a man.
Oh Lord, it’s hard to be humble, I’m doin’ the best that I can.
(see, I need that little flash drive thing to download stuff like this out of prime memory space in the brain-do have the library card number in there though!)
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Thanks. That’s it. Great recall or download. When I look in the mirror it is best if I don’t look too closely or maybe I should take a close look which would make it easier for me to be humble.
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And here I thought Vishnu was the central figure in the religion of Vishnuverheer, which is practiced by vacationers and post card senders. Goes to show what I know….
Dale, did the quiz mention anything about Eckankar? Which, apparently, has their headquarters in Chanhassen. I’m told that their church is an architectural marvel and that designers and architects come from all around the world to see it.
How can we begin to feel smart again? Slip the clutch and engage the cerebrum.
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Like! Slip the clutch and engage the cerebrum – fabulous!
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OK you guys… I just about snorted coffee after that one….
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We had gone to Eckankar for a while (too long of a drive) and their building, church and grounds are absolutely gorgeous. The inside of the church is amazing and has a very special feeling to it. Plus, they serve excellent drinks and snacks after service as I recall …
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I knew someone that was Eckankar when I was in sales. I called her once and asked if she was busy. She said, “I’m just cleaning my desk and my soul.” I stammered for a second and said, “Geez, it sounds like you’re ~really~ busy…” She laughed and explained that it was an Eckankar exercise to connect the tasks you’re doing physically to doing them spiritually as well. I thought that was a nice idea…a nice symmetry to it.
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TGITH kinda beat me too it – but I was thinking that they key to allowing us to feel smarter, or at least to get us smarter, is to quit asking what are essentially multiple choice trivia questions and ask some good essay questions that require comparisons and creative thinking (not just, “who is Vishnu,” more along the lines of, “if Vishnu and Allah were at a dinner party, would they sit next to Thor, and what period of art might they discuss?”). But maybe that’s my liberal arts degree talking…
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which avatar of Vishnu?
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Your choice.
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Dale, your God quiz reminded me of a story my grandfather told me. His father was raised in a very religious German/Dutch baptist family, but was never a firm believer. He knew his bible well, though. Greatgrandfather married a woman from a similar and even more religious family. They had 14 children, and my greatgrandfather took delight in coaching his children to ask their very religious maternal grandfather embarassing bible questions-questions related to sexual references in the Song of Solomon, questions about the personal failings of the prophets- just to make his father-in-law rant and rave.
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teeheehee
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How do we become smarter? I have a two-word answer: Public Radio. That’s the church I attend (seven days a week . . . I’m pretty devout). Unfortunately, one of my favorite “ministers” was just let go, which troubles my heart but doesn’t make me abandon my faith.
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i hear they’re getting a new pastor. the old one wants to service the congregation as an independent contractor
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Super! Nobody does it so good as he.
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i was talking about bill kling.
i agree with you 200% on dale
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Morning!
Crazy day here… just skimmed over tim slipping the cerebellum and goat milk….
Huh?
Yeah, back at you all later! Have a good one!
Oh, ‘How do I feel smart’? Heck- I don’t know… I’ll let you know when I get a break how smart I feel…
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I’m back to say just because I’m learning a lot today doesn’t necessarily make me smart….
And I need a nap.
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I can’t think of anything intelligent to add at the moment, so I’ll just add this:
There’s an interesting quiz you can take to find out what religion you are (close to), if you’re not sure… http://www.beliefnet.com/Entertainment/Quizzes/BeliefOMatic.aspx
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Is Blevins looking down at us from the heavens? I think he knows the answer.
Sometimes I think I’m pretty smart. Then life confronts me with the truth.
I’m a hippy folkie musician nurse working with gun-toting rednecks for the last 14 years. No – not very smart.
I love to read and think. I love music and poetry and art. I love the natural world. I enjoy reading this blog and trying to figure out what tim means. I enjoy sharing my responses with all of you. I love laughing so hard that coffee comes out of my nose. But, if I was really smart, I’d figure out a way to bring back the Morning Show. The Morning Show always made me feel smart.
I’ll keep reading. I’m pretty sure you’ll figure it out as a Congress. Glad to be here with you guys.
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Good Afternoon from the colorful UP!
Since I started college, I have not felt smart. Even now, 2 years after finishing, I still do not feel smart. To make myself feel smart…sometimes…I play Trivial Pursuit. It doesn’t always help (oftentimes I lose by a lot, haha), but it does make me realize just how much I don’t know, and I’m fine with that. I don’t need to know everything, I just need to be able to function.
When I’m feeling particularly dumb, I read a book. It doesn’t matter what kind, just something to get my mind off of what I don’t know. I’ll admit, I enjoy romances, teen fiction/fantasy, and sci fi, but every now and then, I need something a little…more. That’s when I’ll pick up Jane Austen. Wading through the flowery language (and understanding it), makes me feel many times smarter than I did before I started reading. I got my older brother hooked on Jane Austen by lending him Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. After reading that, he went back and read Pride and Prejudice as it was originally written. Discussing books/music/movies/politics with my brothers often helps me feel smarter as well. I enjoy being able to discuss things and not end up in a wrestling match…unlike when we were younger 😉
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two years is nothin alana. you’re a pup. read on.
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as i reread it it sounds dismissive allana, i meant enjoy your youth and the time that you have to become old a wise (or at least old). when i was 24 i felt full growed and it is hard to explain how different it is seeing the world through young adult eyes vs tainted eperienced suspicious eyes of wisdom. i love the thought of trying stuff the first time but it gets further away form the first time i’ve done lots of stuff. go slow and savor the small moments. they add up and they are the ones that make you smile. by the way if you ever want to get you ass kicked at trivial pursuits by someone new let me know. say hi to the dog.
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I feel really smart when I’ve been able to teach or share something with someone, and they get it. In a lot of cases it requires finding that “teachable moment”, and (esp. with people you live with) takes an enormous amount of patience. But I love it when I do find that moment when the person is open, the “aha” look. I also love it when I am in that open space, and feel that’s when I am truly most intelligetn.
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Ah, a typo, just so I don’t take myself too seriously… 🙂
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Thank God for this blog.
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What she said.
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You get the Daily Banana Award for that!
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Amen.
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i think we thank dale for this blog
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Sorry for the late posting-a round trip to Grand Rapids took me away from the keyboards.
What fascinated me in the NYT article was that the people who did the best on the quiz were athiests and jews. Too bad I’m not smart enough to know why
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I found this interesting: responding to the question, “What was Joseph Smith’s religion?” 93% of Mormons answered correctly.
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the 7% who didn’t don’t know who is buried in grants tomb either
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