Lexis,

I thank you for your well-written piece in this week’s Journal. I would like to take this opportunity to provide a different perspective on the results of the resent Pew Research poll on America’s knowledge of basic religious facts.

As you say in your article, it is interesting “that the people who knew the most were atheists and agnostics.” I had a different reaction to these results. It should come as no surprise that the average atheist or agnostic knows more about religion than the average believer. As Dave Silverman, president of American Atheists says in the same New York Times article you cite, “Atheism is an effect of that [religious] knowledge, not a lack of knowledge.”

The more one learns about religion, where it came from, who wrote the stories in the Bible and Koran, how these books were edited and put together, the history of religious conquest and (most importantly) what these books actually say, it is not hard to see why one would reject religion altogether. The fairytales and superstitions found in these books reflect the values, behaviors and primitive understanding of the world held by the barbaric nomads who first conjured them up. It is beneath human beings of the 21st century to subscribe to the ignorant, homophobic, misogynistic ramblings of these desert morons.

You also say, “It is shocking how many people don’t know some of the most basic, fundamental questions of their own faith,” adding later, “I just can’t understand the concept of wanting to follow a religion without bothering to learn about it in the first place.” This brings us to the subject of tradition, which is one of the reasons I believe most people still follow a religion. I would argue that most (not all) people who believe do so because they were taught to by their parents when they were very young. As such, they don’t think to (or refuse to) question or challenge those beliefs later on in life and pass them on to their children and so on and so forth. The only reason they continue to believe in this nonsense is because they’ve been doing it for countless generations and because tradition is comforting.

You add, “I’m not saying people who want to identify themselves as Christian or Jewish should read the Bible or the Torah in their entirety before committing, but at least do some reading.” This is a terrible suggestion. Why shouldn’t one read the entire Bible or Torah before committing to beliefs as consequential and life-changing as those found in those books? It would be like reading only part of the Communist Manifesto before becoming a die-hard Marxist. Although, on the other hand, if people did read the entire Bible or Torah (and kept an open-mind) they would most likely be repulsed by the instances of divinely commanded slaughter, genocide and slavery and would hopefully become atheists.

You conclude by writing, “Like everything else in this world, one must always be able to back up their beliefs. Religion should be no exception.” This is in essence the thesis of my article from September 22 and I am in complete agreement with you. There is a difference, however, between being able to recall basic facts about one’s beliefs and being able to provide good reasons for believing in the first place. Simply put, there is no evidence or reason to believe in the doctrines of any of these religions. Therefore, even if one were to master the basic facts of a religion, that doesn’t give them a good reason to believe in it. In fact, it does the exact opposite, it gives them every reason not to believe in the antiquated, inhumane doctrines of the world’s religions.

Louis Rocco
President, Suffolk University Coalition of Reason