By Rachel Zoll:
“A new survey of Americans’ knowledge of religion found that atheists, agnostics, Jews and Mormons outperformed Protestants and Roman Catholics in answering questions about major religions, while many respondents could not correctly give the most basic tenets of their own faiths.”
And below that:
“Not surprisingly, those who said they attended worship at least once a week and considered religion important in their lives often performed better on the overall survey. However, level of education was the best predictor of religious knowledge. The top-performing groups on the survey still came out ahead even when controlling for how much schooling they had completed.”
I think that religions, for the sake of numbers, have for a long time dumbed-down the message of their religion. This has made it easier for them to argue about the “truth” of their faith, because so many recognize what can only be true and common sensical. This apealled to those in need of appeasement, in need of quick and simple answers, who believed in the existence of simple answers in this and so many other things.
Those that are most aware and inquisitive, I think, end up learning much more about their faith and those of others, and ended up atheists, or, in the case of exemplars, retained a form of their faith, a form that might not even be recognized by his or her former colleagues, but nonetheless, a more honest and valuable alternative than the rest.