“Atheism is an effect of that knowledge, not a lack of knowledge. I gave a Bible to my daughter. That’s how you make atheists.”
The quote is funny, but I disagree. If Mr. Silverman gave his daughter a Bible and said, "G'wan now. Read it!" then, to be blunt, he's an idiot. Have you ever tried to read the Bible? The Old Testament is a mish-mash of multiple takes on the same incidents (I mean, there are two creation stories... two flood stories...) and the gospels are like reading midrash of the Old Testament, and letters that people attributed to Paul weren't really Paul's in some cases... in other words, it's not the best cold read in the world.
I think what the survey really shows is how woefully ignorant people are of their own religious history, and how happy the Church has been to keep them that way. When I was a child growing up in the Episcopal Church, there was no encouragement from clergy to ask questions. If I did ask a question, I was told I was asking "the wrong question." (whatever that meant!) Bishop Gene Robinson, before he became part of the episcopate, was an exception. He delighted in being asked by this punkish teenager, "Where did God come from?" Answer: "I don't know, but I believe any way."
Now, as an adult, I ask lots of questions. And nobody's afraid to have the questions asked. And more of the priests readily say, "I don't know." There seems to be more encouragement, at least within the Episcopal Church, for people to learn and engage their brains in theology. I think that's why programs such as Education for Ministry have such a great following: in-depth study of what lies behind the writings of the Old and New Testament, the growing pains and sibling rivalries of church history, and the thinking and crafting of doctrine and philosophy of the church. If Pew had surveyed a student of EfM, I think they would have been pleasantly surprised at what these Christians know about Christianity... not to mention other religions of the world.
Probably more important to the church is not necessarily that people know that Martin Luther's writings fired up the Protestant Reformation. If they do know that, do they know what it was in those writings that led to him breaking away from Roman Catholicism's doctrine? That might be more important. And, as Christians, do they understand the call of Jesus to "love one another as I have loved you"? Do they know how far and wide that reach extends in all directions from their being? Do they know the taste of freedom that comes through the resurrection of Christ, and not just the pains of the nails at crucifixion? Those are concepts and ideas that seem to me far more important for your average self-identified Christian to know than factoids about the religious identification of Mother Teresa.
Perhaps if atheists met a few more Christians who lived closer to the source of their faith and responded to the world from that place of faith, then atheism might not seem so "rad" after all. It's not the Bible that makes people atheists: it's the hypocrisy of so-called Christians that does that!
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