Knowledge About Religions

A recent Pew Research survey found that atheists and agnostics in the United States know more about religion than those in the "nothing in particular" group. Atheists and agnostics are also on par with the Catholics and Protestants concerning knowledge about Catholicism and Protestantism by their followers.

God Preferred Inbred Relationships

I'm a former Christian and reading the Bible led me to disbelief. It's been a long time since I've done that, so I've decided to get into it again now that I'm older. I'm adding some Bible study to my Agnostic Guide for this blog. It's starting to feel like a waste of time, but I'll use it to throw out a general observation here and there.

Here's an odd thing that really jumped out at me during my recent review: God preferred inbred relationships in the Old Testament for many key characters as his chosen people.

Warring Children of Abraham

The children of Abraham squabble and fight like the worst of siblings. They're closely related as a people if the religious texts can be believed. The picture above is a good one for showing the messed up family tree branching out from Abraham. Jews and Jesus are believed to descend from Isaac whereas Muhammad was descended from his older brother Ishmael. Ishmael's mother was Isaac's mother's handmaid, so that's an interesting relationship dynamic between the descendents.

Non-Religious Rising

Source: Twitter

New statistics are out showing ‘Nones’ now as big as evangelicals, Catholics in the US. This is good news for those of us in this unaffiliated minority.

According to newly released General Social Survey data analyzed by Ryan P. Burge of Eastern Illinois University, Americans claiming “no religion” — sometimes referred to as “nones” because of how they answer the question “what is your religious tradition?” — now represent about 23.1 percent of the population, up from 21.6 percent in 2016. People claiming evangelicalism, by contrast, now represent 22.5 percent of Americans, a slight dip from 23.9 percent in 2016.