Do you know what you believe?

 

How many religious people have really proven what they believe in? Shockingly few, the results of a recent Pew survey indicate.

A survey released Tuesday reveals that “Large numbers of Americans are uninformed about the tenets, practices, history and leading figures of major faith traditions—including their own.” In fact, atheists and agnostics gave more correct answers in the survey of 3,412 American adults conducted from May 19 to June 6 than “Christians” or any other group.

“While every group did better with questions specific to its own religion,” writes the Washington Times, “once questions about church and state and other world religions were factored in, nonbelievers wound up doing the best overall.”

The conclusion drawn by the president of the American Humanist Association, who says that unbelievers tend to be better educated than believers, is that “The more dogmatic that one is, almost by definition, the less critical thinking is happening.”

Certainly, this is generally the case. As Herbert Armstrong wrote in Mystery of the Ages, “Most people … accept or reject a belief on careless assumption due to whatever they have heard, been taught, or assumed without proof.”

This Pew survey confirms that reality, with results showing a “surprising lack of knowledge even about the tenets of people’s own religions,” according to the Times.

But it need not be this way—in fact, it should not be.

It comes down to a question of whether one accepts the reality that absolute truth does indeed exist—and whether one is willing to prove it.

In a column earlier this year, Ron Fraser raised the question of how to identify true religion:

Sooner or later, any thinking person who believes in what Sir Winston Churchill termed “divine Providence” has to ask and seek to answer the question, “What is the true religion?” …Christ established only one church under and by His divine authority, based on one divinely inspired body of doctrine (Ephesians 4:5). He is the personification of the Word of God (John 1:1). That means, by definition, that the one true Church that He established will be not only extant today, but it will possess the same, unchangeable doctrine He gave it at the beginning. It will be founded not upon only one testament of the Bible, but two, for as one of the foundational apostles of the Church, the Apostle Paul, declared, the true Church is founded upon the apostles and the prophets! (Ephesians 2:20). …Where is that one true Church today? It must be in existence, for Jesus Christ its Head declared of it that the gates of the grave would never shut it down—it would never die!

Again, Mr. Armstrong wrote, “Why do most people believe the things they believe? Few, indeed, ever stop to ask themselves in retrospect how they came to accept the beliefs that have found lodgment in their minds” (op. cit.).

Don’t be among those who lack knowledge of their own beliefs.

If you are up to the challenge, we would suggest you study Does God Exist?, The Proof of the Bible and Mystery of the Ages.