The greatest tool religion has in their arsenal, is ignorance, even it is the ignorance of their own teachings. I remember being told by a religious relative that I only needed to study certain passages in isolation from the bible as a whole and that I must never read the bible as i would read any other book. I did not listen which is why I don't buy into their delusions.

@divers....I doubt most Christians open their Bibles during the week, other than when they stand for the reading of the scriptures pre-sermon. There is a lot of. lazy ignorance. I talked to a preacher once who'd never heard of the curse of Jeconiah and thought Peter was the first pope. When I corrected him, he looked stunned and angry.

Not that surprising to me anymore. In my view the beliefs of a great many religious people amount to little more than a handful of generalizations they learnt at an early stage of life. Go much beyond these and discussion soon runs out, Yes, there are exceptions, but many people's religion has little or nothing to do with beliefs or knowledge, but with identity and ritual. Reading history, real history, science, e.g. evolution or theoretical physics (your point here), or the bases of their religion, not so much. And let's face it, that's exactly what religions want - believers, not readers or questioners. Religions are theological Ponzi schemes, and you don't want the investors asking too many questions, right?

I knew a self described preacher who's claim to fame was that he was not "book learned". He claimed that god spoke through him. He had no need for earthly knowledge. He actually made it pretty good living from it until his congregation got old and died off.

I'm an ex Xian.

Being religious is the default in every culture I know of so us non-believers have made a conscious choice to be contrary. I think that before making that choice most of us carefully examined the religions we were "born into" just to make sure we aren't mistaken and so many the people we know and love aren't deluded and then after that we took a good long look at all the other ways of believing we could find just to make sure we weren't born into to wrong one

It's actually to be expected that atheists know more on average about religion than believers, because many of us used to be religious, and knowing our religion is how we began to doubt it.

Even atheists who were never religious are obliged to think about the truth claims of religion because they are a tiny minority in a theist society and culture. They are often obliged to do some thinking about why they shouldn't convert given that they are usually pressured, overtly or implicitly, to convert.

But of course. Religion is based on faith, thus, it is not important for a religious person to have good knowledge of anything

When as a child you are told that this guy on a cross was a wonderful man and you must worship him and his dad...you question why...what have they ever done to deserve this...so you start doing background checks and you discover there are several different versions of events..then you find there are all these different deities who each proclaim godhood...which one do you believe...all of them or none of them as there is no scientific, natural claim for any of them actually existing except in the minds of people who want to control you and tell you that if you stop praying to said gods the sun will not rise in the morning or there will be no new crops without their blessing...kinda makes you sick that these individuals have got so far these days without people opening their eyes and taking a good look and saying WTF....!!

I agree! If you are going to reject something considered a "norm" it makes sense that you would educate yourself about it!

I have often found this to be true , but then I was raised Christian and studied for a long time . Before I finally had to give it up . I've even had people knocking on my door , who left lacking the faith they had attempted to convert me to , with me telling them, you need to read your Bible , first .

It does make sense because knowing what the religious are saying/preaching/believing makes it easy to debunk if you are questioning as a one time believer or never fell for it in the first place. The look on their faces when it becomes apparent you may know the book better than they do is somewhat rewarding.

As a child, Bible study always told us what passages to read, in what order, and always seemed to jump around. As an avid reader even at a young age, I was always likely to read more than just the passage suggested. I even decided at one point to read the Bible all the way through. My major hitch with religion came when I was sitting in church at age 12 and the Minister read a passage, and then proceeded to explain what it meant, however his explanation was so completely unrelated to what the passage said that I got very frustrated going back and reading the passage again and reading further back and further forward to keep it in context and I never could justify what he was saying with what the Bible actually said. The judgemental, snooty people in church didn't help my opinion of the religion either.

I actually listened to the sermons in church rather than getting caught up in the emotion.

It is interesting to ask a religious person who seems to think that quoting the bible makes their argument better, if they know anything about where the bible actually came from and why there are so my mistakes in it.? then there are the statements that they make which are not quotes but suppositions on what the words really meant. I just ask them who told them what to think.?

Like many atheists, I have read about the world's religions. So, I know more than most people. I chatted with a cab driver who is an immigrant and Muslim. I informed him that I knew that the founder of Islam, Mohammed, was married to Khadija, his first wife for 20 years. She owned her business and hired him to work for her. She asked him to marry her. The cabbie was amazed and said to me "You know more about my religion than I do!"