"Prejudice is the child of ignorance." ~William Hazlitt
It's not surprising that religious prejudice abounds in America today, and our collective ignorance on the subject of religion helps explain why. According to a survey just released by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, Americans as a group fared poorly on a survey of questions testing general knowledge of all the world's major religions, including their own.
The Pew survey, a series of 32 questions covering tenets and facts about various religions, revealed that many Americans cannot identify the central teachings of the major world religions, their observances and their founders. Given that prejudice comes from the seeds of ignorance, it's easy to understand why religious prejudice flourishes in America.
We fear the unknown. We are hostile toward that which we do not understand and we all too frequently seek to stamp out anything that is not familiar to us. That is the very core of prejudice.
Ironically, the most knowledgeable on the subject of religion were the atheists and agnostics. Those individuals are also the most tolerant of people with beliefs other than their own. Now we know why.
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