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Americans Know Nothing About Their Own Religions


 

(Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Mohammedani...

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The latest Pew Research survey dove into religion. Specifically, researchers wanted to know just how much actual religious knowledge drives this most holy of lands.

Unsurprisingly, the answer was not so much.

Americans, who are religiously bent, are as ignorant of the tenets of their diverse faiths as they are of the Constitution’s purpose for the separation of those faiths from the workings of the state.

Who knows the most about religion in general?

Atheists.

Which makes total sense. A person has to know something about religion in order to conclude that it’s bigotry wrapped in superstition and basically a tool used to maintain some of the world’s more useful oppressions.

After the God deniers, Mormons and Jews knew more actual facts about the various religions of the world. I wonder if this isn’t because their faiths focus more attention on following the letter of their laws, as opposed to the nebulous, feel-good spirit of the rules that seem to change with each new evangelical schism.

Catholics didn’t know shit. How could they? They are apparently not being taught the most basic tenet of the religion – transubstantiation. You know, that icky sticking point with Protestants of all ilk? The fact that the wafer and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ during the consecration during mass.

41% of Catholics think the wafer and wine are … symbolic. The Pope must be breaking his own knuckles with hand-wringing over this big oops by his American clergy. Perhaps the bishops of America have been too occupied covering up the molestation thing, suppressing women and being all round tools of the man in the pointy hat to remind their parish priests about such an important topic?

Protestants fair a bit better but only if they are mainline and not evangelicals. Both groups, also unsurprisingly, gloss over the main point of Luther’s original break back in the middle-ages – “grace” can’t be earned. God gives or not. It’s a bleak outlook whose darkness varies according to the religious flavor. Evangelicals don’t bother with it at all because it’s simply too much for them and they prefer their view that everyone BUT them is a loser in the whole “God loves me better than you” grace race.

Curious about my own knowledge base, I took the quiz at the Pew Forum site.

I missed the last question on The Great Awakening. Not too strangely, this wasn’t covered in religion class at my Catholic high school.

My general distaste for the puritan streak that runs wide and uselessly through the American psyche means I haven’t spent much time trying to discover how such an atrocity happened. Frankly, I thought the whole “personal guilt” thing floated over with the Pilgrims, but it started here. We can’t blame the English for this.

The “awakening” was a clever assault on the god-fearing with the end result being that life generally sucked more than it should have for the early American colonists. Worst of all, it marked the beginning of that sing-song preaching style that’s punctuated with shrill notes and poignant silences.

At The Daily Dish, Sullivan linked to a blog that invited a bunch of scholars to apologize for the ignorant. One guy thought that the “spirit” of religion was probably more important than adherents actually knowing factual information or even, gasp, understanding what it was they professed to believe.

Seriously? If you are going to vote, persecute, impose or otherwise force your faith down the throats of those who worship, or not, then you had better know your shit.

Because it stinks.

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Chicken or The Egg?


 

Photo of a 20-piece box of McDonald's Chicken ...

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An age old question. Which came first. Chicken? Egg? And really, does it matter?  Except to those who live off the grants that fund the studies to decide the issue for once and all?

The more serious query concerns chicken nuggets.

So, which came first the white meat or the batter?

Let’s find out!

The answer, of course, is neither. But the surprise that American children will eat deep-fried chicken goo is interesting. Any North American parent could have told Jamie the outcome in advance.

We train our kids to eat chicken nuggets as early as possible. Their ability to gnaw the soggy glop apart is the key to our semi-liberation. No longer are we a slave to our own dinner tables once Junior can subsist on nuggets and french fries (can’t forget the starch – it’s staple).

Once the eating of fried chicken paste is mastered. We are free to feed our kids on the run courtesy of McDonald’s, who will let us choose apples or carrots to assuage our guilt and throw in a plastic Chinese toy for added distraction time.

Chicken nuggets means we can eat out again. Not at good restaurants – because their “nuggets” are actually “fingers” which our children eye with suspicion (having no personal knowledge of what real chicken looks like). They sniff. They poke. They balk. They take a bite or two and refuse to eat more because “it tastes different”.

Different being a bad thing where small barely cognizant humans are concerned.

By the time they are the age of the kids in this “fool-proof” experiment, they are ruined.

Ruined, I tell you.

And it’s our fault.

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The 12 Ill-Fitting Outfits of American Women


 

Just to prove the muffin top is not limited to LA

Image by Malingering via Flickr

 

Though there are likely more than 12, I am guessing that the number one bad fit is some sort of trouser. It gathers unflatteringly at the crotch and produces a muffin-ish roll at the waist. It’s too long or a tiny bit too short depending on the female in question’s inseam because in America it’s 30″, 32″ or 34″. Period. With 31″ being the inexplicable default when manufacturers’ feel that catering to girth is duty enough.

What strikes me as amazing is that pouring ourselves into pants that obviously don’t fit has been in vogue for so long that women, more or less, can’t tell when they are wearing the wrong size.

Take muffining for example. Most young women spill over the waistband. Even those who are thin – by real life standards or Hollywood ones – feel that unless they are being squeezed up and over the top of their pants – they must be too big.

What a fantastic bit of salesmanship! Fashionista Americana must still glow pridefully for pulling off that neat trick.

A recent U.K. study* revealed that women, generally, have at least 12 outfits in their closets that don’t fit them at all. Too big.  Or, more likely, too small. And the decades old nonsense of buying something too small to encourage yourself to lose weight or get in shape is still one of the culprits behind this unsurprising revelation.

When I posted a link to the article on my Facebook feed, my sis, DNOS, replied that she probably had more outfits than that. Her husband is forever imploring her to thin the unwearable herd.  If I lived closer, I’d offer to help.  Some of the flock is mine.  Things I grew weary of or decided didn’t suit me. I bet that a good portion of my college days wardrobe is currently huddled together in my sister’s closet, discussing their days of yore – when someone actually wore them.

My youngest sister still wears a couple of my old pre-Dee pair of jeans I gave her during one of her many cash-strapped periods. Whereas DNOS will accept much of what I offer (though she considers my style and colour preferences fuddy-duddy), BabySis – a beggar if ever there was one – is choosy as hell. The only items she’s ever accepted were jeans and sweatshirts.

I pruned my own closet again mid-summer in anticipation of a garage sale that will have to wait until spring now. As I glanced through the closet the other day, I realized that Rob takes up most of the space. I would be hard put to find 12 ill-fitting outfits, but I could probably rid myself of four or five that I don’t truly love anymore.

True love is my criteria for keeping or purchasing clothing.

Which brings me to a list of sad statistics about women that this study also (re)discovered:

  • most women own at least three different sizes of clothing to accommodate their yo-yo dieting
  • Just 2% of women were happy with their looks
  • Most women think they are “frumpy”
  • 1 in 10 women thinks she is fat

I accidentally discovered I’d gained a bit of weight and am farther over my “happy weight** than I have been in a long while. The interesting thing is that I didn’t have much of a reaction. I happen to think that I look pretty good at the moment. The yoga I am doing has added a bit of muscle – which accounts for some of the weight – but it’s also changed how I “fill out” so-to-speak.  First time in my life that the number on a scale hasn’t sent me into a dieting free-fall. It was kind of nice.

It is nice.

I am whittling down my fabric possessions. It doesn’t have much to do with ill-fit. Much of what I sell or donate doesn’t fit my life-style anymore and what I can’t garage-sale, I have to pitch because it’s simply worn out. I have so few pieces of clothing that I am actually wearing them out – like I did when I was a kid.

*Boggles me a bit what people get paid to study.

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