[Terez]

[url="http://www.ffrf.org/legacy/quiz/bquiz.php"]http://www.ffrf.org/.../quiz/bquiz.php[/url]

This quiz is obviously biased to the atheist side, but it's got some really nice tricky questions in it. I think I am pretty well-informed when it comes to the Bible, even though I'm undeniably rusty, but I only got 33 out of 50. The answers to some of the trick questions are very interesting.

Frinstance (a freebie for anyone that wants to take the quiz):

[quote name='quiz']
1. What is the last of the Ten Commandments?
Answer: C

• [u]Don't steal[/u].
• [u]Don't covet your neighbor's wife and property[/u]. <--Wrong answer. --This is the final commandment as listed in Exodus 20:2-17, the version often used by Protestants and Catholics. However, these are not the "ten commandments." (See below.) Notice the biblical sexism: women are the property of men.
• Don't boil a young goat in the milk of its mother. --Believe it or not, this prohibition in Exodus 34:26 is the official tenth commandment, from the only set of stone tablets that were called "the ten commandments." There were three sets of commandments:
  1) The first time Moses came down from Mount Sinai with commandments, he merely recited a list (Exodus 20:2-17), which is the version most churches today erroneously call the "Ten Commandments," although they were not engraved on stone tablets and not called "the ten commandments."
  
  2) The first set of stone tablets was given to Moses at a subsequent trip up the mountain (Exodus 31:18). In this farcical story, Moses petulantly destroyed those tablets when he saw the people worshipping the golden calf (Exodus 32:19).
  
  3) So he went back for a replacement. God told Moses: "Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest." (Exodus 34:1) Here is what was on the replacement tablets (from Exodus 34:14-26):
  
  

  1) Thou shalt worship no other God. 2) Thou shalt make thee no molten gods. 3) The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. 4) Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest. 5) Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks. 6) Thrice in the year shall all your menchildren appear before the Lord God. 7) Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven. 8) Neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left until the morning. 9) The first of the firstfruits of thy land shalt thou bring unto the house of the Lord thy God. 10) Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk.

  Keep this in mind next time you are tempted to boil a goat. This list differs, obviously, from the one in Exodus 20 (was God's memory faulty?), but it is only this list that is called the "Ten Commandments": "And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments." (Exodus 34:28)
• [u]Love your neighbor as yourself[/u]. --Even Jesus was unclear about the exact set of commandments. In Matthew 19:18-19 he listed them as: 1) Thou shalt do no murder 2) Thou shalt not commit adultery 3) Thou shalt not steal 4) Thou shalt not bear false witness 5) Honour thy father and thy mother 6) Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. For the Jews, loving your "neighbor" meant loving your Jewish neighbors: it did not mean loving the neighboring tribes or other outsiders, as the intolerant and bloody Old Testament (and Christian) history proves. [/quote]
  
  

Anyway, I thought the quiz might start an interesting discussion. We argue about religion a lot, usually in reference to Christianity, but there aren't many of us who are all that informed when it comes to actual scripture.

This post has been edited by Terez: 25 March 2010 - 11:34 PM

[Aptorian]

18 out of 50. Most of the time I was just guessing.

The quiz is a bit stupid because it makes it sound as though these "laws" are the only answers given by the bible. The quiz makers, who are obviously atheists, have deliberately chosen some of the most shocking quotes from the bible.

[chill]

22 out of 50.

And I agree with Apt. I don't think this quiz reflects your biblical literacy... in fact it looks more like propaganda against die-hard christians.

[Tiste Simeon]

Terez, on 25 March 2010 - 11:32 PM, said:

Anyway, I thought the quiz might start an interesting discussion. We argue about religion a lot, usually in reference to Christianity, but there aren't many of us who are all that informed when it comes to actual scripture.

I completely agree with this.

chill, on 26 March 2010 - 08:47 AM, said:

22 out of 50.

And I agree with Apt. I don't think this quiz reflects your biblical literacy... in fact it looks more like propaganda against die-hard christians.

That's cos bashing Christianity is the easy and safe thing to do these days, try and diss anyone elses beliefs and you get branded as a racist intolerant bigot...

EDIT: So I did it, and half of it is completely out of context or twisting the words. No wonder people don't know too much about the bible if these folks are deliberately trying to warp what it says...

This post has been edited by Tiste Simeon: 26 March 2010 - 10:06 AM

[Gothos]

19/50

I must say I've never read past Genesis, it was boring as hell. Though I did exactly know some of the answers (philistine foreskins, virgin daughter sacrifice, and several others)... I tended to go with what I judged to be most barbaric. Ah well.
It's not really a big secret that christianity has very little to do with the Bible anymore.

[Use Of Weapons]

28/50. But that's mainly because I answered based on what the most outlandish and repressive answer would be, not due to any particular knowledge, except in a few instances.

I knew about the dashing babies against rocks == happiness thing, because I've sung that text in Walton's 'Belshazzar's Feast' -- "Happy he be that taketh thy children, and dasheth them against a stone."

[Aristai]

This quiz is crap. Retarded in how slanted and how much it wants to shock. And yes I bombed it.

[Illuyankas]

I ended up with 33 out of 50. As ways to live your life, the Bible has a lot of stuff you really have to ignore nowadays, frankly.

Also, Tiste?

[Jusentantaka]

39 out of 50 and whoopee. Likewise with the obvious intention of the quiz, and pretty sad that only the first one (and a couple more maybe) was a decent did-you-know question and all of the rest were entirely 'axe to the wheel' questions. Also a few were 'lets deliberately mix up the grammatical parts of this sentence so it says something different' I thought people stopped doing that around ten?

This post has been edited by Jusentantaka: 26 March 2010 - 03:08 PM

[Bauchelain the Evil]

I got 23 out of 50. Mostly because I chose the most horrible and ridiculus answers, knowing that was the point of this quiz.(Although I did know that menstruating women were considered unclean). Anyway I agree that this test is stupid. I'm an atheist and I've always considered the Bible nothing more than a test like the Enuma Elish or the Theogony, but, really, bashing it because it says bats are birds and the thinking organ is the heart... Everyone in those times, included those we now consider geniuses, believed that.

This post has been edited by Bauchelain the Evil: 27 March 2010 - 08:37 PM

[Terez]

haha, yes I said in the OP that the quiz was obviously biased. I found it fun to take anyway. There actually weren't many that had to do with word twisting. I didn't guess very much on the ones I got correct, because I actually remembered the answer. These were the things that gave me cognitive dissonance when I still called myself a Christian.

So, Tiste...do you have a better quiz for us? I want to pit my Bible knowledge against yours!

[Tiste Simeon]

Not one that I can recommend straight up but if I find one I will let you know. Of course any I find will no doubt be "too Christian slanted" or some such.

@Illy, arf arf, very funny. I never once said we were being oppressed but should I make a claim such as "All atheists are retards with no education and no idea of what free will is and they are just blindly following the religious teachings of Richard Dawkins" I would be shouted out of the DB. Yet I have seen very similar posts time and time again in here. Just seems odd to me...

[Terez]

lol, that's because it's a false analogy, Tiste. Atheists don't worship Dawkins; we existed long before he was even born (long before Darwin was born too). We all know that the world is full of sheep. But the Bible is the basis of Christianity. The only real basis of atheism is skepticism. Sheep can be skeptics too.

Also, Illy's pie chart seems to represent the US. Maybe Britain? (Though I think you guys have more Muslims, and last I noticed, more no-religion folks too.) Certainly not the world.

This post has been edited by Terez: 27 March 2010 - 12:58 AM

[Tiste Simeon]

Hmmm... just you wait, Dawkins will establish the religion of atheism and himself as the grand potentate of nothingness... I mean he already preaches religiously against the perils of religious preaching, it's not too far a stretch...

[Illuyankas]

Terez, on 27 March 2010 - 12:58 AM, said:

Also, Illy's pie chart seems to represent the US. Maybe Britain? (Though I think you guys have more Muslims, and last I noticed, more no-religion folks too.) Certainly not the world.

Yar, it be the USA. Here's the link to the source of the statistics.

@Tiste: Show me on the doll where the nasty scientist touched you.

[Darkwatch]

I agree with Tiste on Dawkins.
The man is a zealot, except against god. He's preachy, arrogant and insufferable.
He's almost got a cult of personality thing going on as well in some cases. Besides people can worship things that come after.

John Saffran had an excellent point when he accused many "atheists" of not understanding what they were talking about. (This generally isn't the case on the board.)

I'm repeating myself here but:

Since atheism is an ideology, like religion, then it to can and may breed fanatics (Dawkins is what I would call a first generation one and a rallying point for the future).

Edit:
While I understand the religious right in the U.S. is Christian and the main threat against the first amendment, they really should have books and pamphlets against all forms of religion. Because right now they make me think of a 15 year old who just found out that the Church has a checkered history and thinks it's cool to spit on the priest.

This post has been edited by Darkwatch: 27 March 2010 - 01:31 AM

[Pilgrim]

Hmmm...even after 18 years of Catholic school, I only scored 16. I'm so sad. Dejected. Troubled. I stopped worrying about religion a long time ago. The Bible was written by PEOPLE, not a diety, not an angel, not an all-knowing earth-spawning alien (thank you Sitchen), I just believe in a higher power, and try to do the right thing. Whether or not Jesus actually made the Golden Rule, not much harm can come from living by it.

[Illuyankas]

Oh, the Golden Rule predates Jesus by over fifteen hundred years.

[Pilgrim]

As does most every idea in the Bible, Koran, Torah...

[Terez]

Pilgrim, on 27 March 2010 - 01:37 AM, said:

Hmmm...even after 18 years of Catholic school, I only scored 16.

Well, duh. I mean, until 1960something, Mass was in Latin. Laypeople weren't expected to understand it. The whole point of the Reformation boiled down to the fact that the Catholic institution was largely extra-Biblical. Hence we have Luther raging against Copernicus, while the pope is okay with it, really. Biblical literalism is a largely Protestant thing.

This post has been edited by Terez: 27 March 2010 - 03:21 AM