Education as a Cure for Christianity

The percentage of college graduates from Pew Forum’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey.

Atheist & Agnostic – 42%
Mainline Protestant – 34%
Mormon – 28%
Catholic – 26%
Evangelical Christians – 20%

Enough said?

It’s hard to swallow stuff like Creationism and Biblical Literacy if you’re intelligent enough to get through college.

Of course Jews boast 59% college graduates. But I’m always hesitant to quote statistics about Jews because of the ethnic and cultural aspects. I know a lot of Jews who look upon their Jewishness as more of a nationality than a religion.

Then one has to consider the age situation. The percentage under 50 years of age from the same survey was:

Atheist & Agnostic – 70%
Mormon – 66%
Catholic – 59%
Evangelical Christians – 56%
Mainline Protestant – 50%

I also always find the gender distribution of some interest. The percentage of males from the same survey was:

Atheist & Agnostic – 66%
Evangelical Christians – 47%
Catholic – 46%
Mainline Protestant – 46%
Mormon – 44%

Then there is the political spectrum distribution. No real surprise there.

Mormon – 60% Conservative, 10% Liberal
Evangelical Christians – 52% Conservative, 11% Liberal
Catholic – 36% Conservative, 18% Liberal
Mainline Protestant – 36% Conservative, 18% Liberal
Atheist & Agnostic – 15% Conservative, 46% Liberal

Of course there is no guarantee that everyone is interpreting Conservative and Liberal in the same way.

As for income level, the percentage making $75,000 a year or greater are:

Atheist & Agnostic – 42%
Mainline Protestant – 36%
Catholic – 33%
Mormon – 32%
Evangelical Christians – 24%

So Atheists & Agnostic tend to be better educated, more affluent, younger, more liberal and more male than Christians. There are no real surprises here. This survey just reinforces what other surveys have said consistently.

Maybe if we started teaching reality earlier we could get high school students to stop relying upon imaginary friends.