Are you smarter than an atheist? A religious quiz

[DemPGH]

The four I missed were early and concerned the Eastern religions. I knew every one I got right except Maimonides. Never heard of that individual, so I played a process of elimination based upon how the name "sounded," narrowed it to two, guessed, and got it right.

ha!  I guessed on that one as well.  I think I actually knew 29 of them and guessed on three, getting one of those guesses right.  That's how I scored 30.  

Like you, I did some estimation and elimination on that one.  Well, he's French, so if he's Catholic he probably wouldn't be worth mentioning, because that wouldn't distinguish him from millions of other of his countrymen.  If he were Hindu or Buddhist or Zoroastrian, well the likelihood of his living in France would be very small, wouldn't it.  Only Jew remained.  

Or something like that.  It was yesterday and I've thought about other things since, but I do remember thinking "Moimidez.  Who the hell is that?" and then going through some elimination process.

Multiple guess.  Still my favorite format for exams.  

Ha, that's close to my reasoning. It initially sounded Greek to me, but nothing really matched that, so I ruled out Muslim, I bet 95% he wasn't Catholic, so between Hindu and Jew, I bet the latter. Funny how that works, isn't it? Funny logic. I've probably gotten as many right as wrong using it.

I remember back in the day a goofy GRE word - an antonym question, I think it was recalcitrant, which is a pretty cool word. But I didn't know what it meant then, so what came to mind was "calcify," which is to harden, become difficult to deal with, and in my mind bitter and nasty. One of the choices was something like "easy to work with." Bang, picked it. Filed it in my mind and when I got home I checked and I'd surely bet I was right. Of course I missed some using that as well, but at some point right is right whether for the wrong reason or not!

[The Mikado]

This thread is going to end up making me write a thread about Moses Maimonides, I just know it.

I seriously had no idea he was this obscure.

[angus]

This thread is going to end up making me write a thread about Moses Maimonides, I just know it.

I seriously had no idea he was this obscure.

No, man.  It needs its own thread, BRTD-style.  Or don't you believe in the false dichotomy?

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

This thread is going to end up making me write a thread about Moses Maimonides, I just know it.

I seriously had no idea he was this obscure.

Do it! This level of unfamiliarity with one of the most important Jewish thinkers is unacceptable.

[Insula Dei]

Maimonides is obscure?

[Kaine for Senate '18]

32/32

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Really, this should all be general knowledge. And yes, you people have never heard of Maimonides, come on people?

(For the record, I got 31/32 as I misread the question on the Constitution).

[DemPGH]

Heh, I admit to more or less being beyond hope. It appears that the illustrious Moses Maimonides (wow) seems to have gotten lost on me. I must have been reading up on rock layers, isotopes, the Vikings, or maybe Shakespeare. Mikado, do enlighten us. Should be interesting.

[The Mikado]

Heh, I admit to more or less being beyond hope. It appears that the illustrious Moses Maimonides (wow) seems to have gotten lost on me. I must have been reading up on rock layers, isotopes, the Vikings, or maybe Shakespeare. Mikado, do enlighten us. Should be interesting.

Your dismissal of the preeminent scholar of the 12th century (and certainly a writer at least equal in influence to Shakespeare) shows your own arrogance more than anything else.  Here's a Jew living in the Islamic Almoravid Empire writing to an audience that included most of the scholars of Christendom and the Islamic world.  He could draw on the works of his great contemporary, the Islamic theologian Averroes, as well as the ancient Greeks, as much as he could draw on the Talmud.  His work would influence thinkers Jewish, Christian (esp. including St. Thomas Aquinas, who was very familiar with his work), and Muslim alike.  Everyone who was a scholar in the High Middle Ages read Rambam's works, whether they agreed or not.

Rambam's most famous works are his commentary on the Talmud and his Guide For the Perplexed, a powerful book that takes on basically every major theological question.

The Talmud is a collection of centuries of rabbinical commentary on every word in the Torah.  It is tens of thousands of pages long and presents at least three or four interpretations of every rule, action, and symbol in the first five books of the Bible, formatted as "Rabbi X said a, but Rabbi Y said b.  Rabbi Z thought that Rabbi X had a point, but that he went too far..."  He boiled centuries of debate into a codification of the Talmud as containing 613 Laws, and enunciating exactly what those were and how one was to follow them.  The Mishneh (his summary of the Talmudic interpretation of Jewish law) is a critically important book in that it essentially is Judaism: it's still the binding authority towards questions of how an observant Jew follows the laws of Moses.  It's one thing to talk about the need for a head covering and fringed garments, but how should they be designed?  Consult the Talmud.  Can execution be justified without a Sanhedrin (Jewish religious court) carrying out the trial?  Consult the Talmud.  Why can't a Jew mix dairy and meat products despite that not actually being a law in the Torah itself?  Rambam has an answer for you.  Halakhic Law, even down to the very idea that there are 613 Holy Laws and not 612 or 614, is the product of Rambam.

The Guide to the Perplexed is a much more user-friendly document than the Mishneh, and is the document that the scholars of the ummah and Christendom were more likely to encounter.  The Rambam pioneered the mixing of Aristotle and religious texts, putting classical Greek thought to the service of monotheism in the same manner as Averroes did for Islam and Aquinas did for Christianity (both of whom cribbed from Maimonides).  His biggest target (much like the Muslims he lived among) was efforts to anthropomorphize the deity, emphasizing how God was so utterly alien and beyond human conception that the very language and thoughts we use cannot possibly capture him.  Much as Muhammad would often (as in, he says it all over the Qu'ran) say that "Allah is greater than the things men ascribe to him," Maimonides rejected the idea that people could even imagine or conceive of God in any way meaningful to the human mind, an idea diametrically opposed to the God who became a man that the Christians worshiped.  Maimonides grappled with all of the big questions, including the old classic, "why does evil exist?"

[Beet]

31/32 (97%)

An absurdly easy 'quiz' obviously designed to maximize page views (an advert link even popped up right in front of the 'next' button just as I was clicking it!). The only one I got wrong, in retrospect was so easy I'm ashamed to admit it.

[John Dibble]

31/32 (97%)

An absurdly easy 'quiz' obviously designed to maximize page views (an advert link even popped up right in front of the 'next' button just as I was clicking it!). The only one I got wrong, in retrospect was so easy I'm ashamed to admit it.

It is an easy quiz, which makes it rather sad that in polling Americans only got half right on average.

[angus]

31/32 (97%)

An absurdly easy 'quiz' obviously designed to maximize page views (an advert link even popped up right in front of the 'next' button just as I was clicking it!). The only one I got wrong, in retrospect was so easy I'm ashamed to admit it.

It is an easy quiz, which makes it rather sad that in polling Americans only got half right on average.

But the explanation lies in the post, doesn't it.  Commercial ads, and your ability to be influenced by them, clearly outweigh religious knowledge, and your ability to be influenced by it.

I'd agree that most were easy, but a couple of them were challenging. 

Let's be honest, I got 30 right not because of what I learned in school.  I got 30 right because I watch a lot of TV.  You think I'd know that Devapali is the Hindu festival of lights if I didn't watch TV, or that Sita was Rama's girlfriend, or that it's hard to get a pulled pork sandwich in Egypt?  (Well, okay, I've been to Egypt, so I know it's hard to get a pulled pork sandwich in Egypt, but for most of the rest of them, I learned it by watching television.)

[DemPGH]

Heh, I admit to more or less being beyond hope. It appears that the illustrious Moses Maimonides (wow) seems to have gotten lost on me. I must have been reading up on rock layers, isotopes, the Vikings, or maybe Shakespeare. Mikado, do enlighten us. Should be interesting.

Your dismissal of the preeminent scholar of the 12th century (and certainly a writer at least equal in influence to Shakespeare) shows your own arrogance more than anything else.

If anything, it's insensitivity combined with a jocular attempt to acknowledge an ideological gap. If my intention had been to dismiss this figure out of an attitude of conceit, I would have simply skipped it and went to the next topic. 

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You know, this is not general knowledge (because of that unique thing called background), and one of the things I learned a long time ago is not to go into a forum, particularly a very, very open one, and take the attitude that everyone has heard of and has worked with the things near and dear to me. To use a random example, I would not come in here and expect that others know about the diversity of life during the Silurian period. It can be looked up, but I would not expect people to have done much with it. Likewise, were I you, I would not expect that everyone has heard of and  has ruminated at length on 12th century spiritual leaders in far-away lands.

As this is a board for "Religion and Philosophy," I tend to think more about the likes of Francis Bacon and T.H. Huxley, but the seeming prevailing and rather homogeneous sentiment here seems to be not interested in looking at the subject in that light. But again, that's difference in people and difference in backgrounds. That's fine.

That said, your knowledge of all this is impressive, and I learned something. I'm glad you shared it. Honestly, my interest in this is keen: from my perspective, I wonder why a person would even attempt to figure out how many "holy laws" there are. Like, as in a serious psychological question. That's a question more for me than you. So, I learned something today I didn't know yesterday, and when I have a chance I may just read up more on this Maimonides!

[Filuwaúrdjan]

That writing style is so affected that reading it hurts my eyes. Urgh.

[Alcon]

I knew 31 of those solidly but still have absolutely no idea who Maimonides is -- got lucky there.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

"Related: Is Gandhi really in hell?"

[Hnv1]

29/32 and I'm a Hebrew Atheist (I'm still indecisive whether Judaism is both ethnicity and religion), it was rather easy though (part for some question of Christian dogma I wasn't familiar with)

[minionofmidas]

Hindus also aim at Nirvana. I closed the quiz as too damn dumb at this point (especially since I'm also annoyed by quizzes that feel the need to make you click to an extra page just to tell you that yes, 2+2 is indeed 4! Congratulations!)

[GMantis]

31/32. I missed the question on the Great Awakening.

[DreamTheater]

29/32
I didn't know who Maimonides, I didn't think teachers would have been allowed to read from the Bible, and I had no idea what religion Indonesia primarily is.