# Can an Evangelical be Considered Anything but Ignorant? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 7, 2011, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-evangelical-be-considered-anything-but-ignorant/570577 "2011-02-07T21:12:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2011, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-evangelical-be-considered-anything-but-ignorant/570577/81 "2011-02-08T22:05:47Z")
> [@razncain](#): > > [Boy, you sure left out a lot of studies!](http://kspark.kaist.ac.kr/Jesus/Intelligence%20&%20religion.htm) All in all, I think I’ll stick with believing real, published research results above an anonymous webpage if it’s all right with you. (Or even if it isn’t all right with you.) But even if I did want to switch to giving webpages higher priority that one would be a singularly bad one. First of all, despite claiming to prove that “more intelligent people tend not to believe in religion”, most of the page has nothing to do with that claim, focusing instead on the prevalence of religious beliefs among scientists vs the general population. The only portion of the webpage that has anything to do with what the author claims it proves is the list of studies in the middle of the page. Not a single one of those studies comes with a proper citation, hence there’s no way to verify any of them and no reason to trust what’s written about them, or even to be sure that such studies existed at all. However, even I were to make the mistake of taking what’s written at face value, where does that get me? Some of the studies appear to have nothing whatever to do with religion. Others say the exact opposite of what they’re supposed to say; look in particular at #'s 1, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15 on that list, as well as the study from Warren and Heist listed farther down the page. Among the rest, the information given is too vague to make any conclusions. #3 mentions a “negative correlation between religiosity and IQ”, but any high school statistics student could explain why that statement is meaningless unless we know what actually correlation is. -.001 is a negative correlation, after all. Similar problems with #'s 2, 4, 7, … However, fun as it may be to poke many holes in that webpage, it’s really beside the point. The question of whether it’s really true that education prevents people from being or becoming religious cannot be settled by small, individual studies of the type listed there, even if they exist, but rather by an in-depth look at the long-term effects that unfold on a society’s religious makeup. The article I already linked to gives such an analysis and the conclusion is clear, that more education doesn’t lead to less religion, despite the high hopes of some atheists. Unlike the webpage you linked to, this article backs up its research with many proper citations to further research. ---
**Author:** ![brocks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7feea3/32.png) [@brocks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brocks)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2011, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-evangelical-be-considered-anything-but-ignorant/570577/82 "2011-02-09T01:01:16Z")
> [@Skammer](#): > > high regard for biblical authority, especially biblical inerrancy\* I think that’s really all you need to know. Anyone with access to a modern education would have to be not only ignorant, but willfully ignorant, to say the Bible is inerrant. And throwing in qualifiers about subject or intent doesn’t mitigate ignorance as much as it mitigates integrity. I have more respect for the intellectual honesty of someone who insists on a literal six-day creation, than someone who claims that Genesis can be reconciled with science. I guess I’d rather have the latter for a neighbor, though. I truly don’t wish to offend anyone, but if I believed in fairies, I don’t know of an inoffensive way you could tell me how silly I was. ---
**Author:** ![x-ray\_vision](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/x-ray_vision/32/351_2.png) [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2011, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-evangelical-be-considered-anything-but-ignorant/570577/83 "2011-02-09T01:05:08Z")
> [@revelator771](#): > > I spent 30 years as a well schooled secular humanist before I became an Evangelical. Oh, really? Well schooled former secular humanists don’t make statements like this: > [@](#): > > All of creation and all of each person speaks to something infinite and transcendant. Even the most cogent logic accepts there has to be something infinite outside of the finite. Time is finite because it has to have a beginning point. > [@](#): > > The fact of the matter is, to quote a character in atheist Carl Sagan’s book Contact, that 98% of the population of the world believes in a Supreme Being of some sort. That’s relevant circumstantial evidence. It is an incoherent logic to assume that the other 2% are under some sort of needy neurosis. > [@](#): > > The fact is that Evolution is a stark point of ignorance, one that is finally starting to be chipped away…as Ben Stein’s movie recently spoke about. This is an irrefutable fact…there has never been any…repeat…any…transitional fossil between species that verifies evolution. Adaptation is not evolution. ---
**Author:** ![brocks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7feea3/32.png) [@brocks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brocks)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2011, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-evangelical-be-considered-anything-but-ignorant/570577/84 "2011-02-09T01:20:24Z")
> [@JThunder](#): > > It’s also one reason why I reject the claim (stated earlier) that most atheists know the Bible better than Christians do. They may be pretty vocal, but that’s not the same as being well informed. Actually, I think you have it backwards. Clueless Christians are much more likely to be “pretty vocal” than clueless atheists, at least in my experience. A good knowledge of the Bible is pretty scarce in both camps. And that’s because the vast majority of people are passive in their beliefs. In the US, at least, most Christians are Christians just because their parents were, and they never questioned it, and they never studied it. Most atheists probably got approximately the same indoctrination as most Christians, but for whatever reason, it didn’t stick. It’s only a minority of either group who really put some study into it before making a reasoned choice. But in my experience, which I fully realize is limited and anecdotal, most atheists-by-default are not that vocal about defending their lack of faith, while totally untrained Christians can be quite belligerent in defending their faith, even though they really don’t know much about it. Maybe my perception is skewed by the absolute numbers. There are many more Christians than atheists, so if 90% of each group doesn’t know much, you will see a lot more clueless posts from Christians than from atheists. ---
**Author:** ![brocks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7feea3/32.png) [@brocks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brocks)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2011, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-evangelical-be-considered-anything-but-ignorant/570577/85 "2011-02-09T02:08:12Z")
> [@JThunder](#): > > I think the claim that most atheists are better informed about the Bible and/or Christianity is utterly laughable. The confusion in this thread alone demonstrates that. That’s quite a conflation. Being informed about the contents of the Bible has next to nothing to do with being informed about the hairsplitting and terminology that Christians use to debate among themselves which denomination REALLY understands it. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2011, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-evangelical-be-considered-anything-but-ignorant/570577/86 "2011-02-09T02:10:43Z")
> [@AshenLady](#): > > I find all of these groups kind of confusing, I guess. Evangelicals, evangelists, fundamentalists, born-again Christians. > > Like, you could be a Methodist or a Presbyterian and also a born-again Christian?? Yes like how you can be a Republican and a conservative. ---
**Author:** ![Razncain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9d8465/32.png) [@Razncain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Razncain)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2011, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-evangelical-be-considered-anything-but-ignorant/570577/87 "2011-02-09T06:55:18Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > All in all, I think I’ll stick with believing real, published research results above an anonymous webpage if it’s all right with you. (Or even if it isn’t all right with you.) But even if I did want to switch to giving webpages higher priority that one would be a singularly bad one. The two links I provided were more than just anonymous sites, those were from 43 real studies and polls that have been published and spread out over a period of many decades, and other than four, the rest did show that the more intelligent the person was, the less religious they were which the second [link](http://www.skeptictank.org/hs/iq_relig.htm) also provided. And they weren’t just based on scientists, although they studied some of those groups too. This was a very comprehensive list, and your site spends a good portion of time on economic studies of religion, without covering much of the material that my sites uncovered with those studies and polls. There were some similarities, however. Your site does admit that _professors, scientists, and other highly educated Americans are less religious than the general population,_ but they say the differences are _associated with gender, race, and other demographic traits._ If your link was going to be a comprehensive test of intelligence and religiosity, I think IQ’s studies would have been another important indicator. My links included them, along with Mensa, and SAT scores. Your link goes on to say though, that despite professors and scientists and other highly educated Americans being less religious than the general population, _within academia, religious faculty are far more common in the “hard” sciences than in the humanities or social sciences._ Even among average scientists, the numbers don’t reflect that. With leading scientists the numbers are even greater. We’ll get to that shortly with the NAS results which have been conducting surveys since 1914. For now, some of the concluding remarks from Beckwith that reviewed all of the studies from my link states: > [@](#): > > In this essay I have reviewed: (1)sixteen studies of the correlation between individual measures of student intelligence and religiosity, all but three of which reported an inverse correlation. (2) five studies reporting that student bodies with high average IQ and/or SAT scores are much less religious than inferior student bodies; (3) three studies reporting that geniuses (IQ 150+) are much less religious than the general public (Average IQ, 100), and one dubious study, (4) seven studies reporting that highly successful persons are much less religious in belief than are others; and (5) eight old and four new Gallup polls revealing that college alumni (average IQ about 115) are much less religious in belief than are grade-school pollees. > I have also noted that many studies have shown that students become less religious as they proceed through college, probably in part because average IQ rises. So as I stated, your site sure left out a lot! You state: > [@](#): > > The article I already linked to gives such an analysis and the conclusion is clear, that more education doesn’t lead to less religion, despite the high hopes of some atheists. Unlike the webpage you linked to, this article backs up its research with many proper citations to further research. My link does back up with the proper citations and further research, naming the studies and the year the research was conducted. Your link also stated that \* We find only two areas – outright rejection of religion and rejection of the Bible – where the estimated impact of high education or a scientific/college career overshadows the impact of gender.\* Your link goes on to say though: > [@](#): > > Despite continuing talk about the secularizing effects of education and academia, our analysis of data from the 1972 through 1996 General Social Surveys find that most highly educated Americans, including most professors and scientists, are as religious as other Americans. Moreover, the college faculty most acquainted with “hard” scientific knowledge – physicists, chemists, biologists, and mathematicians – are by every measure substantially more religious than their counterparts in the social sciences and humanities. It is only among anthropologists and non-clinical psychologists that we observe very high rates of disbelief and anti-religious sentiment. First of all, the groups would be a better representation if separated. Secondly, this certainly would be a surprise to [leading scientists from NAS.](http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.html) Your link skips them altogether. 93% of leading scientists reject or seriously doubt a personal god, and human immortality. Results from the NAS surveys show: > [@](#): > > Our chosen group of “greater” scientists were members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Our survey found near universal rejection of the transcendent by NAS natural scientists. Disbelief in God and immortality among NAS biological scientists was 65.2% and 69.0%, respectively, and among NAS physical scientists it was 79.0% and 76.3%. Most of the rest were agnostics on both issues, with few believers. We found the highest percentage of belief among NAS mathematicians (14.3% in God, 15.0% in immortality). Biological scientists had the lowest rate of belief (5.5% in God, 7.1% in immortality), with physicists and astronomers slightly higher (7.5% in God, 7.5% in immortality). ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2011, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-evangelical-be-considered-anything-but-ignorant/570577/88 "2011-02-09T07:45:16Z")
Ignorance is part of the human condition. Read Plato’s dialogues, and the only guy there who doesn’t look like an ignorant fool is Socrates, because he admits he is ignorant. Over and over again. What is knowledge, what are our standards of evidence, what has meaning to different people are all basic human questions before we die and decompose? A poster who is certain there is no God speaks to their own condition and by their own experience and own accepting of what is scientific. But as valuable as science is, it is just a method and most people ever born don’t place any personal value in it. Others see that it has limits to what science can tell us about our existence. And as of this date, it tells us next to nothing on what it means to be happy and at peace, we must look beyond science for an interpretation that is relevant now. Those who see no value in systematization of knowledge like science look like ignorant hicks to those who value it. Then there are hucksters like the late Jerry Falwell. I am convinced Falwell was an unbeliever at heart and simply used religion to get rich and fat in an evil and cynical way. But there are others who have used religion for wonderful and charitable purposes too. ---
**Author:** ![PBear42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@PBear42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PBear42)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2011, 7:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-evangelical-be-considered-anything-but-ignorant/570577/89 "2011-02-09T07:57:51Z")
Sticking to the OP and skipping the mostly tangential subsequent discussion, the short answer has already been given. As **Czarcasm** says (nailing it in the very first reply), “some can, some can’t.” See also several similar early replies. What I would add is that, since the OP self-identifies as a former secular humanist, he should understand that standard apologetics are useless in engaging atheists. Standard apologetics preach to the choir and assume the very points atheists dispute. To meaningfully engage atheists, an apologist must meet us on our ground. Whether the Bible is true is a question, not something to be assumed. Whether faith is a valid argument is a question, not something to be assumed. Whether God as first cause solves the problem of where we came from is a question, not something to be assumed. Whether we have souls and a propect of eternal life (or damnation) is a question, not something to be assumed. BTW, why believing a story (without evidence) is the touchstone of salvation would be pretty helpful. FWIW, I can play the “used to be” card too. Only I used to be a Christian. One day, I realized my communion with God was the sound of one hand clapping. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2011, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-evangelical-be-considered-anything-but-ignorant/570577/90 "2011-02-09T08:07:09Z")
[Bender Bending Rodríguez] I can consider you anything you’d like. [/BBR] ---
**Author:** ![phaemon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/977dab/32.png) [@phaemon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phaemon)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2011, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-evangelical-be-considered-anything-but-ignorant/570577/91 "2011-02-09T12:31:45Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Nonsense. Old writings, stories etc may not be hard evidence for the things they claim exist; but they certainly are evidence for the people who wrote them. No they aren’t. They could have been written by anyone (if someone came up with a text they claimed was written directly by God, I doubt you’d accept it as evidence). It is only evidence that some person existed. > [@](#): > > And unlike religious claims they can be evaluated and compared to produce a consistent view of the past… If you meant to say anything about evaluating and comparing texts, then you should have. What you actually said was that if all you had was old writing, stories and hearsay about someone then that person was fictitious. And that makes everyone for whom we have no physical evidence of existence fictitious (I forgot about DNA evidence in my first statement, which was kindly corrected by **razncain** ). And for _most_ historical personages, _all_ we have to go on is old writing, stories and hearsay. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2011, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-evangelical-be-considered-anything-but-ignorant/570577/92 "2011-02-09T13:19:26Z")
> [@phaemon](#): > > No they aren’t. They could have been written by anyone (if someone came up with a text they claimed was written directly by God, I doubt you’d accept it as evidence). It is only evidence that some person existed. More nonsense. You speak as if every bit of writing was some isolated scrap that had no context, no references to its author in other works, no references to things that could be checked, nothing like that. And by serving as evidence that someone existed, that does prove the author wasn’t fictional; we might not know who they were but we know they existed. That’s far more than any religious text does for any god. > [@phaemon](#): > > If you meant to say anything about evaluating and comparing texts, then you should have. I wasn’t expecting this to devolve into a silly attempt to equate verifiable historical documents and fiction. ---
**Author:** ![phaemon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/977dab/32.png) [@phaemon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phaemon)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2011, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-evangelical-be-considered-anything-but-ignorant/570577/93 "2011-02-09T15:25:59Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > More nonsense. You speak as if every bit of writing was some isolated scrap that had no context, no references to its author in other works, no references to things that could be checked, nothing like that No, that’s how _you_ spoke. I’m arguing from the point of view of _your_ statement. And indeed, you recognise yourself that it’s nonsense. Good. > [@](#): > > I wasn’t expecting this to devolve into a silly attempt to equate verifiable historical documents and fiction. Where, presumably, historical documents == things you agree with and fiction == things you don’t? Or do you have some other method of evaluating “old writing” (now that it’s not _all_ classed as fiction)? ---
**Author:** ![Burton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Burton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Burton)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2011, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-evangelical-be-considered-anything-but-ignorant/570577/94 "2011-02-09T16:42:27Z")
I think revelator771 has yet to respond to what his beliefs are. I don’t know what an Evangelical is either. I believe Bible literalists, for whatever reasons they harbor, choose to ignore reality. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2011, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-evangelical-be-considered-anything-but-ignorant/570577/95 "2011-02-09T17:59:47Z")
More about defining Evangelicals. The [Houston Museum of Natural Science](http://culturemap.com/newsdetail/02-08-11-hmns-teases-expansion-with-texas-history-russian-jewels-and-a-mummified-dinosaur-really/) is expanding & adding a big new paleontology section. Robert Bakker is on board as Visiting Paleontology Curator. Anybody who has watched any dino TV in the last couple of decades knows him–he’s the one with The Hat & The Beard. Here’s [something I didn’t know](http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/biographies/MainBiographies/B/Bakker/1.html): > [@](#): > > Bob is currently working on Bones, Bibles, and Creation, a book about “how theology — good, solid Biblical theology — went hand in hand with the discovery of fossils and deep time. The press certainly doesn’t realize that.” … > > If you can’t appreciate a great Pentecostal sermon, don’t bother asking Bakker a question. Besides hunting and explaining and popularizing dinosaurs, he’s also a Pentecostal preacher who teaches the Old Testament — and he delivers his knowledge with a preacher’s fervor and a blend of relevant scripture and well-placed jokes. He speaks his convictions bluntly and worries little about whether some listeners might be offended by either his scientific or his spiritual message. More [here](http://www.prehistoricplanet.com/features/index.php?id=26): > [@](#): > > Bakker sees little conflict between religion and science. A Pentecostal preacher, he says scientists and creationists alike would do well to read Augustine, the fifth century scholar and source of much of the Christian tradition and belief. In addition to studying textual revelation, Augustine sought to interpret the scriptures in light of natural revelation. “And after reading Genesis and thinking about it he came up with the conclusion that the story in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 was not a simple historical sequence of events. It just couldn’t be. It’s not what the words meant. It just wasn’t.” ---
**Author:** ![Paranoid\_Randroid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/paranoid_randroid/32/18_2.png) [@Paranoid\_Randroid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paranoid_Randroid)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2011, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-evangelical-be-considered-anything-but-ignorant/570577/96 "2011-02-09T19:03:46Z")
> [@razncain](#): > > The two links I provided were more than just anonymous sites, those were from 43 real studies and polls that have been published and spread out over a period of many decades, and other than four, the rest did show that the more intelligent the person was, the less religious they were which the second [link](http://www.skeptictank.org/hs/iq_relig.htm) also provided. Well, he was right in one sense: many of the studies mentioned in your links do not contain proper citations. Further, most of them appear quite old; methodological advances have occurred over the decades. Unfortunately, **ITR champion** seems much too willing to extrapolate from the experiences of the US (in which education does correlate positively with religion) to international trends (which go the other direction). A few recent articles: Lynn, Richard, John Harvey, and Helmuth Nyborg (2009). Average intelligence predicts atheism rates across 137 nations. Intelligence, 37, 11-15. Studying 137 countries, a strong negative correlation – 0.6 – was found between intelligence and religiosity (as measured by proportion of believers). Cuba and Vietnam (in one direction) and the US (in the other) seem to be the primary exceptions. Sacerdote, Bruce and Edward L. Glaeser (2001). Education and Religion. NBER Working Paper 8080. Unpublished, unfortunately. They note that – within the US, somewhat anomalously – religion correlates positively with educational attainment. However, they find that persons with higher education exhibit less church attendance, appearing to select into less “fervent” religions. Fan, C. Simon (2008). Religious participation and children’s education: A social capital approach. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 65, 303-317. A bit more conceptual. Fits in with the prior article by demonstrating how the positive effects of education on religion can be explained in terms of the accumulation of social capital. There are additionally quite a few studies that demonstrate that religious schools are more effective than secular schools (I trust this doesn’t require citations), but what that has to do with the schools’ religiosity per se I’m not sure. ---
**Author:** ![TooTame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/fbc32d/32.png) [@TooTame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TooTame)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2011, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-evangelical-be-considered-anything-but-ignorant/570577/97 "2011-02-09T20:31:46Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Huh? A rabid Star Wars fan may be anything bug ignorant when discussing the ins and out of the series and the extended universe and all the stuff that is way beyond me. > If he starts to claim it is real, then we have a problem. Especially if he denies evidence it isn’t, and starts inventing excuses for inconsistencies seriously. Okay I know this isn’t the topic- but going to the star wars comment or even star trek- if a language and life is created based on fiction doesn’t that mean the involved think its real or real life based? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2011, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-evangelical-be-considered-anything-but-ignorant/570577/98 "2011-02-09T20:47:41Z")
> [@TooTame](#): > > Okay I know this isn’t the topic- but going to the star wars comment or even star trek- if a language and life is created based on fiction doesn’t that mean the involved think its real or real life based? Not usually. Though starting, at least, with the Baker Street Irregulars some people find it fun assuming the role of a person who believes it to be real. On the other hand if you grew up with parents and friends who act as if Star Wars was real, and went to a building every Sunday decorated with Star Wars images, and listened to sermons about how the Force should help you live your life given by a person dressed in Jedi robes, you might get taken in. If you asked how we knew about this, you’d hear it was revelation through Saint George, and if you asked to see evidence you’d be told that the evidence was obvious a long time ago in a galaxy far away. ---
**Author:** ![Find\_Friends](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c37758/32.png) [@Find\_Friends](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Find_Friends)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2011, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-evangelical-be-considered-anything-but-ignorant/570577/99 "2011-02-09T21:53:02Z")
> [@revelator771](#): > > You make my point. You make a sweeping general statement and dismiss the one who holds the position. You must be very new if you are just discovering Der Trihs. 🙂 I would say that the people I’ve known who fit he definition generally show a tremendous amount of intellectual dishonesty, especially when it comes to the obvious problems with the Bible as “the word of God” and the fact that the burden of proof is obviously on them, not skeptics of religion as a whole or people who are skeptical because of distinctly different faiths held. If this intellectual dishonesty were to be included in the definition of ignorance, then, yes, I would say that Evangelicals are ignorant as a whole. I’ve met many who are honorable, kind, and free of blatant hypocrisy, but that is all separate to the question. * * * - Jack\*\*\* ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2011, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-evangelical-be-considered-anything-but-ignorant/570577/100 "2011-02-09T23:01:07Z")
> [@Burton](#): > > I don’t know what an Evangelical is either. “Evangelical” is one of those labels (like “conservative” or “liberal”) that is commonly used, but that doesn’t have clear, well-defined boundaries. People or groups sometimes self-identify as Evangelical, but they may not all have the exact same definition in mind. At the risk of oversimplifying, Evangelicals are a subset of Christians (often the more conservative ones, though being Evangelical isn’t just a matter of being conservative), who place a great deal of emphasis on the Bible and its authority, on an individual’s personal relationship with God, and on the need for everyone to “get saved” and “accept Jesus into your heart.” We had a thread on "[What are the differences among Protestant denominations?"](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=482893&page=2) that got into the “What’s an Evangelical?” question starting at around Post #62 (on page 2 of the thread, which is the page I linked to). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-evangelical-be-considered-anything-but-ignorant/570577.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-evangelical-be-considered-anything-but-ignorant/570577.md?page=6)