"My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge": The Stupefying Ignorance Of Average Churchgoers

Churchgoers, on average, can't articulate, defend, or verify their beliefs in any meaningful or compelling way.  Ask those outside the church.  Atheists and scientists have known this for a long time, but Christians seem highly reluctant to acknowledge it.  Those who have read my blog and noticed its title The Christian Rationalist will know that I have an epistemology and theological conclusions that are extremely different than what one will find in the worldviews of most Christians.  Amusingly, because of this, sometimes Christians have tried to oppose my priorities or my conclusions.  In the past few years, I've had a Christian yell at me publicly outside of a restaurant for insisting that other Christians focus on intellectual matters and try to learn their Bibles better, I've had another Christian outright deny that Christians are generally ignorant of logic and philosophically naive and unsophisticated, and I've had numerous other Christians scold me for my relentless and overt emphasis on intellectualism and knowledge.

Interestingly, the Bible itself notes that this is not a new phenomenon, as something in Hosea remains very applicable to the modern situation.


Hosea 4:6--". . . my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge."


Regardless of any denial of the widespread ignorance of the Bible and logic one may find in the church, this verse perfectly describes what I think when I converse with most Christians around me, irrespective of what particular church they go to.  I find it fascinating--and very damn frustrating--that Christians so often have no idea what the Bible itself teaches specifically and verifiably about certain issues and ideas, or almost anything at all.

This penetrating and entrenched ignorance can be easily confirmed.  Simply enter a church on Sunday morning or Wednesday evening and just ask people questions.  You don't even need to ask how they know the Bible or Christianity is true (or how they know God exists, which is a wholly separate issue).  To highlight the lack of simple Biblical knowledge--knowledge of the very book they claim to revere and ascribe to God himself, just inquire into what they believe the Bible teaches about hell, morality, justice, God, the alleged Trinity, and many other things.  One doesn't even need to ask questions about logic, epistemology, or external philosophy to expose the disease of ignorance common in the church.  When asked where the Bible teaches the beliefs that they cling to so passionately and personally and proclaim so loudly and inadequately in our culture they will probably say things like:


"Well, I don't know the verses, but I know my position is Biblical."

"That's a good question.  I need to study this topic more."

"Go ask (my pastor, my friend, etc).  He/she knows this far better than me."

"Ultimately, I/we just have to believe this conclusion is true."

"I've never really thought much about this."

"This isn't a 'salvation issue', so don't get too concerned with it."


See how utterly disappointing and terrifying this is?

If this is the general state of the minds of churchgoers, then it is no wonder that when people ask things like "Does the Bible say torture is wrong?", "Is the Trinity taught in the Bible?", "What does the Bible say about evangelism?", "Is it a sin to have close friendships with members of the opposite gender?", "Is the book of Revelation literal or not?", or "Is this position on pre-marital sex biblical?", there is no consensus, no ability to quickly recite memorized passages or at least passage numbers, no starting from foundational principles and working upwards from there, and often no certainty.  In most cases, at best they will possibly recall a cliche verse that even nonbelievers are familiar with or a vague one few are familiar with and then try to force an extrapolated or irrelevant idea into it or out of it.  This is why people in churches will usually respond when questioned with appeals to ignorance, emotion, authority, popularity, tradition, novelty; this is why they will usually beg the question and resort to circular reasoning; this is why one finds so many non-sequiturs and red herrings and contradictions in their answers and justifications.  The fallacies can seem endless!  The complications only amplify when these ignorant masses base their own beliefs largely on intuition, the teachings of others, personal "convictions", and assumed premises.

All of this is merely one horrifying symptom of the latent anti-intellectualism and alogical priorities in the church at large.  When Christians rarely use reason to defend Christianity or try to learn and know the evidence supporting it, it does not surprise me when they interpret the Bible or hold to particular theological beliefs in the same way.  The sloppiness and fallacies and ignorance of the former are simply carried over and inherited into the latter.  Many things believed and practiced by the modern evangelical church are nothing but baseless ideas that either are demonstrably false or plain unverifiable, certainly foreign to the Bible itself and to logic, which is responsible for enabling us to even understand what the Bible says to begin with.  Reason and applied use of reason (to investigations of the Bible, for instance) alone can reverse this, but ignoring the mounting problems with the ability and willingness of many churchgoers to articulate and defend ideas will not reassure or save or comfort anyone.

The church is perishing for lack of knowledge, its faults and intellectual stupor and ignorance obvious to almost all but protested and corrected by few.  Will it wake up to the screams of concerned people inside and outside of the church?  Or will it continue to neglect the alarms and remain drowsy and lost?