This goes along with what I’ve seen with your ordinary Christian. They tend not to examine their religion too closely for fear of discovering something that might shake their faith. Although many participate in Bible studies I don’t think they study the Bible like a non-believer does. They typically study the Bible to find support for it and discard anything that poses a problem. Many, many books have been written on the problems in the Bible and when you read these books you find them filled with perverted and twisted linguistic logic.
To give an example how Christians can twist the Bible I heard pastor on a Christian radio station (yes, I do listen to them) try to explain Rev. 3:11, “Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.” The pastor focused on the word “quickly” saying that the writer used the word “quickly” to mean sudden or explosive versus “quickly” meaning soon. Elsewhere in the Bible “quickly” was used to mean soon as in “get here quickly.”
His point, I guess, was to dispel the notion that Jesus would come back soon. Instead he was building a case for Jesus coming back with a “boom” and some time in the future. In essence he perverted the word to get over a difficulty in the Bible.
But anyways back to the Pew Forum survey, it may not have been fair to ask Christians about other religions as they are focused on their own Christianity. Atheists, on the other hand, tend to examine many religions along with Christianity to see if any of them make sense. In the process Atheists come up to speed on religions more than your average Evangelical in the Bible belt of the US. I wouldn't read too much into this survey but at the same time if you can get an evangelical to really study the Bible, you may end up sowing the seeds of doubt. Whoa, wouldn’t that be a kicker!
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