I don’t think this is limited to religion. Too many people almost never read a book, let alone a serious book, and too much of education is dedicated to Leftist indoctrination rather than supplying vital information. Battles against ignorance are hard won and too many people these days aren’t even aware that they are bone ignorant about almost every thing. Ignorant people are always susceptible to con artists, in politics as well as in all other areas of life.
We may be seeing in our time this warning that Dickens made in A Christmas Carol: “This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom”.
Every year with my freshmen, I do an exercise concerning Biblical idioms that have made their way into our everyday language (“writing on the wall”, “go the extra mile”, etc.), but there are two levels to the exercise – 1) do they know the expression? And 2) do they know it is Biblical in origin?
At the start of this year I was borderline despondent due to how much they didn’t even recognize most of the expressions that have been taken for granted by multiple generations. Talk about a fly in the ointment…
“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” Mark Twain
And the prouder they are, the harder it is.
Even invincible.
Donald is sadly correct: “I don’t think this is limited to religion. Too many people almost never read a book, let alone a serious book, and too much of education is dedicated to Leftist indoctrination rather than supplying vital information.”
Most of the people with whom I work at Neutrons ‘R Us are among the most intelligent around. The overwhelming majority are boneheadedly illiterate on not just the Bible, but anything historical before they were born. Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, Virgil, Lucretius, Aurelius, etc. are well beyond their understanding. If you mentioned Carthage and the Punic Wars to them, they would have no idea what you’re talking about. Often they don’t even know basic things about our own country, like who was the American commanding general during the Revolutionary War and who was the King of England, who won the Civil War, how did we enter WW I, etc. And unless something is materialistic (i.e., consistent with their religion of scientism) and liberal progressive, they don’t care. And worst yet: these people vote! Sorry, Folks, I know I shouldn’t feel this way, but I am disgusted, especially when I get derisively called a “Boomer.”
BTW, I thank God that I never went to college. But I know Latin and Koine Greek, a little history (not like Donald, though!), a lot about the Bible, etc. And due to no TV in our house when I was a kid, I read everything from HG Wells, Jules Verne, and Robert Heinlein to Cicero, Seneca, and Virgil. I also have taught very technical things related to nuclear energy, my job. My high school Latin teacher, my parents, and the US Nuclear Navy gave me the best, most well-rounded education one could hope for. Academia (IMHO) is contemptible, however, and their product – today’s millennials at Neutrons ‘R Us – are prideful, haughty, ignorant, defiant, disobedient adult children. They refuse to follow regulation and think they know better than everyone else. They’ve never had the experience of a reactor scram at 800 feet and everybody is waiting on you the reactor operator so we all can breathe easy and not suck in seawater, and get to the surface.
Remember the Jeopardy episode a couple years ago. The clue was to fill in the blank in the following prayer: Our Father, who art in heaven, [BLANK] be thy name. None of them knew it. And from what I hear, you have to be pretty good to pass the test for being on Jeopardy in the first place. A lot of it isn’t that they’re lazy or stupid. They simply haven’t been taught the things that don’t matter to those doing the teaching. As I’ve long said, history might not always be written by the winners, but it sure it taught by the winners. If they don’t know who the commanding general was in the Revolution, it’s because that isn’t important when it comes to Washington. What is important is that he was a racist slave owner. The bulk of historical studies and other subjects today, and for quite some time, are presented in such a fashion.
Dave G. is correct.
LQC:
“Who was the King of England”.
Who was the King of Great Britain.
(I’m sure many of the English-derived colonists were happy to ignore the Scots, too.) 🙂
@LCQ: Spot on about the need to try to know Latin or Koine Greek, or at least to be familiar with some of the key phrases and what the best non-tendentious scholars explain how these words and passages really should best be translated. Of course the Latin Vulgate written by the consummate Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic scholar, S. Jerome (d. 420), was the work of one who lived in the Holy Land not very long after Our Lord’s time, and who learned the still-actively spoken ancient languages. It remains a critical source for accurate translation.
All one need do to see the “text-drift” of our “official Catholic” translations is to compare the 1970 translation of the New American Bible (NAB) with that of the 2025 NABRE (“Revised Edition”) version.
Ignorance of the Ten Commandments isn’t merely religious illiteracy. That one seems to me a completely different category. That’s like not knowing which side of the road cars drive on in your country, or not being aware of mail.
Tom Byrne, point well made. Thanks.
Education has been so dumbed down. It started before I went to school and I graduated from high school in 1982.