For about the next 300 years, you’re going to hear exuberant atheists, agnostics and “freethinkers” quoting the survey that was released yesterday by The Pew Forum on Religion in Public Life. They think the survey demonstrates that people of faith are so clueless, they don’t even know as much as atheists about what they believe.

Helped along by major media headlines, nonbelievers are in celebratory form today, sharing links that exclaim, “Atheists and Agnostics Know More About Bible Than Religious.”

Yep, those headed for eternal destruction are pretty excited today! Too bad this survey, whatever it may have to do with religion, doesn’t have anything to do with God.

First, let’s look at the way they identified and broke down respondents:

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Classic legacy media thinking: A white protestant is different than a black protestant, for whatever reason, and white Catholic is not the same as a Hispanic Catholic.

At any rate, atheists and agnostics averaged the most correct answers out of all 32 questions concerning religion in general. But check out a sampling of the questions:

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The presumption seems to be that if you embrace any particular faith, you should be an expert on all faiths. But that’s a silly premise, particularly as it relates to Christians. For a Christian, the content of the Bible is what matters. Christianity is a personal, saving relationship with Jesus Christ, and the events of the Bible are the rock of that faith.

There is no reason for a Christian to know anything about Maimonides, the Dalai Lama or the Koran. If you’re interested in knowing about that stuff, fine, but it does nothing to aid your walk with Christ if you do. It’s only useful, honestly, if you want to sit around getting in arguments with other people about religion. And contrary to what you might think, most serious Christians see that as a waste of time. If you really want to get into arguments about religion, I’m sure you can find Christians online who will take you on, but out of the entire Christian population as a whole, most don’t bother.

But you know who loves to get into arguments about religion? Atheists. Try them. They’re easy to find on Facebook and on every Internet forum, whether it’s about Detroit Tigers baseball or cooking. The atheists are always the ones who have done the most research on religion. They know about everything from the crusades to the Zoroastrians – not because they’re exploring an understanding of God, but because they’re looking for examples of fraud and hypocrisy to use in debates.

Even questions about historical Christians like Martin Luther and Jonathan Edwards are not as relevant to the practice of Christianity as you might think, because Christians don’t obsess over human servants of God. We focus on God himself, presented in the flesh in the form of Jesus and indwelling us in the form of the Holy Spirit. We’re not big on human celebrities.

That brings us to one of the most important points about this survey. It’s about religion. It’s not about God. Not one of the questions dealt with the character of God, the nature of grace or the power of the Holy Spirit. They are all about the traditions of man. This is the sort of thing the media thinks is key to the practice of faith.

I live in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which I guess is the world headquarters for those of the Christian Reformed variety. I am not Christian Reformed, but I am largely familiar with their practices, and with some exceptions, their faith and concept of God is pretty much the same as my evangelical-tinged-with-pentecostalism version.

But if you read the local media, particularly the “religion editor,” you’d think the Christian Reformed faith is about nothing but “synod” meetings and debates over female preachers. Most actual adherents to the faith know little about these debates, and care even less. They’re focused on Jesus Christ. But to the “religion editor,” it’s all about these worldly administrative details. So when they poll people and find that they don’t know much about it, they’re horrified.

I could easily come up with a list of 32 questions that deal with crucial tenets of the Bible. Most Christians would ace it. Some atheists might do OK, since they’re always boning up for their next argument. I doubt many journalists could get 50 percent right, and that goes for the self-proclaimed genuises at the Pew Forum too.

They may know about religion. But they don’t know anything about God.

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