You know what would be an interesting experiment to do in the United States?

[xiphias]

I think it would be very interesting to have a polling firm do the following poll, throughout the United States. Two questions, but the second one would be a bit long:

1. With the caveat that you might be able to see exceptions in some cases, do you, on the whole, come closer to supporting or opposing the display of the Ten Commandments in public, not-overtly-religious buildings such as courthouses, town halls, or schools, and the like?

2. Please name as many of the Ten Commandments as you can.

Question 2 would be scored from 0 to, oh, about 14 or so, with half-points given for partial credit. The reason for going over 10 would be for people who could name multiple versions of commandments, including the "keep" and "remember" distinction in the commandment of the Sabbath, and between the Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish versions. Actually, perhaps one would want to score from -1 to 14, to cover people who list things that aren't in the Ten Commandments, such as "Love thy neighbor".

I hypothesize that there would be no correlation between the "support" or "oppose" answer, and how many they could name. And that the average number would be somewhere around 2.

Comments

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Oppose, and I can certainly do the ten in Catholic version, as well as riff on some of the other forms (though not do them entirely).

I have at least once in my copyediting career had to tell an author that there is more than one version.