Mu. No, Really, mu.

[omorka]

Incredibly Annoying Faith Quiz

Hey, memeslayer, remember the AUTOMATIC 0% MATCH? I can't answer over 50% of the questions in this quiz - all of the answers are equally (and wholly) wrong.

Comments

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

I've heard some very unsettling things about BeliefNet. If you hang out there regularly and have no problems, then don't mind me; but if not, I'd suggest not drawing their attention.

[memeslayer.livejournal.com]

I am annoyed with this quiz too. It's yet another example of an author that has no idea what atheism is all about. Specific complaints:

Q7(Afterlife): I've never felt that rejecting the idea of an afterlife was essential to atheism, but others may disagree.

Q8(Evil): Both "human failings" and "free will" seem like equally valid answers to me, but one is supposedly religious and the other is not. Why?

Q12(Different Beliefs): "Sincere but mistaken" is apparently religious, the rude "It's amazing what people will believe" is the atheist answer. I find this vaguely insulting.

Q13(Agreement): I have no idea how to answer this. Do I "Reject most or all formal teachs of faith"? Or "Accept most or all of what my faith teaches"? I chose the former.

Q14(More Evil): This one makes atheists out to be sulking children. The atheist answer is "[Evil] convinces me that there is no god". In other words, "God hurt me so I hate him!".

Q15(Science): What the hell is this? "Science will disprove religion"? *Maybe* you could make some wild assumptions and streeeeeetch and get something similar to that, but "...two aspects of the same search for ultimate truth" is more reasonable. Of course, this is the religious answer.

Q17(Children): I don't really believe in foisting my views on others, so teaching children to "Reject teachings of faith in favor of secular philosophy" does not really appeal to me.

Q18(Meaning): Two roughly equivalent answers--one says that people should be moral and loving, even though life is a "chemical accident"(irrelevent). The others says that being moral and loving can give meaning to our lives, regardless of whether there is some supernatural element or not. I chose the latter, but apparently it's a religious(or at least agnostic) answer.

Q20(Moral Code): I'm apparently expected to answer with "Religion makes it harder to be moral", but that's a load of crap. I chose "It's entirely possible...without religion".

Q22(Spiritual Quest): I have no spiritual quest, so I stretched and put "learning to lead a good life".

Q25(Spiritual Fulfillment): I don't find spiritual fulfillment, so I put "watching people treat each other well".

This makes me a "Spiritual Dabbler(30-39)". It's right about one thing, though -- I'm not impressed. :)

[binaryathena.livejournal.com]

since I accept the principles and purposes of the UUA -- I come out as straddling between spiritual and skeptic -- which is amusing in a weird sort of way. the "atheist" answers are annoyingly insulting -- and as a panentheist, the whole thing is helplessly skewed with all wrong answers.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

Q7(Afterlife): I've never felt that rejecting the idea of an afterlife was essential to atheism, but others may disagree.

Interesting - I've met at least one hard-core atheist (harder-core in his atheism than even you are, I think, although less a hard-core materialist) who explicitly accepted ghosts (he'd met one), and at least two others who also had some sort of nebulous suspicions about an afterlife. So perhaps this opinion is quite a bit more common than the quiz author realizes. (I hadn't thought about it at the time - this was one of the few questions I could give an honest answer to!)

Q12(Different Beliefs): "Sincere but mistaken" is apparently religious, the rude "It's amazing what people will believe" is the atheist answer. I find this vaguely insulting.

And having been told this myself by atheists and Christians alike, I find it odd that it would be marked as an atheistic answer. More of a One Right True and Only Way-ist answer, whatever that Way may be.

Q14(More Evil): This one makes atheists out to be sulking children. The atheist answer is "[Evil] convinces me that there is no god". In other words, "God hurt me so I hate him!".

This was the one that made me give up completely. None of the answers was even the least bit palatable . . . and yeah, that answer seemed awfully condescending to me, too.

I didn't even get to #22 or #25.

[memeslayer.livejournal.com]

Interesting. My brand of atheism could probably best be summed up as "Whatever you think, you're wrong". I lump questions about the afterlife in with questions about the nature of consciousness, which I don't worry about particularly much. I don't see it as necessarily being a religious matter any more than life or death are.