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11 Responses to “Belief-O-Matic”

Chris
March 10th, 2004 at 19:02

I took that poll.…
1. Neo-Pagan (100%)
2. New Age (98%)
3. Unitarian Universalism (81%)
4. Mahayana Buddhism (78%)
5. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (77%)
6. New Thought (77%)
7. Liberal Quakers (72%)
8. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (71%)
9. Scientology (66%)
10. Theravada Buddhism (58%)
11. Bahá‘í Faith (56%)
12. Taoism (56%)
13. Reform Judaism (53%)
14. Secular Humanism (51%)
15. Hinduism (45%)
16. Sikhism (41%)
17. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (40%)
18. Jainism (40%)
19. Orthodox Quaker (39%)
20. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (34%)
21. Orthodox Judaism (31%)
22. Jehovah’s Witness (28%)
23. Nontheist (27%)
24. Islam (19%)
25. Seventh Day Adventist (11%)
26. Eastern Orthodox (9%)
27. Roman Catholic (9%)


Pariah Burke
March 12th, 2004 at 08:01

So, know­ing both of us and our reli­gious beliefs, how do you inter­pret the results you and I received?


Chris
March 12th, 2004 at 16:23

I find it thouroughly amusing.…I would never in my wildest dreams have guessed, that deep inside of me lurks a lib­eral quaker.and upon fur­ther reflec­tion, I would think that Jainism should be higher up on my per­sonal list.
As for you?.…
Never for­get your roots… I remem­ber your self induced “reli­gious slump” from a few years ago. I hope that you have decided to once again embrace your faith and power. You are strong in the ways… and it will help you through many rough times. I have only myself began to truly apprec­ciate my abil­i­ties. Focus on the neg­a­tive and it will thrive, as I have learned the hard way. The biggest chal­lenge… in ANY faith, keep true to your spirit or call­ing, and it will guide you to the bet­ter path… albiet some­times a scenic route through some pretty hor­ren­dous ordeals.

gimme a call some­time brother.


Pariah Burke
March 12th, 2004 at 19:10

Given our upbring­ings, I was sur­prised to see Catholic so far down our lists.

I’ve been try­ing to get back to my faith. I even dug out of stor­age a set of 8 cas­sette tapes that com­prise a lec­ture called “Energy Anatomy” by Carolyn Maise (spelling may be off). After lis­ten­ing to the first two and one-half tapes today, I felt good deal more cen­tered, more like myself. I small break­thru hap­pened in one of those epiphanic, all-of-a-sudden moments. Something big made sense again. A minute and three-quarters later my cell rang with an inter­view offer. I had for­got­ten how good it felt to know Truth and how much power and imme­di­acy I can sum­mon when I do.

Unfortunately, within a few mintues of return­ing home, it all unrav­elled again.

My cur­rent ordeal is the most hor­ren­dous I’ve ever been in.


Samuel John Klein
June 26th, 2004 at 15:29

Pardon me if I chime in, not being a long­time vis­i­tor here, but I took the sur­vey too and got fairly inter­est­ing results.

My poll results were:

1.ÊMainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (100%)
2.ÊMainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (88%)
3.ÊBah‡’’ Faith (86%)
4.ÊOrthodox Quaker (83%)
5.ÊChurch of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (82%)
6.ÊJehovah’s Witness (82%)
7.ÊLiberal Quakers (78%)
8.ÊEastern Orthodox (77%)
9.ÊRoman Catholic (77%)
10.ÊSeventh Day Adventist (74%)
11.ÊUnitarian Universalism (66%)
12.ÊTheravada Buddhism (60%)
13.ÊOrthodox Judaism (57%)
14.ÊMahayana Buddhism (54%)
15.ÊSikhism (54%)
16.ÊJainism (52%)
17.ÊHinduism (50%)
18.ÊNeo-Pagan (48%)
19.ÊChristian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (47%)
20.ÊReform Judaism (47%)
21.ÊSecular Humanism (43%)
22.ÊIslam (43%)
23.ÊTaoism (43%)
24.ÊNew Age (40%)
25.ÊNew Thought (30%)
26.ÊNontheist (30%)
27.ÊScientology (25%)

I found myself going back to what the poll seemed to be say­ing to me with respect to the results. My belief sys­tem, nur­tured in Roman Catholicism and shaped fur­ther by long years in a self-imposed wilder­ness that I now no longer remem­ber why I started, seems to have just a lit­tle more in com­mon with Protestantism than my native Catholicism. I find that both inter­est­ing and amus­ing for rea­sons I can­not put a fin­ger on.

I was born RC and con­sider myself “lapsed” (apostate-haven’t con­sis­tently prac­ticed the faith for years) but have felt the call of my mother reli­gion. I have a free home-study Bible course that I’m going through in starts; I even have a few books by Catholic writ­ers that I have found engag­ing and also have a paper­back copy of the Catechism (availi­ble at Powells and other fine book­stores. If such a thing intrigues the notional you you should get it-it’s not expen­sive and it’s actu­ally quite read­able. A tes­ta­ment to the qual­ity of The Wife{tm} is that even though she does not wish to con­vert (she is a non­af­fil­i­ated Christian) she does not object to liv­ing a Catholic lifestyle as she finds an extreme amount of beauty and love in the Catholic sys­tem. Also, she admires JP2.

Ah, prat­tle prat­tle prat­tle. Pariah, thanks for the oppor­tu­nity to ram­ble on.

Quickly going over the rest, I am encour­aged that RC (for rea­sons stated above) is #9 on my list. Based on my per­sonal feel­ings, I’d like to have seen it higher. I am intrigued that, by and large, those faiths that I have felt spoke to me loud­est are at the top of the list (save the Protestant, which, as I said, find amus­ing), and the ones that don’t speak to me at all are down to the bottom.

But, I must say, I don’t know what Scientology is doing there. And this must have impor­tant beliefs in com­mon with Mormonism, but not dogma, because I’ve done more than my share of com­par­a­tive reli­gion self-study (as well as seek out crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion on all faiths) and Mormonism is just some­thing I can­not per­son­ally approach in any way.

Thanks once again for giv­ing some­thing to make me think, explore, and feel.


Pariah Burke
June 28th, 2004 at 17:00
“She finds an extreme amount of beauty and love in the Catholic system.”

I would have to agree with her there. Though long fallen from the graces of the Vatican, I was raised Roman Catholic. In the immutable tra­di­tions and trap­pings of Catholocism I find great com­fort. It isn’t Christ or the Holy Ghost that enfolds me warmly in safety and com­fort despite the cold oak of the pew. Rather it’s the pre­dictabil­ity of the prac­tice; one mass is the same as the next, regard­less of parish. While there exists enough free­dom for each priest to infuse his per­son­al­ity into the mass, the atmos­phere, struc­ture, and activ­ity of a mass remain con­stant. Most impor­tantly (to me), is the con­tin­u­ance with an adult’s lucid­ity of that which I was taught as a child: A Catholic church is safe; one may always seek refuge in one and catch one’s breath.

Catholic dogma no longer holds Truth or com­fort for me, but the tra­di­tions and sense of safety inher­ent in the prac­tice of Catholic ser­vices returns me St. Someone’s build­ing on occassion.


logtar
June 29th, 2004 at 07:38

1. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (100%)
2. Liberal Quakers (89%)
3. Unitarian Universalism (78%)
4. Bahá‘í Faith (77%)
5. Orthodox Quaker (73%)
6. Reform Judaism (72%)
7. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (64%)
8. Neo-Pagan (63%)
9. New Age (60%)
10. Sikhism (59%)
11. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (56%)
12. Mahayana Buddhism (56%)
13. Orthodox Judaism (56%)
14. Theravada Buddhism (54%)
15. Islam (53%)
16. Secular Humanism (51%)
17. Seventh Day Adventist (48%)
18. Eastern Orthodox (47%)
19. Roman Catholic (47%)
20. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (47%)
21. New Thought (44%)
22. Jehovah’s Witness (43%)
23. Jainism (40%)
24. Taoism (38%)
25. Scientology (36%)
26. Hinduism (27%)
27. Nontheist (26%)

I am another one that was raised Roman Catholic, and now I am some­what of a Catholic light, mixed with protes­tant… inter­est­ing test… and I might have to go learn a lit­tle more about the Quakers, I eat thier oat­meal and never knew it was a full fledged religion. ;)


Samuel John Klein
June 29th, 2004 at 12:59

Pariah (and others):

I am extremely enam­ored of the sorts of inter­nal jour­neys that we go on when we think of spir­i­tu­al­ity, and our own spir­i­tual sides. In terms of final result and opin­ion I can only speak to my own expe­ri­ence. I do not how­ever, think it out of line to say that think­ing about reli­gion (orga­nized or non) seems to cause a com­bi­na­tion of intro­spec­tion, and self-defniniton.

I do not think this an alto­gether fruit­less or unpro­duc­tive as long as it is not solely an inter­nal jour­ney. One of the things that most reli­gions seem to do is, in some direct or indi­rect way, cause us to reach out in a pos­i­tive way to our world.

Yes, I do find trou­bling aspects in pro­ceed­ing grad­u­ally back toward the Catholic Church. The scan­dals in the news regard­ing the molesta­tion of chil­dren and the incred­i­bly bad han­dling of the results down through the years.

Still, I feel a gen­tle call back to the Church and I will prob­a­bly fol­low it in my own wend­ing way. When I last had Mass, and vis­ited a Church (Our Lady of Sorrows, at SE 52nd and Woodstock to be pre­cise), we found our­selves in the mid­dle of a sin­cere group of folks of var­i­ous lev­els of devout­ness who had noth­ing but love for the world.

Certainly that’s pos­si­ble with­out reli­gion; one of the things I’ve learned lately is that some peo­ple need reli­gion more and oth­ers less.

I’d bet­ter end this; it’s becom­ing woolgathering.

But before I go, touch­ing on Pariah’s response to me, yes, the com­fort of the Church in its tra­di­tions and rou­tines is a big point for me, too. It’s one of the things that got me “back in the door”.


spiritualone
August 23rd, 2004 at 09:54

Hi there,
I’d be inter­ested in tak­ing the test, can you pro­vide me a link? an URL?. I am a very itense stu­dent of reli­gion and find this blog very inter­est­ing, thanks Mr pariah for the chance to read the many opin­ions and the chance to say mine. I was brought up in a mul­tire­li­gion fam­ily. Mainly catholic, all but two of these were Christian. It was good cause I got to sam­ple many dif­fer­ent beleif sys­tems and also very many doc­trines. I also learned to have a great respect for all reli­gions and to see there is a lot in comon amongs all reli­gions in the world. I love the Bible and read it often. My cho­sen reli­gion might sur­prise many, it is Scientology. But for all the difer­ences peo­ple find in it to Christianity, I have learned to appre­ci­ate Jesus and The Bible a lot more through it. It agrees with me basi­caly because it is very lib­eral and not author­i­tar­ian, and I find it work­able. I love the Catholic her­itage of mine and I iden­tify per­fectly with the above ideas. I’d like to take the test too If pos­si­ble. Thanks again for shar­ing your views and insigts, very valu­able to me. Love Spiritual one


Samuel John Klein
August 23rd, 2004 at 22:07

You can still reach the Belief-o-matic. It’s linked through the first sen­tence of Pariah’s orig­i­nal post here, or use this link:

http://​beliefnet​.com/​s​t​o​r​y​/​7​6​/​s​t​o​r​y​_​7​6​6​5​_​1​.html


Allura Eden
September 9th, 2004 at 13:31

hello !

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