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My Belief-O-Matic Results

As a person of pathologically eclectic beliefs, I always wonder how well I would fit into particular religions. Luckily, Beliefnet has a web doodad called the Belief-O-Matic to help us figure out to what degree we would fit into the major religions of the world, reduced to a simple percentage for easy rating! Silly, I know, but kinda fun just the same. I HTML-ified the optional emailed results you can get, here it is:

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Belief-O-Matic Selector Results

Thanks for taking Beliefnet's Belief-O-Matic quiz at http://beliefnet.com/story/76/story_7665_1.html. Your results are below.

Remember: The top score on the list below represents the faith that Belief-O-Matic, in its less than infinite wisdom, thinks most closely matches your beliefs. However, even a score of 100% does not mean that your views are all shared by this faith, or vice versa.

Belief-O-Matic then lists another 26 faiths in the order of how much they have in common with your professed beliefs. The higher a faith appears on this list, the more closely it aligns with your thinking.

How did the Belief-O-Matic do? Discuss your results on our message boards.

Rankings:

  1. Neo-Pagan (100%)
  2. Unitarian Universalism (94%)
  3. Mahayana Buddhism (87%)
  4. Jainism (84%)
  5. New Age (84%)
  6. Liberal Quakers (81%)
  7. Reform Judaism (80%)
  8. Theravada Buddhism (76%)
  9. Sikhism (75%)
  10. Secular Humanism (71%)
  11. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (69%)
  12. Hinduism (64%)
  13. New Thought (59%)
  14. Bahá'í Faith (57%)
  15. Scientology (55%)
  16. Taoism (55%)
  17. Orthodox Judaism (53%)
  18. Orthodox Quaker (44%)
  19. Islam (42%)
  20. Nontheist (42%)
  21. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (35%)
  22. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (28%)
  23. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (24%)
  24. Seventh Day Adventist (20%)
  25. Eastern Orthodox (20%)
  26. Roman Catholic (20%)
  27. Jehovah's Witness (16%)

Forward this e-mail along to friends to show where among world religions you fit in and encourage them to take the quiz themselves.

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Commentary on my results


Okay, 100% Neo-pagan, no surprise there. Neither is Unitarian Universalism; I have in fact attended services at UU churches in the recent past. But Mahayana Buddhism? I'm about as close to being a Buddhist as I am to being a Christian. Granted, I think both Jesus of Nazareth and Siddhartha Gotama (the Buddha) were wonderful people who said some very wise things, but I think the same of Socrates, and I'm not about to start a religion over it. I suspect both would be horrified to see the level to which they've been posthumously deified. If I were into Buddhism, I would think Theravada Buddhism would be a closer match. I'm guessing the Belief-O-Matic thinks polytheists like me would find "The Three Bodies of Buddha" a better alternative to the agnostic attitude of the Theravada Buddhists, but not in this case. For that matter, my match to Secular Humanism is probably lower than it ought to be. The survey lets you rate the importance of particular questions, but not the confidence levels in your answers -- I'm a lot closer to being agnostic than my results might suggest; with a lot of questions I really felt like clicking the "don't know" option. I should retake the quiz someday when I'm feeling more Pyrrhonistic...