The First STW Religion Poll

Let’s do our own religion poll on here.

If you are willing, indicate your attitude to religious belief (defined, for our purposes, as adherence to a particular faith tradition), using one the following categories:

1. practicing religious
2. non-practicing religious
3. *interested, non-religious
4. non-interested non-religious (ambivalent)
5. anti-religious

If you choose to answer, please do not make judgemental comments about anyone else’s response.

*By ‘interested’, I don’t mean that you want someone to come around your house to convince you; just that you find the topic interesting and have no hostility against any particular religious position.

I’ll start.

1.

1.

Against all logic and not as a result of my upbringing.

Rather, it’s because I choose to and I get something from it.
Inexplicably, it fills a hole in my being that would otherwise be empty.

Vicars son so 4 obviously

4

1. My religion is bikes. Trails are my church. I pray before the gods of Santa Cruz and Maxxis.

That and Jedi (my official response on the last census)

(Sorry, non serious answer 😛 )

4

5.

But, I am interested in religion as it has a huge impact on the world we live in. I just don’t like it and I certainly don’t want someone to come to my house to convince me.

None of the above – sorry (hybrid of several)

4.
[Sith on the last census]

3.
Atheist and scientist, and have always taken an interest in history, which has to include the effects of religion throughout the ages.
No particular interest in religion itself, though.
But.. I regularly find myself edging towards 5, but then I remember that it is often people that are the problem, not the books that they read.

4/5 . A vicar did pray for/with me yesterday and I cried.

I’m messed up

3

5

5.

4.

Occasionally interested but more intrigued as to why and how some of my seemingly otherwise rational and (very) intelligent and well educated relatives are massively god fearing full on believers.

4.

4.

Although, I regularly make blood sacrifice to the Great Deity of Bicycle Maintenance and to the casual observer, my frenzied utterances may constitute some religious significance.

None of the above really, I guess it would be a modified 4
4a ‘completely disinterested until someone tries to force their ideas on me then (politely) anti-religious for as long as it takes for them to go away then back to completely disinterested’

4

Occasionally 5

5

5 I think. I’d rather live without the impact those who claim to be religious have/had on humanity

4, but 5 if pushed

4

5

5

Occasionally interested but more intrigued as to why and how some of my seemingly otherwise rational and (very) intelligent and well educated relatives are massively god fearing full on believers.

If you’ve already accepted that they are very intelligent, yet they still believe, this might be a question you’d do well to ask..!

2.

4.5

4 mostly but sometimes 5.

just that you find the topic interesting and have no hostility against any particular religious position.

I 3) find the topic interesting and have no hostility against a particular religious position, however I’m 5) anti-religious when it comes to people following organised religions using ancient fairy stories and superstitions to demand preferential treatment, justify their bigotry, persecute others, or otherwise get their own way.

I don’t doubt that there are positive aspects to religion; community, support and suchlike. But all the increasingly implausible goddy bits really have no place in a 21st Century society.

Douglas Adams once said, “isn’t it enough to say that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it?” – turning that on its head, if we got rid of all the fairies we’d still have beautiful gardens. Some theists lose sight of this I fear (as evidenced in previous threads where some have alluded that religion is a prerequisite for morals, for instance).

So I’m a 3, 4, 4.5 or 5 depending how you look at it I suppose. Sorry, I appreciate that doesn’t help your poll much.

4

5.

4+. spouse is 1/2.

@Cougar: No, it’s fine. I don’t want people to feel pigeon-holed by the categories; I just wanted to throw together something succinct-enough to cover as many eventualities as I could think of.

5

Need another category:

6) Cougar

4.999 (unless someone tries to “sell” religion to me, and then it’s a 5)

OP you need a category of aggressivley anti-religious. That’s seen quite freequentiy on STW

4.999 (unless someone tries to “sell” religion to me, and then it’s a 5)

I’m not surprised, what with inflation the way it is and all.

jambalaya – Member
OP you need a category of aggressivley anti-religious. That’s seen quite freequentiy on STW

But I don’t want the thread to be in any way inflammatory, jambalaya. I am just hoping that people, as objectively and as concisely as possible, feel able to state where they are coming from with respect to religion.

‘Aggressively’ is an editorial word that I don’t think would help us along! 🙂