I’m astounded–I’m between Huxley and Freud! But I think that’s how it’s meant to work–none of us is sure, and it’s supposed to make us think. Depending on the question or the field addressed at the time, we might feel more comfortable with one interpretation over the other–but that can mutate. I’m glad God is more patient than I am in that area–he has to be, given the lack of clarity!
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Of course I do, but what that would be (what incurrs guilt) depends a great deal on whom you ask. So, once again I’m in a quandry. It’ll all come out in the survey, right?
It can mutate! That’s for sure! Let’s see how it mutates this morning.
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Now you have me curious if I took it again just how much the result will change.
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I just redid it. Nearly identical results.
Reading the explanation more carefully of the Y axis, as @Christy had mentioned, was helpful. I do consider the content of religious belief a lot, but I don’t think the survey gets to the implications of that.
I think it was @SkovandOfMitaze who was surprised that my results were not closer to yours, but sticking to the axes descriptions, I think we see differences on the graph that you and I have talked about already. I’m somewhat more inclined to see science as explaining a lot of things that we both value intuitively. I always want the answer “BOTH” but it’s nearly never available.
And we have also established that you find the content of belief much less important than I do, but we both value how one lives one’s life.
This time, I also captured shots of all the questions as I took the survey, and the write up at the end. So I have the content of the website, if I need to hash over anything again.
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Agreed so perhaps some differences should be expected or could even be predicted?
I found myself choosing responses further from center, I think because I’ve become more sure and settled in my own criteria for answering.
This time I took note of the questions where I selected the center response, something I tried hard to void. There were just 3: #4, #17 and #26.
My location moved closer to center horizontally and a little less so vertically.
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Okay - I had to go and retake it this morning, just to get to the textual explanations that I failed to read the first time. Now that I took the time to read the explanations they gave for each axis, it makes a bit more sense, though I still think it’s interesting that New Atheists are in the upper quadrant rather than in the lower one.
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This stood out in looking at the explanation of the vertical axis again:
At the top end lies the view that religion is, at heart, about beliefs: it’s about God, or revelation, or the supernatural, or miracles, or life after death, or doctrine, etc. It’s more about what you think than what you do.
New atheists would agree that it is what you think, and as with their fundamentalist counterparts, it is about what one should think. Both embrace the modernist paradigm that rationality should lead. But since rationality is rudderless it allows them to take it in opposite directions.
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I’m not able next door to indicate in any way that I saw your reply without “having the last word,”which I would rather you do. But, thanks for it.
Hillary, a fun quiz to take! And provided lots of insight as well. Thanks, and have a nice Christmas season!
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I took the survey, but didn’t realize others were posting their results. Technically challenged (techno-peasant?), I landed 2 squares above the horizontal and 2 squares to the left of the vertical.
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“Same old, same old” problem: interpretation. How find did one reader slice the question vs another reader? Thus, room for discussion! Great!
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Some of us are just exhibitionists!
I took it another time and got nearly identical results.
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This is an interesting quiz. I was curious to see where I fit in relation to Gould. I find that I agree with many of his views on evolutionary biology, and his difficulties with sociobiology. But we differed in our views of the substance of the Christian faith.
Here is my result:
I think it reasonably reflects my views. Although I might have said I would be a little closer to the y-axis on scientism - greatly respecting the value of science but not thinking that science can answer all questions about the meaning of life or how we should live. I think that science and religion are compatible, although there are some areas of ambiguity. None of those ambiguities really challenge my faith, perhaps because I don’t expect life to be without ambiguities.
I agree with many that the questions are sometimes hard to interpret in a well-defined way. If I were a little closer to the y-axis, I could almost think of myself as Stephen Jay Gould reflected through the x-axis 
.
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I think many “Biologosians” have been finding ourselves in a very similar spot on the graph!
Another thing I wanted to note: there was some serious scholarship involved in making this survey in that the designers must have decided how those distinguished scientists would have answered the questions, based on their published writings. So, thank you @HRankin for the original posting. I hope we contributed to their research.
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Well I think you speak truly for “we” but what are you not telling us about your own understanding?
I agree with your assessment of Christy’s value and your approach to reading the Bible seems like a dead ringer with hers - which probably tells you all you need to know about how little I know on that score.
But I have no idea what this means:” Oh yeah, I am on version 6.2, was a USAF pilot for 24 years”.
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The quiz was trying to categorize people, so many of the questions seemed like false choices to me and I couldn’t strongly agree or disagree. Yes, I think religion is really about a spiritual reality and not just a moral code (it’s “substantive”), but I also think religion is pretty worthless if it isn’t functional and actually impacting the way people live life. I think science gives excellent answers to the questions it is equipped to answer and I’m pretty confident and unskeptical about those answers, but obviously there are dimensions of knowledge it doesn’t speak to and can’t explain. But that doesn’t mean I’m “pluralistic” and think we should look to astrology, homeopathy, and science for answers to the same questions, it means we should figure out which tools we need to use and use science when it’s appropriate.
For the many of us who have spent a lot of time thinking about the intersections the quiz was highlighting and how to nuance things with a lot of “both/and” type explanations, it was frustrating to be asked to pick “either/or” explanations for everything.
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You just brightened my day. I’m looking down the barrel of 7.0 in a couple months. I look forward to becoming more easily agitated, opinionated and judgmental though my current codger game is already strong.
Edited to say it is good to have your example to put against the pilot preacher in John Irving’s A Prayer For Owen Meany. I’ve shared a description from the book in the 32nd entry to this thread on current reading. I never know if a link will take you there directly but it is dated Oct 20. It may give you a chuckle.
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