Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Beliefnet

The Belief-o-Matic at Beliefnet.com is just so fascinating to me. I've always had an inexplicable interest in religion, considering I'm just not religious.

Years ago (before I had kids) I took a four-hour interest assessment exam the tries to match your interest with possible occupations. All of my top matches were religious, minister, rabbi, etc. The next top matches were all in the social services field (psychologist, psychiatrist, etc. I'm really not sure why all of this is such a good match for me, or why I've always been so interested in religious beliefs.

Well, anyway... I just took the Belief-o-Matic quiz again just now and was surprised and please by the results. I learned of this quiz about four years ago and every time I've taken it since (which I do every once in a while) it has resulted in 100% Unitarian Universalist, until today. Today the result was a 100% match with Secular Humanist.

About three months ago I was thinking of my beliefs and realized that the thing that feels true to me is secular humanism. Before that time, I considered myself a UU, felt very much like a UU and, after moving to Corvallis, struggled with the fact the the UU church here didn't feel like a very good fit.

Over the years I've recommended the Belief-o-Matic to many people and have found that those who are actively searching for a faith community often don't like the results, but when I look at their results think, "well that makes total sense". They often have an inaccurate preconceived idea of what the resulting religious match is, and can't see themselves in that religion. Often, if they just opened their mind a bit, they could see the accuracy of the recommendation. The people who are really secure in their faith community usually find that the results match what they already know.

So, go take the quiz and see what happens - I've just found it to be so accurate!

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