View Poll Results: What

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  • I was raised in a religion. (religious)

    54 18.43%
  • I arrived at my beliefs through reason. (religious)

    57 19.45%
  • I arrived at my beliefs through proselytization. (religious)

    3 1.02%
  • I arrived at my beliefs through a life changing event. (religious)

    8 2.73%
  • I arrived at my beliefs through other means. (religious)

    7 2.39%
  • I was raised without religion. (irreligious)

    27 9.22%
  • I arrived at my beliefs through reason. (irreligious)

    118 40.27%
  • I arrived at my beliefs through proselytization. (irreligious)

    4 1.37%
  • I arrived at my beliefs through a life changing event. (irreligious)

    5 1.71%
  • I arrived at my beliefs through other means. (irreligious)

    10 3.41%
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Thread: Another fact finding poll: How did you arrive at your beliefs? (read the first post before voting!)

  1. #1
    Dayman's Avatar Romesick
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    Default Another fact finding poll: How did you arrive at your beliefs? (read the first post before voting!)

    We have a very successful poll that attempts to discover the makeup of EMM posters religions, and while that is interesting on its own, what I am interested in is how people arrived at their current beliefs. Topics like this have arisen before but I will attempt to be comprehensive and have this be a resource for future posts here in the ethos much like the previous poll.

    There will be two subsets, one for irreligious, one for religious. I define irreligious as anyone who does not believe or eschews believe in god. If you don't care about religion at all, you count as irreligious. Same goes for deists who believe in god but have no religion (of course, unless you consider your deism your own religion). Religious goes without saying, if you believe in a god or in a dogmatic religion pick a selection in this category.


    • I was raised in a religion/without a religion. This is obvious, if your religion (or lack thereof) is that of your parents and you have experienced no crisis of faith or conversions and have been consistent in your beliefs choose this. If you've stayed within the same doctrine choose this. If you stayed religious but changed religions DO NOT choose this.
    • I arrived at my beliefs through reasoning. This means that you arrived at your position through thought. Becoming an atheist through skepticism or a Christian by studying theology or anything of the sort. If on your own you sought out and changed your beliefs choose this. If you were convinced through proselytizing and later reasoned it out DO NOT choose this one. If you were born in a religion and later reasoned it out DO NOT choose this either.
    • I arrived at my beliefs through proselytization. Someone else convinced you, through whatever reasons you felt valid, to accept a set of beliefs. This includes books and media! If you read Dawkins and instantly renounced your faith then pick this. If you read Dawkins and it resonated with what you already were thinking do NOT pick this. Same goes with the religious side. If someone special convinced you enough to change beliefs, but later on you reasoned it out pick this.
    • I arrived at my beliefs through a life changing event. I know two people who this applies to specifically. My aunt works with a woman who's been raped in front of her children, witnessed a murder of a family member, amongst other things. She's an atheist. I know another woman who was in an accident and had an near-death experience and says she saw Jesus. She's a Christian. Both were the opposite beforehand. If this experience reaffirmed your beliefs this doesn't count, so if you went to Jersusalem and had a vision at the Dome of the Rock and you were already Muslim do not pick this.
    • I arrived at my beliefs through other means. Anything that doesn't fit into the above categories. I think I covered them all but if you choose this PLEASE explain.

    NO CHOICE IS BETTER THAN ANY OTHER! I WILL NOT JUDGE ANYONE ON WHAT THEY CHOOSE! JUST BE HONEST!

    After this poll has gained, in my opinion, sufficient sample size, I will analyze and interpret the results. I'm not going to reveal the purpose until after this so this attempt at an experiment (yes, it's self selected, I'm not a scientist) will at least be single-blinded. Results in the poll will be show after I close it, but you can reveal what you chose if you want. I just don't want anyone to try and fix it one way or another.

    Don't debate other people's beliefs here. No insults or douchebaggery is permitted. Feel free to tell us what you voted for and why, I like to know the stories behind people. I may, and others may, ask you why you think why you do. Answer or don't answer, it's up to you. Don't flame others, and again, no douchebaggery.
    Last edited by Dayman; July 14, 2009 at 07:05 AM.

  2. #2
    Dayman's Avatar Romesick
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    Default Re: Another fact finding poll: How did you arrive at your beliefs? (read the first post before voting!)

    reserved

  3. #3
    Dayman's Avatar Romesick
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    Default Re: Another fact finding poll: How did you arrive at your beliefs? (read the first post before voting!)

    To start off I'll do myself. I'm an atheist, however I was raised Catholic and only renounced my faith at 18, just as I started college. I was always enamored with science and as a skeptic I thought most of the more "out there" things like alternative medicine, UFOs, cryptozoology, etc, were silly. I just wasn't internally consistent with my skepticism. After some self examination brought on by a budding love of philosophy I decided I was deist...then a weak later, agnostic, then a few months later, atheist. My skepticism wasn't realized as such until last December, when I learned about skepticism and what it really was.

  4. #4
    Orko's Avatar Praeses
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    Default Re: Another fact finding poll: How did you arrive at your beliefs? (read the first post before voting!)

    Hmmm. It's a combination of two options for me, actually: I was convinced by someone and by thus started loosing my beliefs, until it all went on and I became more reasonable and less religious.
    Quote Originally Posted by Marcus Aurelius
    Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.

  5. #5
    Dayman's Avatar Romesick
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    Default Re: Another fact finding poll: How did you arrive at your beliefs? (read the first post before voting!)

    Quote Originally Posted by orko View Post
    Hmmm. It's a combination of two options for me, actually: I was convinced by someone and by thus started loosing my beliefs, until it all went on and I became more reasonable and less religious.
    I can't tell you what to pick, but read what I wrote in the first post, it should help. I think I know what you should pick, but I'm not going to skew the results be doing that

  6. #6
    Tigrul's Avatar Campidoctor
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    Default Re: Another fact finding poll: How did you arrive at your beliefs? (read the first post before voting!)

    I was raised in a very religious environment. When I was becoming an atheist, I was even praying to god to help me keep my faith, to hide bits of reality from me, to give me strength to ignore bits of reality. But the arguments against my christian belief kept piling up and at one point I simply gave up christianity. (when I say arguments, I don't refer so much to arguments from outside as to arguments of my own; of course, I've had arguments from outside sources as well, but more were of my own) A bit later I gave up belief in god as well. Last year I gave up any belief I had left in after life. I was never, after deconversion, really confident in an afterlife, but last year I took a more definite attitude, I considered that there was no logical reason to believe in the existence of an afterlife, so that' when the last part of my past religious beliefs fell. At around that same time, my weak atheism got stronger (not as in more towards strong atheism, but as in I got more confident of my weak atheism)

    I guess I'll go with irreligious option 2.

    On a second note, I have to warn you that most probably, both religious and irreligious people will be more likely to say that they arrived at their conclusion via reason. I really think that this poll won't be too revealing, unfortunately. I think you'll see more religious/irreligious option 2 than really applicable.



    Most idiot, ignorant and heavily biased statement about evolution that I've ever read:
    Quote Originally Posted by Dea Paladin View Post
    The evolution theory started thing like rasicm

  7. #7
    Dayman's Avatar Romesick
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    Default Re: Another fact finding poll: How did you arrive at your beliefs? (read the first post before voting!)

    Quote Originally Posted by Tigrul View Post
    I was raised in a very religious environment. When I was becoming an atheist, I was even praying to god to help me keep my faith, to hide bits of reality from me, to give me strength to ignore bits of reality. But the arguments against my christian belief kept piling up and at one point I simply gave up christianity. (when I say arguments, I don't refer so much to arguments from outside as to arguments of my own; of course, I've had arguments from outside sources as well, but more were of my own) A bit later I gave up belief in god as well. Last year I gave up any belief I had left in after life. I was never, after deconversion, really confident in an afterlife, but last year I took a more definite attitude, I considered that there was no logical reason to believe in the existence of an afterlife, so that' when the last part of my past religious beliefs fell. At around that same time, my weak atheism got stronger (not as in more towards strong atheism, but as in I got more confident of my weak atheism)
    Do you think you were naturally irreligious or skeptical? Why did you eschew faith?

    On a second note, I have to warn you that most probably, both religious and irreligious people will be more likely to say that they arrived at their conclusion via reason. I really think that this poll won't be too revealing, unfortunately. I think you'll see more religious/irreligious option 2 than really applicable.
    Hopefully the guidelines in the first post will prevent this. I'm not going to use this data to judge anyone, no one option is better than the other I just want people to be honest.

  8. #8
    Tigrul's Avatar Campidoctor
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    Default Re: Another fact finding poll: How did you arrive at your beliefs? (read the first post before voting!)

    Quote Originally Posted by Boeing View Post
    Do you think you were naturally irreligious or skeptical? Why did you eschew faith?
    Whether there is natural tendency towards religiosity/irreligiosity, I don't know for certain, but there are studies which seem to show ideas on that guideline. I might be inclined towards a more critical approach to reality, in which case it would make sense that I've managed to break free from religion.

    As for why I've shunned religion, in a short list:
    - lack of proof for the major statements of christianity
    - contradictions in the bible
    - immorality in the bible; I've obviously started with the beginning of the old testament, and mere pages in the book, I was already disgusted by what I read
    - contradictions between the bible and reality
    - the stubbornness of priests to deny the theory of evolution, to claim that the theory of evolution contradicted parts of the bible; you can imagine what happened when I realized that the theory of evolution was a lot stronger than the one of gravity
    - I tried to (re)convert a friend of mine, the only atheist in class and probably the only evolutionist; the more I tried, the stupider the christian arguments I was using started to seem (and in case someone decides to pin the failure on me... those arguments are still used, it wasn't a case of me making up bad arguments, it was a case of me using arguments I had been fed by the priests, community etc)
    - questioning the validity of one religion, in light of the fact that almost all religions claim that they're the only truth and all other religions are false
    - the contradiction between my idea of god: perfection itself, on one hand, and the bloodthirsty schizophrenic guy in the bible, which gave me the impression that the bible was rather a collection of stories told by frustrated males

    Later on, I've found out about many of the logical fallacies, and realized how often I had seen them in theistic arguments.

    Hopefully the guidelines in the first post will prevent this. I'm not going to use this data to judge anyone, no one option is better than the other I just want people to be honest.
    I don't think it's a matter of people misunderstanding the options, but rather a matter of people being intentionally dishonest/taking care of their own ego/pride. Even if the results are private, when making the choice, each voter will still confront their own pride.



    Most idiot, ignorant and heavily biased statement about evolution that I've ever read:
    Quote Originally Posted by Dea Paladin View Post
    The evolution theory started thing like rasicm

  9. #9
    Tuor's Avatar Senator
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    Default Re: Another fact finding poll: How did you arrive at your beliefs? (read the first post before voting!)

    I chose proselytization because a good friend influenced my change from a non-devout Christian to an Agnost. However, given how I feel now, I think that I would've eventually reached this decision on my own through reasoning. My friend just made me realize my choice sooner.

  10. #10

    Default Re: Another fact finding poll: How did you arrive at your beliefs? (read the first post before voting!)

    I voted Reeligious via other means, but im not completely religious and i ddint learnt it anywhere nor from anyone. Im not agnostic because i do believe there is a greater power out there, but i am not completely religious because i do not base my trust or morals on this greater power. The idea ive adopted about God and religion about him is that he really doesnt mind too much. Its like pasing someone in the street, you dont mind if they dont like you, but you'd prefer it if they did. That's all. He's created worlds and galaxies and nebulas in this universe, and it's still going on, and i find it very hard to understand why "God" would even remotely care if we believed in him.


  11. #11
    Fiyenyaa's Avatar Vicarius
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    Default Re: Another fact finding poll: How did you arrive at your beliefs? (read the first post before voting!)

    Pretty much raised non-religious: neither of my parents are religious, although my dad still seems to favour Christianity over others (in terms of culture, etc).
    I didn't really think about it until I was probably 16 or 17 - I remember having to go to church for various events when I was little, and never assuming that it was anything more than some traditional cultural ritual.

  12. #12
    Daeger's Avatar Semisalis
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    Default Re: Another fact finding poll: How did you arrive at your beliefs? (read the first post before voting!)

    I wasn't raised as a christian nor non-believer. I just realized how idiotic the church and it's beliefs are when I was in a confirmation class. I resigned the church immediatly after turning 18. I couldn't reisign earlier because my parents didn't allow me to.

    I think it's incredibly retarded that you can't leave the church without your parents allowance if you're under 18. I think church is against the finnish constitution in a way since it says in the constitution that no-one should be made part of any organization against their will. It doesn't say that you need to be over 18 for this law to apply.

    Yes, I do concider church just another organization and there is no justification to legally bound me to it just because my parents want to do so.

    I voted "I arrived at my beliefs through reason. (irreligious)"
    Last edited by Daeger; July 14, 2009 at 05:10 AM.


  13. #13
    Pious Agnost's Avatar Praefectus
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    Default Re: Another fact finding poll: How did you arrive at your beliefs? (read the first post before voting!)

    'I arrived at my beliefs through reason. (irreligious)'

    Through reason, I arrived at the belief that I have no reason to assume anything. Namely trying to comprehend any sort of God, which by definition a human cannot

  14. #14

    Default Re: Another fact finding poll: How did you arrive at your beliefs? (read the first post before voting!)

    I belief in life ather death, what does that make me ?
    I think our ghost, spirit is the real life in us, and what you say from the outside our body is just the mechanism to move,feel,eat,think,speak,...

    Our life is in a circle, we live we die we live again but in a other form maybe as a alien,microbe,animal,...

    This life was not the first, and not the last.

    I sometimes think, there will be nothing only entless nothing like space but then without stars. I think that because the universe was created by the Big Bang. So all that maybe is alive on this very moment is not so old, so a chance we ever find intelligent life is not possible because our sun will die and then we will die to. Because there are no ways jet to move the earth if that is even possible. We maybe can live on Mars. What then we will never have enough resources to support them with food. We don't have the means on this earth to find a way or a solution to survive a death sun. The earth will die eventually with all living things on it.
    One of the few to still have his first avatar in place here on TWC.
    I sometimes miss this place you know. This is where my journey began.


  15. #15
    Taxandrius's Avatar Praeses
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    Default Re: Another fact finding poll: How did you arrive at your beliefs? (read the first post before voting!)

    I belief in life ather death, what does that make me ?
    I think our ghost, spirit is the real life in us, and what you say from the outside our body is just the mechanism to move,feel,eat,think,speak,...

    Our life is in a circle, we live we die we live again but in a other form maybe as a alien,microbe,animal,...

    This life was not the first, and not the last.

    I sometimes think, there will be nothing only entless nothing like space but then without stars. I think that because the universe was created by the Big Bang. So all that maybe is alive on this very moment is not so old, so a chance we ever find intelligent life is not possible because our sun will die and then we will die to. Because there are no ways jet to move the earth if that is even possible. We maybe can live on Mars. What then we will never have enough resources to support them with food. We don't have the means on this earth to find a way or a solution to survive a death sun. The earth will die eventually with all living things on it.
    someone who believes in life after death.....

    OT: I was raised as a moderate christian, mostly because of my parents, but when the nice stories in the Bible started to bore me, I started thinking of life, death, society...etc. Though my parents raised me as a christian, nobody in my environment ever encouraged me to take everything in the bible as a true story, I was taught to have a critical vision on my surroundings, and that helped me a lot in forming my own vision and opinions, though books allways had a major impact on how I see things. A couple of years ago, I started taking a closer look at society and the personality of a man, and found a similar vision, with -ofc- more elaborate and deeper studies of my points in Philosophic literature, especially Existentialistic books.

  16. #16

    Default Re: Another fact finding poll: How did you arrive at your beliefs? (read the first post before voting!)

    Voted irreligious through reason.

    I was raised by a reasonably Christian family, albeit one who did not really force beliefs on me, and from a young age just followed along with the ride to ensure myself an afterlife, eternal rewards and salvation that so perfectly drew me in at that stage in my life.

    Yet as soon as I left a primary, junior school setting and began to open my eyes wide to the problems, sheer unreasonable factors and opposing theories, my faith wavered significantly. Science lessons here were a major factor, the wonders that had seemed so divine, so mystical quickly became simple facts of the universe, easily solved by some basic scientific application. Blind faith, while pleasant, never felt as enriching or as righteous as my own path into the more questioning avenues of thought...and I was never certain enough to follow in my entirety.

    As I've grown even older, my faith in science and reason grew yet larger the rather obvious idea that the improvable should remain unbelievable sprouting in my head. At that point I became a strong atheist, firm in thought that so long as an omnipresent being stayed no more than a belief, it would never have my faith, yet some recent, further thinking left me with that ideal destroyed as well.

    Now I sit on those murky boundaries of religion, the agnostic atheist. How can one prove atheism either, should we not be able to disprove a god. Too many unexplainables still exist in my beloved subject, unexplainables that have a number of possible answers in the fields of religion and science. If I excluded theism due to it being impossible to prove, atheism must be vanquished also.

    So now I sit on the fence in between, losing no matter what the final outcome (or winning, should the final answer never come to us bewildered, insignificant humans.)


  17. #17
    The Count(er)'s Avatar Protector Domesticus
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    Default Re: Another fact finding poll: How did you arrive at your beliefs? (read the first post before voting!)

    I voted irreligious through reason,

    I was born into some branch of Christianity, I can't really remember which one, if I remember right it was some form of protestantism. Anyways, after several months of complaining at about the age of 6 or so I finally convinced my parents to stop taking me to church, I really just couldn't stand listening to that stuff even from an early age, after that the whole idea of god never crossed my mind for the next several years. Then somewhere around 14-15 years old I looked at some of the religions a bit more objectively on my own, it really didn't make any sense to me, since I was lucky enough to spend quite a bit of my life in a particularly non-religious environment(Of course I still voted "by reason" because a decent amount of time was spent forced into some religion.), asking a few questions and never getting proper answers has left me a weak atheist, no real reason to believe in god and I'm quite happy that way. Short simple story, not a whole lot to it, but that's how it happened.
    Quote Originally Posted by Chaigidel View Post
    everyone but me is wrong.
    Ego's are fun

  18. #18

    Default Re: Another fact finding poll: How did you arrive at your beliefs? (read the first post before voting!)

    Quote Originally Posted by Boeing View Post
    We have a very successful poll
    Cheers.

  19. #19

    Default Re: Another fact finding poll: How did you arrive at your beliefs? (read the first post before voting!)

    I chose other (irreligious)

    "I arrived at my beliefs through reasoning. This means that you arrived at your position through thought. Becoming an atheist through skepticism or a Christian by studying theology or anything of the sort. If on your own you sought out and changed your beliefs choose this. If you were convinced through proselytizing and later reasoned it out DO NOT choose this one. If you were born in a religion and later reasoned it out DO NOT choose this either."

    This is flawed, because reasoning isn't the only kind of thought. I arrived at the position of agnostic atheism because I have understood what my faith was at the time I was a christian and realized that both logic and faith as well as personal experience lead me to this position. It can easily be changed.

  20. #20
    Dayman's Avatar Romesick
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    Default Re: Another fact finding poll: How did you arrive at your beliefs? (read the first post before voting!)

    This is flawed, because reasoning isn't the only kind of thought.
    For sake of the poll the "reasoning" option encompasses anything like that. It's through your own means and not through the influence of others.

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