Lay Theism

Taisha Jones, M.S., a 5th year clinical psychology graduate student at Saint Louis University, is inviting you to participate in this research study that is being conducted online, under the direction of Dr. Honore Hughes, Research Chairperson/Advisor at Saint Louis University.

The title of this study is Coping Strategies and Adjustment. The purpose of this study is to examine various ways in which people use individual coping strategies, including non-religious and religious ways, to facilitate overall life satisfaction and adjustment.

Your participation in this study is confidential and will involve completing a series of brief questionnaires to assess coping and problem-solving strategies. Participation will entail completing brief surveys and a demographic questionnaire that are available online at http:www.surveymonkey.com. There are no right or wrong answers in the surveys, so please be as honest as possible in responding to the individual items. Please be sure to respond to all survey items. Your participation will require at least 10 minutes of your time, but likely no longer than 30 minutes. In appreciation of your time, a monetary donation of $5 will be donated to a charity that you will specify at the end of the study as your preference to receive the donation.

The results of this study may be published in scientific research journals or presented at professional conferences. However, your name and identity will not be revealed and your record will remain anonymous. To protect your anonymity, no identifying information will be collected.

Participation in this study does not have a direct benefit to participants. While it is hopeful that you may gain insight from participation, it is not a guarantee. Participants may increase their knowledge of individual coping skills and problem-solving strategies. This might allow participants to become aware of various coping strategies and gain a better understanding of what strategies might be available. However, participation may benefit others as a small monetary donation will be made to a charitable/service organization that group members may select (e.g., Habitat for Humanity).

The risks to you as a participant are minimal. These risks may include mild boredom and/or discomfort with responding to sensitive items that probe for religiousness and/or lack of religiousness, as well as psychological adjustment.

They requested that I post this:

Hello to all,

I am writing to request your participation in my dissertation study “Coping and Adjustment.” In exchange for your participation, I will be donating $5 to a charitable organization of your choice. The choices are included at the end of the study. The study examines various ways in which people cope with stressors (including religious and non-religious ways) and how these relate to one’s happiness and life satisfaction. Additional information including final results can be obtained after the study. Thus far, participation has included individuals with religious/faith-based beliefs and those without such beliefs. My goal is to obtain representation from several individuals and groups that include varying ages, gender, religious affliations, social abilities, intellectual abilities, and so forth. Please consider participating in the study and please forward this to everyone that you think may wish to contribute by participating. Please remember, your participation is voluntary and that the study completion time is not expected to exceed 30min. Study completion time has been around 10-30 minutes.

You can access the study at the following link:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=wp5LFvjXAooMReVkqxwaaw_3d_3d.

For any additional questions or information, please see webpage or contact the researcher at copingandadjustment@gmail.com or copingandadjustment@yahoo.com.

Polling, Religion, Science, Statistics data, prayer, reason, research

Rafael… Dude, you rock. Welcome to the blog world.

whygod.weebly.com

Thanks for coming out for non-belief. You are on my list of favorites already.

I’m just an average Joe. I do not believe in any dogma or any powerful being. I don’t like labels but I guess I’m an atheist, although I think of my self as just plain rational. I don’t claim to disprove God’s existence, I make no such claim because I cannot prove that God doesn’t exist. No religion can prove that he does either. It’s all faith. I know that I cannot compete against faith. I am just talking about having reasonable doubt.

I think that’s fantastic… if we took God to court, he would surely lose on that basis alone.

Update: Weebly sucks and Rafael’s site may be down.

2nd Update: Weebly still sucks but whygod is back up with minor damage.  Why would they have taken every weebly site down for several hours during peak US surfing hours?  Idiots.

Agnostic, Atheism, Polling, Religion, Science atheist, bible, blog, doubt, faith, god

I accidentally found this when writing my Bryant Wright post!  Too funny.  You should try it.  Amazingly, I could not score less than 51 after three tries! What the hell? That only gets me to purgatory.  I guess with lame questions about income and questioning my beliefs, it skews the result.  For instance, I never question my beliefs, but neither would a devout suicide bomber I imagine. See what you can score and post your results here.

Enjoy:

Headed to Hell, I Guess...

Sampling of the questions for your reference (non-functional):

Shamelessly copied from The Afterlife Test, by Heaven Hell Purgatory.

Agnostic, Atheism, Graphics, Polling, Religion, Science, Statistics faith, god, heaven, hell, Love, purgatory, sex

I just completed the Belief-O-Matic(tm) on beliefnet and it is absolutely fascinating.  I answered very carefully and conscienciously based on my current beliefs with the following results.  It looks like I am 100% aligned with Secular Humanists:

The most amazing one to me was Quakers.  Who knew that Quakers were so free-thinking?  Actually, I had an idea because I recall that the early Quaker movement in the US was largely due to dissatisfaction with contemporary sects of Christianity and has become even less rigid as of late.

I have considered attending a UU church for the social and intellectual stimulation, but many of the UU blogs and web sites are frequently lamenting that UU denominations are not more “spiritual”.  That’s certainly not for me, so UUism is probably not in my future.

You should check out beliefnet.  It was even more fun to try it again with my ‘Baptist’ upbringing.  Enjoy…

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I wrote a while back about the inadequacy of the study by Bruce Hunsberger and Altemeyer of non-believers entitled Atheists.  In fact, the subtitle of their book is at best misleading because of the focus on the atheists in only three samples. Their surveys were very well written, but their samples were terrible. But that was another day (more here).

Today, I want to point out an impressive study with a strong methodology, large sample (35,000), and fascinating conclusions.  The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has just completed a tremendous survey of religion in the United States and has revealed exactly what I suspected (emphasis mine):

More than one-quarter of American adults (28%) have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion – or no religion at all. If change in affiliation from one type of Protestantism to another is included, 44% of adults have either switched religious affiliation, moved from being unaffiliated with any religion to being affiliated with a particular faith, or dropped any connection to a specific religious tradition altogether.

The survey finds that the number of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith today (16.1%) is more than double the number who say they were not affiliated with any particular religion as children.

My guess is that religion is NOT supplying the answers that people seek.  How can it?  It’s mythology. All religions were completely, 100% dreamt up my men… typically primitive men desperate for explanations regarding tragedy and natural phenomena. 

As more information becomes available via the Internet, our 250+ channels, modern schooling, book stores, etc., people will have more and more difficulty reconciling truth and reality with ancient texts.  Another highlight of the study includes the numbers of “Unaffiliated”. 

Hey, there I am!  I like the description “Secular Unaffiliated”.  How cool is that?  The term Atheist always gives me heartburn because it seems to be used almost like a weapon… for shock and awe. It certainly cuts to the chase. Although, almost anything is better than “bright” – oh, please…

I am not sure what “Religious Unaffiliated” means, but in the future, I would rather see a category called Non-Believer or Non-Theist, and I’m happy to join the atheists there.  I know there is really no distinction between my non-belief and atheism, but note that only 1.6% were comfortable identifying as the latter. 

It’s one of those weird things… when you find that you are an atheist… because it is essentially impossible for you to believe in the claims of religion – you have no choice of succinct label.  Once you are at the point of non-belief, you are, in fact, an a-theist.  HOWEVER, many people (ahem, present company included) still have trouble identifying with that lot.  I have found when it comes right down to picking the words that come out of my mouth when asked (what I am) are “non-believer”. That quickly turns to “You’re an ATHEIST?!” (typically with significantly increased volume on the respondent’s part). To which I must reply, “Yeah, I guess I am.” Then, because I am choosy about the company I keep and allowing the conversation to steer into that area, we usually proceed to have an intelligent conversation.

I know this veered off into “me” territory, but I think this survey is strongly indicative of the unraveling of organized religion, which is exactly what happened to me.  And, unlike over the last several millenia, once the genie is out of the bottle this time, no one will be able to put him back.

As an aside, great post from Majikthise.

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