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PhiNotPi's avatar

Would you like to contribute to a survey about religious intolerance on Fluther?

Asked by PhiNotPi (12686points) March 29th, 2013

I am interested in your opinions on the presence of religious intolerance on Fluther.

Here is an anonymous survey that asks you about your experiences with religious intolerance on Fluther.

There are thirteen questions in total, which include things such as:
– How often do you witness heated arguments on the topic of religion?
– How often are you unfairly attacked for your religious beliefs?
– What actions could the moderators take to reduce religious intolerance?

The goal of this survey is to examine how religious arguments impact the user experience.

After a period of time (maybe around a week or so), the statistics gathered the survey will be made public.

I hope that you consider participating in this survey.

Observing members: 0 Composing members: 0

99 Answers

Hawaii_Jake's avatar

This is interesting. I hope it’s been discussed that this will not be a scientific sampling. People taking the survey will be self directed.

PhiNotPi's avatar

Someone mentioned something about adding a “neutral” option to a few of the questions. Those have now been added.

EDIT: It is true that this sampling will not meet the requirements for a formally scientific survey. There will be too much nonresponse bias.

Imadethisupwithnoforethought's avatar

I took it, but I don’t think you should have grouped Agnostic/Atheism together. Some Atheists on Fluther are more dogmatic than the believers.

PhiNotPi's avatar

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought That is true. I guess I grouped them together out of habit, because that is how they would appear on most surveys. Some users have already selected that option, so it may be too late to ungroup them. What is your opinion?

Imadethisupwithnoforethought's avatar

Agnostics think they don’t really know. Atheists are sure they know and some of them let you know they know that your beliefs are wrong and they hold an objective truth. Doesn’t seem the same thing at all.

Video

PhiNotPi's avatar

I went ahead and ungrouped atheism and agnosticism. There were only a few users who selected that option, and their selection will remain “atheism / agnosticism” on the official data sheet. Any newer responses will be either “atheism” or “agnosticism”.

Thanks for all of the real-time feedback.

glacial's avatar

Are we allowed to ask why the survey?

ETpro's avatar

Interesting survey. I share @glacial interest in knowing what motivated this effort.

PhiNotPi's avatar

One of the main things that inspired this survey was some stuff that I had been thinking about in my personal life. I’m not going to go into too much detail, but it was a combination of seeing religious intolerance within people that I know, along with seeing all of the religious conflicts of the world, that made me decide that I wanted to check up on Fluther and see if religious arguments were affecting it.

Hawaii_Jake's avatar

@PhiNotPi Color me confused. If I read your post correctly, you took conducting this survey into your own hands? And yet a portion of the information is to be shared only between the moderators? Something smells a bit fishy to me.

Whose idea was this survey? Who wrote it? What effect will it have on Fluther?

Dr_Lawrence's avatar

I urge experienced Jellies to participate and offer useful feedback.

PhiNotPi's avatar

The survey was my idea, and I wrote it over the course of a few hours.

Why did I take it into my own hands? Because, in my opinion, that’s the most efficient way to get stuff done.

I noticed that religious intolerance is a major problem in the world, so I realized that it might be a problem on Fluther. I created the survey to judge the size of the problem.

As for why I am sharing the data with the other mods, it is because they will be involved if there is any change to our policy. I decided that people will probably be more willing to share their thoughts if they are not made completely public.

As to what could be changed with the policy, I don’t know. If religious intolerance turns out to be a major problem, then the community will have to work out a solution. Nobody will work out a solution unless we know that there is a problem, and how will we know that there is a problem without having a survey?

I guess that the simple answer is that I am trying to be proactive about stuff. At least one other mod is “looking foward to seeing the outcome.”

rojo's avatar

I am looking forward to seeing the outcome. Hope Y’all decide to share with the rest of us.

ETpro's avatar

@PhiNotPi Bear in mind that if you surveyed the members of Westboro Baptist Church they would tell you that religious intolerance is a HUGE problem in the USA and they are the targets of it.

bobby_C's avatar

Just to be clear here. Is religious intolerance saying things like “I don’t believe in your cloud guy” or “Why do gays need to marry, they will be in hell soon enough?”.

There is a lot of both going on.

Berserker's avatar

Took that bad boy.

whitenoise's avatar

@bobby_C

Welcome to fluther…

filmfann's avatar

I have taken your survey. Let us know the results.

DaphneT's avatar

I’d love to see the results of this one.

bkcunningham's avatar

From what I’ve read, changes cannot be made to Fluther’s policies and procedures. I get what you are doing and think it is interesting. What parts of the survey won’t be made public? I don’t understand.

hearkat's avatar

I think some of the questions should reference “the Fluther community” rather than “Fluther”, because it distinguishes that interactions are among random public members of the site, not the site or its representatives – I hope I’m making sense with that wording.

glacial's avatar

@ETpro‘s point is exactly what I kept thinking while I filled out the survey. This is not as simple as tallying the results and saying “Oh, some people think that there is great religious intolerance, therefore there is great religious intolerance.” Those who cry religious intolerance the loudest are rather more likely to be guilty of it.

Earthgirl's avatar

I am not participating for this reason:if you don’t like the vitriol that occurs on Fluther during religious discussions, don’t engage in it. It’s simple as that. Just don’t answer the question.

While an exchange of ideas is always good it is doubtful that an avowed atheist or a staunchly religious person will alter their opinion due to an online discussion of the merits and demerits of religion. Once it devolves into disrespectful and smart ass comments and defensive indignation, you can tell the discussion is going nowhere. I would love it if it could be otherwise. If I see an interesting and engaging discussion going on, I might join in. There are people who are tolerant and the ones who aren’t ruin the discussion and make it impossible to express opinions.Otherwise I think it just becomes another opportunity for both sides to beat on their tom toms and play wordy war games and feel all superior to “the other side”.Creating more rules will not force those who are most guilty to change. They haven’t learned to express themselves civilly and disagree. Or they haven’t learned how to intelligently phrase counter arguments and debate effectively.

livelaughlove21's avatar

@Earthgirl “Creating more rules will not force those who are most guilty to change.”

Agreed.

Nonetheless, did the survey. Interested in seeing the consensus.

ETpro's avatar

@Earthgirl It’s possible for someone to come to a new opinion through an Internet or real-life debate, but not if they enter into that debate with a strong foundational bias already in play. When you see someone in a debate resort to all sorts of logical fallacies to defend their initial position, they are doing so because they came to the debate with a foundational bias. When you call out fallacious arguments, and they are just replaced with other fallacious arguments, that’s a sure sign that you are talking to a stone wall, and might just as well save your time unless it’s for the enlightenment of third parties that may be observing the debate.

JLeslie's avatar

I just came across this Q. I took the survey. I wonder how many atheists often feel attacked during a discussion on fluther? Disagreed with yes, but I think they are likely less easily offended or to take a religious discussion personally. I could easily be wrong. It seems to me a disagreement is enough for some religious people to feel attacked.

Also, you can’t click Judaism and Atheism together, and there are a lot of those here. I assume there might be some other combinations of atheism, agnostic, and some other religious. A friend of mine recently seemed to fall into the Catholic Agnostic category as she is disenchanted with religion right now.

rojo's avatar

Since atheism is actually the absence of belief, can you attack something that doesn’t exist?

livelaughlove21's avatar

@rojo Atheists don’t attack God – they may attack those with the belief in God. The person (and the belief) certainly exists.

Earthgirl's avatar

@rojo Of course you can vilify the absence of belief. You can attack “the unbelievers” as being immoral. You can say that they are what is tearing society apart, what is wrong with the world. And that is exactly what happens with religious extremism.

livelaughlove21's avatar

^ Oops, I guess I misunderstood @rojo. My bad.

rooeytoo's avatar

I want to know that the results will be made available to all Flutherites before I take it. I also want to know if my responses will be anonymous or if you and the mods and the rest of the participants will be privy to who made these responses?

More information please.

JLeslie's avatar

@rooeytoo If you click on the link it says it is completely anonymous.

tom_g's avatar

Could someone please define religious intolerance? I know I’m late to the party here, but I can’t seem to figure out what this term means – especially in the context of a web site in which ideas are on the table for discussion.

livelaughlove21's avatar

@tom_g Not to be a smart ass, but…

“Religious intolerance is intolerance against another’s religious beliefs or practices or lack thereof.”

I don’t believe the OP would label discussion “intolerance” until it gets to the point where the person in question is being attacked, mocked, or belittled based on their religious beliefs.

I’m fairly certain no atheist has ever been the victim of this on Fluther, so many of them think it simply doesn’t exist here when, actually, it happens way too much in a community that seems to pride itself on being an intelligent, tolerant, open-minded group of people.

whitenoise's avatar

@livelaughlove21

re “I’m fairly certain no atheist has ever been the victim of this on Fluther…”

Really?

whitenoise's avatar

I think people saying LGBT people shouldn’t marry are often also displaying religious intolerance.

tom_g's avatar

@livelaughlove21 – I’ll go with what you said and address this question based on how you define intolerance:

“I don’t believe the OP would label discussion “intolerance” until it gets to the point where the person in question is being attacked, mocked, or belittled based on their religious beliefs.”

I’ve been here long enough to be involved in more than a handful of discussions of religious ideas. Invariably, we will deal with hurt feelings and it comes down to someone feeling that their beliefs are being ridiculed, mocked, or belittled. Sometimes this happens in the absence of any real ridicule, mocking, or belittling. But there are times in which this does happen.

I will get this out of the way immediately – I don’t think this type of intolerance is a bad thing. Some people have described this as “conversational intolerance”. All of us practice this when it comes to ideas or beliefs that are without evidence, absurd, or harmful. But ideas tagged as religious have always received a free pass. That is, nobody is going to say that you can’t inspect and criticize beliefs about economics, science, race, or health care. But as soon as it is labeled as a “religious belief”, we’re all supposed to respect it. I can respect the people who hold religious beliefs without respecting those beliefs. There is a difference.

But fluther is a site where we discuss ideas. Everything is on the table, and we should all feel free to dig in. Ideas and beliefs do not have feelings, so if you are serious about open discussion, you have to temporarily distance yourself from those ideas so we can discuss them without having to worry that an attack on the idea or belief is interpreted as an attack on the person holding that belief.

I don’t believe that tolerance of ideas or beliefs is something that any of us – theists, nontheists, capitalists, socialists, conservative, liberal, feminist, anti-feminist, etc – practice. We just don’t. For fun, try saying that you “believe” that women are just not as intelligent as men. Then try to hide behind that belief. Claim that attacks on that belief are attacks on you.

If people feel that religious belief is off limits, we might want to consider why that is?

rojo's avatar

@Earthgirl So, you can attack the non-believer but not the non belief?

glacial's avatar

Great answer, @tom_g.

augustlan's avatar

I doubt very much that any changes will be made in the way that mods address these issues, for what it’s worth. I understand that people sometimes feel attacked when their beliefs are scorned, and that it’s not very nice when people belittle others’ beliefs. However, we can’t really make people be nice. The best we can do is to encourage civil discussion, and remove things that are truly personal attacks. Just as a refresher: “That belief is idiotic” is not a personal attack, though there are certainly nicer ways to say it. “You are an idiot” is a personal attack.

@rooeytoo & others who wondered:

Mods can’t see who answered the survey, and the statistics will be made public.

@PhiNotPi came up with the survey idea on his own (it wasn’t a ‘mod team’ idea, in other words), and he set it up to be completely anonymous. The survey he made says: “Your username will NOT be attached to your answers, and not even the moderators will know your identity. After a period of time, the statistics gathered by this survey will be made public.”

I took the survey, by the way.

rooeytoo's avatar

It all seems like a waste of energy to me. Anyone who participates or even simply skims over the questions regarding religion knows exactly what goes on. No survey is needed.

Earthgirl's avatar

“So, you can attack the non-believer but not the non belief?”

@rojo Sorry to take so long to answer. I’ve been thinking of this question all day and tossed it around with a friend of mine.
I have to say that. although I never thought about it before, I don’t think I can call all atheists non believers. They are non theists. But don’t they usually believe in something? They may believe in the value of rational thought over unverifiable faith. They may believe in the scientific method. They may believe in situation ethics.
So I think that it is wrong to say that atheists don’t believe in anything and that they don’t have a “belief system”. It is simply one that they arrive at without the guidance and sanction of a theistic, and dogmatic system of thought. It may be rigid or fluid. I think it varies more than most atheists would admit. It may be a rejection of religion and reaction to it. It may be an open minded admission that there is no way we can know for sure what constitutes an ethical life, or it may be a code of behavior more or less solidly established as the right way to live, not dependent on what the pundits say and independently arrived at and codified.
So you could attack an atheist for being an atheist and consider being an atheist in itself to be immoral, or you could attack their belief system, which, as I have said, could vary from person to person. You couldn’t attack their belief system if they refused to have one. But really, don’t you agree that most atheists do have a belief system?

ETpro's avatar

@livelaughlove21 As an atheist here, I can absolutely guarantee you that I have been attacked, belittled and told I am the worst sort of idiot for not accepting the beliefs of a theist in a debate. Christians do this and Muslims take it to the extreme of murdering those who disagree with their sky daddy being the one true fairy father. Not so long ago, Christians were slaughtering blasphemers in great numbers, and even other Christians who they somehow believed had gotten in league with Satan or caused an outbreak of the pox in their village.

You most certainly do not have to be a Christian to get attacked on Fluther for having flawed beliefs. In fact, it’s odd to me that in a nation where 75% of the population self identifies as Christian and it’s a virtual necessity to at least claim Christin faith to win elected office of any kind, it’s the Christians that claim to be beset on every side because they aren’t being allowed to pass laws that all school children must be indoctrinated in their faith and that their slogans must me prominently displayed on every public building. Anything short of this, some Christians claim, is a war on their faith.

augustlan's avatar

It’s interesting that Fluther is kind of the opposite of the ‘real world’ (in America, at least) regarding theism/atheism. There are more atheists per capita on the site than one usually encounters in real life, so atheism isn’t as prone to being attacked or belittled here. In day-to-day life, many hide the fact that they are atheists just to avoid having to deal with the negative response it often gets in the real world. The reverse is true of Christianity (and to a lesser extent, other religions)...it’s less prevalent here than in real life, so theism is more prone to being belittled or attacked on the site than it is in ‘real life’.

In my mind, beliefs (or lack thereof) should always be open to debate and criticism, but it should always be done with respect for the actual person behind those beliefs (or lack of).

JLeslie's avatar

@augustlan Yet somehow, even out in the real world, in America, the theists are the vast majority, and even out there many of them claim to be under attack, or that their religion is under attack at minimum. Which is basically what @ETpro said as well.

It’s an impossible situation. As long as most Christians feel they need to spread the word and show the word and “witness” and other people (some are atheists and some are theists) who want to squash that because they believe religion and God should be a personal matter not shoved down anyone’s throat, there will be a problem. The two sides have such different perspectives. Both think of it as a freedom issue, freedom of religion, and other freedoms mixed in. Moreover, both sides feel it is what America is and is supposed to bel.

Strauss's avatar

I think some of the hottest debates happen when one person’s faith-based belief is debated against another’s logic-based conclusion, or vice-versa. The faith based argument may not stand up to the logic, any more than the logic will affect what a person takes as a matter of faith.

JLeslie's avatar

@Yetanotheruser I kind of like when a faith based person is critical of another faith. i have a lot of Christian ans some Catholic friends who will talk about how ludicrous and far out the Mormon beliefs are. In my opinion no more far out than most of them. I don’t understand wanting people to respect one’s religion and then being so critical of another person’s religion. Atheism is a whole other thing, and I agree with you that it can beinteresting how the two perspectives don’t stand up in arguments.

Strauss's avatar

@JLeslie When I was about 12, I had my eyes opened to that. I was raised in a strong Catholic family. My best friend was Lutheran. When he said “We both pray to the same God!” it started me on a journey I’m still following to this day, over fifty years later!

JLeslie's avatar

@Yetanotheruser My experience with Catholics for the most part is they are very accepting and respectful of other religions. I think it is because they have been and still are treated like a minority religion in America.

rooeytoo's avatar

There are only a couple of religions that go around door knocking or accosting others on the streets. I only know of one that is currently killing others who do not believe the same as they do and it is not the Christians. With the exception of in Fluther I really don’t meet any people, atheists or theists who feel the need to announce their beliefs and seem to enjoy arguing about who is on the right trail (except for the aforementioned). If I believe I don’t need the approval of anyone to reinforce my faith and if I don’t believe again I need no approval. So what is the appeal of the endless rumination?

JLeslie's avatar

@rooeytoo You don’t live in the American south. I assume you didn’t when you did live in America, but I actually don’t remember what states you lived in so I could be wrong. Christians on here have freely admited they are going to talk about their religion and do when the opportunity arises out there in the real world, because that is what Jesus asks them to do. It isn’t just in our heads or something we are blowing out of porportion.

bkcunningham's avatar

I’ve lived all over the eastern US and currently live in the American south. I don’t know of any religion except the Jehovah Witnesses of The Watch Tower Society who go door-to-door to spread their beliefs. I have never read on a thread on Fluther where professed Christians said they talk about their religion and do so when the opportunity arises “out there in the real world, because that is what Jesus asks them to do.” Could you find the thread, @JLeslie? I must have missed that one.

Hawaii_Jake's avatar

@bkcunningham I am pagan, and I have been accosted by Christians and Jehovah’s Witnesses here on my front doorstep. As a practicing, born again, fundamentalist, evangelical Christian in my youth in the South, I personally went door-to-door to spread the word of Jesus and save people in my little town which was overwhelmingly Protestant Christian. @JLeslie is not clutching at straws.

JLeslie's avatar

@bkcunningham This one I remember off the top of my head, but there have been others. Knowitall was explaining to me about it. Here is one quote, but you can read the entire thread:

@nicole29 As I’ve explained before, witnessing to others is a directive of the Christian faith, and almost all sects of Christianity. You say pushing, we say witnessing, just a difference in perspective, that’s all. At some point, when you know the ‘good news’ you’re trying to impart is hitting someone wrong, or they look like they swallowed paint, it’s time to stop. Unfortunately (for some of you) many Christians actually get excited about our Jesus/ religion, and it’s sometimes hard to understand that some people prefer to not hear anything about it, or choose a different path. It actually is rather hurtful sometimes when people blow you off or talk to you like you’re an idiot.”

I am not sure if I consider FL the American south. I guess if you are north enough or central enough in FL, then yes it is southern I don’t remember exactly where you live. And, actually knowitall is not in the south she is in the midwest, but in the bible belt. I probably should have used bible belt as the region and not the south.

Imadethisupwithnoforethought's avatar

Do we have any results yet?

Hawaii_Jake's avatar

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought Who needs results? We’re making our own results in this thread right here. ;-)

rooeytoo's avatar

@JLeslie – I have to admit the southern most area I have lived is DC burbs in northern Virginia. So no I have never encountered anyone except Jehovah’s witness and mormons accosting me.

JLeslie's avatar

@rooeytoo Oh, you are talking about accousting? Accousting might be too harsh a word for what I am thinking of in the south.

Northern VA is not southern really. I mean technically it is below the mason-dixon, but it is not deep south and not the bible belt. I grew up in the DC and never met someone who talked about Christianity or another religion to be pursuasive. I never met someone who asked me what church I goto within 5 minutes of meeting them until I lived in NC and TN. I moved to NC when I was in my 30’s. Before that I lived in MD, MI, NY and FL, and had spent a lot of time in northern VA, because I worked there for a while and my boyfriend lived there for a while.

Well, When I was in my late teens I saw a friend who had moved from MD to AL when were still in high school. When I she came back to visit she asked me with a not very welcoming tone, “how can I not believe Jesus is our savior.” She never said anything like that when she lived in MD. She went down south and became born again. That was the first time anyone ever question my religion, I had never experience it before that moment. Then she went backto AL and I never had another encounter until NC years later.

bkcunningham's avatar

You just mean people getting to know you and asking questions, not going door-to-door. I get that, @JLeslie. @Hawaii_Jake, I’ve never heard of any Christian group going door-to-door except Jehovah Witnesses. What church were you a member of that went door-to-door? Was it just an independent church or affiliated with a larger denomination?

JLeslie's avatar

@bkcunningham Well, I was not referring to just getting to know you orginally, but I would agree that for some it is a simple getting to know, at least from the persective of the asker it might be, but it is an odd question to people outside of the bible belt, wouldn’t you agree? Odd, as in unusual, and surprising. But, some Christians go further with it. And the link I gave you talked about Christianity in our faces all the time. I don’t mean seeing a church with a steeple and cross, which is just fine with me, but 100 foot crosses, and people saying, “well, as long as they believe in something,” and wanting to change laws to fit how some people interpret their bible. I’m getting a little off track there, let’s stick with what people say one on one. Like the women who said to my father, “in China they are all atheists, with disgust in her voice.” She had no idea my dad was an atheist of course. In the south people tend to assume an American believes in God I guess. I know everyone assumed it about me. Even when they knew I was Jewish. In fact, maybe even more so that I was Jewish.

Plus, all the religious language used regularly. “I’ll pray for you. Have a blessed day. It’s a blessing. Pray on it. Etc etc.” A girlfriend of mine gave me a good by gift of a small plaque that says, “bless this house” to put in my new house in FL. I really wish she had given me something else. I still might put it up because I love her, but it does not represent me, and peiple who see it will have the wrong message I think.

Hawaii_Jake's avatar

@bkcunningham Well, you’ve heard of it now. I was a member of the largest church in my town, a Southern Baptist church. It was not independent and not a fringe group.

bkcunningham's avatar

You are right, @Hawaii_Jake. First time I’ve ever heard of a Southern Baptist church getting members to go door to door.

JLeslie's avatar

I hadn’t heard of the Baptsist going door to door either. But, I have heard of them and other Christians getting their teens to solicite other teens at their schools. The Gideons hand out bibles in various locales.

augustlan's avatar

I’ve had Baptists come to my door. Not so much with the in-your-face conversion tactics used by some other sects, but more than once they’ve knocked on my door to hand me little pamphlets and invite me to visit their church.

rojo's avatar

My father-in-law, a baptist – cum catholic – cum baptist, used to love to have LDS missionaries come to his front door. He knew they were young and out on their own and probably tired of their own cooking so he would invite them back for supper and have a multi-hour discussion with them about their faith and his (whichever it was at the time).
They never convinced him they were right and I don’t know if he converted them but they all had a nice evenings discussion and parted friends.

bkcunningham's avatar

I was thinking about the Baptist thing. I do remember a bus coming through town when I was a kid to pick up children for church. Come to think of it, it was a baptist church who organized the bus ride to church. The bus was painted like the Partridge Family bus (not exactly, but very bright and colorful). I have to apologize, because I bet you anything that they went door-to-door telling adults about the bus ride to the church.

Seek's avatar

I just noticed this question and the survey.

I cannot submit my answers, because I disagree with the wording of the questions.

1. “civil” and “productive” are not necessarily concurrent. Many uncivilised conversations are incredibly productive, and many civil discussions ultimately lead nowhere.

2. A discussion can be heated without being a “flame war”.

3. “Fluther” as an entity is 100% tolerant of all religious standpoints, per the terms of use. If the question is referring to specific members of Fluther or Fluther members in general, the question should state the same.

4. I’m not sure what that’s even asking.

The rest are fairly straightforward, though I see it is significantly biased toward the negative. Referring to religious discussions as “arguments” and asking whether one views religious discussion as “worsening” their experience, but not asking whether one enjoys having an opportunity to debate religious topics…

It’s like you’re taking a survey to see how many people are upset with how religion is handled here, but not interested in knowing the ratio of happy to unhappy to neutral.

PhiNotPi's avatar

I’m working on compiling the results. So far we have thirty-five replies.

bkcunningham's avatar

Wow. Thirty-five. Is it administered in such a way that a participant can only take the survey once? That seems like a high number considering the number of likes, GAs and people who have said they aren’t participating. I’m not participating, btw. I am curious to see the results though.

ETpro's avatar

Having completed the survey, I would like to indicate that I second @Seek_Kolinahr‘s concerns with it.

PhiNotPi's avatar

Even before I’ve finished compiling all of the results, it is clear that there will be no changes to the moderation policy, as they don’t seem to be needed or wanted.

Also, I don’t foresee myself ever holding a survey like this again, as I’m not a professional and the user feedback was negative.

JLeslie's avatar

I like the survey thing. User feedback is just that feedback, quesionaires are very hard to make, even the professinals ask questions that later they find ut gave very biased answers or could be interpreted more than one way. The criticism should help you think through more the next time you make one, or ask for a second pair of eyes to read it ver before publishing. I took a survey once in College created by people who should really knwo their stuff, and myself and theother Jewish gir in my group told them afterwards it was very very difficult to answer some questions. The survey had to do with having a belief system and how well you did in school. So they said, but it really was too target to Christianity, and I guess Christians wrote it who had no idea one can identify with a religion and be an atheist, or be an atheits and still have ideas, beliefs, about things that religion often tries to answer.

bkcunningham's avatar

Is it possible to take the survey more than once?

What portions of the survey are not being made public?

glacial's avatar

@bkcunningham Why are you so worried about that?

bkcunningham's avatar

Why wouldn’t you wonder about that? Of course it would matter if someone could take it more than once. It would affect the integrity of the survey.

glacial's avatar

Who cares about the integrity of the survey? It’s informal, it’s anonymous, it has no power to change anything. Even if it is impossible to take the survey more than once (which I seriously doubt could be guaranteed), can you guarantee that no one lied? No? Uh oh, that would affect the integrity of the survey!

People are taking this way too seriously. The results will be what they will be – it’s really not that different from taking the results of this question or one like it, tabulating people’s responses, and drawing a conclusion from it. A survey like this is not going to lead to the discovery of The Ultimate Truth of Religious Tolerance on Fluther. I don’t get why anyone would be afraid of it.

I also don’t understand why whether the survey content is made completely private or public is such a big deal, when people’s actual comments on Fluther (the ones suspected of being intolerant) are so public.

bkcunningham's avatar

Did you take the survey, @glacial?

Yeahright's avatar

If I were to take the time and the trouble to take it, I’d very much care about the integrity of the survey. Irregularities do affect the results. And if the survey really aims to evaluate a situation, minimizing error as much as possible is of the utmost importance.

bkcunningham's avatar

I’m just curious if you can take it more than once under the same user name? I’m not saying you did. I just wonder if you’d try to and let me know, purely out of curiosity.

JLeslie's avatar

I agree it is not a big serious thing, it’s just for fun on fluther.

glacial's avatar

@bkcunningham I have not tried, and I can’t imagine anyone wanting to. But as I said above, I would assume that yes, it would be possible to take it more than once. The reason that I assume this is that it would take some effort to create a survey that checks IP addresses, and even if it did that, a person could simply switch computers to appear to be a different user. I don’t think that the OP, who I believe is 15 years of age, is advanced enough to design a site that would do that (though maybe I’m wrong). Perhaps it could be done if they required users to log in using their Fluther username to get to the survey, but nothing like that is in place for this survey. Even with a login, we know that there are jellies with multiple IDs, so that is no guarantee either.

Simply: you seem to be all suspicious about the fact that “perhaps” we can complete the survey multiple times. I approached this knowing that we probably can complete the survey multiple times. Who cares?

bkcunningham's avatar

Holy cow, @glacial, I asked a simple question. Chill out buddy. I agree. It isn’t a big deal or that important. You are reading a lot more into my questions than I put into them. Relax, friend. I was just curious.

glacial's avatar

@bkcunningham I am chilled out. I’m just trying to answer your question.

bkcunningham's avatar

Okay. Thank you.

Seek's avatar

@glacial Never underestimate 15 year old coders. Every geek in my graduating class got an “A” in phys ed. I never even showed up to that class. Thanks, fellow nerd who hacked the school board servers!

glacial's avatar

@Seek_Kolinahr That’s why I threw the disclaimer in there. :)

rojo's avatar

Heh, Heh, @glacial is chilled out, Heh, Heh.

PhiNotPi's avatar

The goals of “anonymous” and “one survey per person” conflict each other. I could have gone through the process of creating something that would require your username, but then it wouldn’t exactly be an anonymous survey.

rooeytoo's avatar

So any old nasty atheist or theist could have taken it 27 times to tilt the answers the way they think they should go. Don’t you just love statistical data!

Plucky's avatar

Somewhere up there…people were wondering about what religions go door to door. We get mostly Mormons and Jehovahs. The Mormons always come in twos (always two men), wearing black pants and white dress shirts. The Jehovahs always come in twos or threes (usually two women, with or without a man, or one of each gender…and sometimes they bring a child along). Both groups are the ones that give long speeches before you can tell them you aren’t interested.
We do get the occasional other religious people but they basically just greet, smile and hand their information to you.

Seek's avatar

@Plucky Just answer the door naked. That gets rid of ‘em, usually. It’s also a good way to get free pizza.

whitenoise's avatar

Anybody want some pizza?

Plucky's avatar

@Seek_Kolinahr I now usually refrain from answering the door if I’m not expecting anyone. :P

rojo's avatar

@whitenoise What kind? Peckeroni?

bkcunningham's avatar

When are we getting the results?

PhiNotPi's avatar

Sorry about the huge delay. I’ve been doing a lot of schoolwork lately.

Bellatrix's avatar

I think we can all wait @PhiNotPi. I think it’s commendable that you are interested in gathering people’s ideas and feedback. Producing surveys is difficult and skilled work. Even those who are qualified in that work get it wrong. I am sure next time you will learn from this experience.

Plus your own school work should be your priority.

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