Misconceptions
You scored as atheism. You are... an atheist, though you probably already knew this. Also, you probably have several people praying daily for your soul.
Instead of simply being "nonreligious," atheists strongly believe in the lack of existence of a higher being, or God.
atheism
83%
Satanism
71%
agnosticism
63%
Paganism
50%
Islam
46%
Buddhism
46%
Judaism
38%
Christianity
13%
Hinduism
0%
Which religion is the right one for you? (new version)
created with QuizFarm.com
This is totally misconstrual of what atheism is. Beliefs about God are generally either 'theistic' or 'atheistic' based on how they relate to the claim that a god exists. Let's have a look:
A theist (and many or most practitioners of religion are theists, but one needn't be a theist to participate in some religions, eg Buddhism, Unitarian Universalism, and many practitioners of traditionally theistic religions are not theists in a well-defined sense), when asked about the existence of god, will say something like: "Based on my faith or on evidence I have been shown, I believe that a god exists, and (potentially), here are some properties of god." This is, from a logical perspective, the easiest position to understand because it is a simple affirmative claim.
There are two possible positions contrary to this, and the difference between them is what a lot of people, including the authors of this survey, fail to notice. This is understandable; it's a fairly nuanced distinction, (but one which the god squad should think about so that they don't build a strawman around me every time I go to Christian Union meetings to heckle them). The first position is embodied in something at least as strong as the following sentence: "Based on the balance of evidence, argument, etc., it is reasonable to conclude that there is no god." The second position is embodied in something at most as strong as the following sentence: "Based on the balance of evidence, argument, etc., it is unreasonable to conclude that there is a god." See the difference? The first claim is an affirmative claim about the lack of a god. The second claim is a negative claim about the existence of god, and the distinction is important because under circumstances where there is little chance for clear proof on either side, the two conclusions are very different. The first of these positions is essentially no more sound than theism, and most serious atheists are not 'strong atheists' of this type (although this is what the survey identifies as atheism). The second is what atheism literally means (think of the words 'sexual' and 'asexual')--the belief that to believe in a god BASED ON GIVEN EVIDENCE AND VALUES is not sensible. I generally take this position of 'weak atheism', but the next bit is rather shocking:
Weak atheism is often mistakenly referred to as agnosticism. This is simply not true; the agnostic concludes from given evidence that no statement should be made about the existence of god: it isn't sensible to believe in god, disbelieve in god or believe it isn't sensible to believe in god in the view of the agnostic.
Now if the ICCU could please get this right, I'm sure I'd have a lot more fun stirring the shit at your Q&A sessions. In particular, some guy called Mike needs to stop being a smarmy git and telling me what I believe. Atheism does not necessitate "hopelessness and moral bankruptcy" because it is a simple negative claim and doesn't say anything at all about hope or morality. Except for roughly agreeing on one small and relatively inconsequential point, atheists can think what they like about anything else.
End rant.