OK, everybody, it's time to help out Dr. Darrel Ray by filling out a survey on a couple of my favorite subjects: religion and sex. He needs as many responses as we can get, so I'll be posting this all over - and let's try to make sure that this is one area where women aren't under-represented (actually, let's do that in all areas).
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PGHSWMW
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
33 comments:
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Well, that was an interesting diversion in my otherwise boring day. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteNot to be too personal, but that was a hard survey for me because I have never partook in sexual relationship, intercourse, or masturbation and not sure about my gender and sexuality, which I guess puts me in the minority.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't sure what was meant by "fulfilling sexual fantasy".
ReplyDeleteI haven't met a klingon yet.
@JT
ReplyDeleteI thought the same thing about tentacles...
@Eric J.S.
ReplyDeleteWasn't a very Virgin friendly survey, I would say. :/
Hopefully you guys wrote some suggestions so they could rework the survey.
ReplyDeleteSurvey definitely seemed geared towards those who were once religious and are now not. I've been an atheist all my life so a large number of the questions didn't apply to me.
ReplyDeleteThat was interesting. I hope they can use some input from a guy living outside of the US and who's not an American.
ReplyDeleteThe survey could have used a little editing to improve the quality/quantity of responses. I didn't really care, but there were some really basic mistakes or insensitive moments that make it seem less professional, such as basic grammatical errors, or listing "transgender" as a sexual orientation. Someone could easily be put off by that, especially when giving relatively personal details such as making a comprehensive list of fetishes/turn-ons.
ReplyDelete@ Sean
ReplyDeleteI agree, but that's why they allow for criticism at the end. Sometimes the writer has the hardest time seeing such things.
There seemed to be a big dose of confirmation bias (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias) to the survey. In my personal experience, atheists seem to have a healthier view of human sexuality, but if this is meant to be serious research then that bias needs to go away.
ReplyDeleteMaybe they should have put in the intro that they only want Americans. The questions seem to be targetted at that culture.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, I'm an atheist agnostic, secularist and humanist... and none of those are religious affiliations...
Gah, this thing is rediculous.
ReplyDeleteI have to answer a bunch of questions that I shouldn't have been asked because I'm not religious, have never been religious, and now after answering that I'm not in a long term relationship (after already asking earlier my marital status, which surely means it's a repeatition...) and now it's asking me a bunch of questions about my long term relationship that I don't have.
Argh!
The survey was geared mostly towards people who were religious or once religious. A lot of the question didn't apply to people like me who were always atheist and or remain single.
ReplyDeleteI like these survey's because it feels like I'm being producive and contributing useful knowledge for a better cause.
That was fun to fill out. I'm married to a religious woman so some of the questions where fun! hehe
ReplyDeleteI've been an atheist all my life, so some of the questions didn't apply and didn't all have an n/a option. Also, some of the questions about sex were hard to answer because I don't remember that stuff precisely.
ReplyDeleteAnd the question about where you grew up I had to do over and over because it wouldn't accept the "format" I had typed it in, but it didn't say what was the correct format. Bleahrg.
Kind of boring, but at least they brought up kink.
ReplyDeleteThe survey seemed rather flawed. I started taking it (I'm a Canadian, I agree with the commenter above about it seeming skewed towards the US) and had to bail.
ReplyDeleteI was baptized and have moderately religious parents. I was involved with their religions when I was young, but just sort of "grew" out of it.
The problem with the survey is, I stopped being religious _before_ I started having sex. A lot of the questions seem to assume that you stopped being religious _after_ beginning to have sex, so they can't be properly answered.
I don't think this survey will be as useful as they hoped. I wonder, since you guys know them, if you could/should recommend they reconsider the questions?
I didn't go to page 2, but I found even page 1 questions a little too limited, like they were trying to fit me in somewhere.
ReplyDeleteFor example, throughout my childhood, I was mostly raised in a kind of secular Platonism. God and religion wasn't much discussed. But at the same time I was baptised Catholic and went to Catholic school from time to time. Anyway, I'd say my childhood was largely "non-religious", but in my late teens and twenties practised a pantheistic Paganism. I'd say that was religious. Sort of. My beliefs didn't change from when I was non-religious, just my actions did. So how many years have I been non-religious? All my life, all my life minus the dozen years or so I practised Paganism, or only the years since I returned to a non-religious existence? Or only the amount of time I've become more sceptical than romantic/fanciful about religion?
Oh and I'm not sure what definition they're using (other than "godless") but spiritualism refers to a belief in ghosts and contacting the dead (with or without a belief in God or gods). Why would they be included in the target audience?
Went to fill out survey, but my response to question 3 kept giving me the following message. "The comment you entered is in an invalid format."
ReplyDeleteThere's no contact information within the survey itself. I went to his blog (Atheist Nexus), but it required me to create an account and have that account approved before I could leave a comment.
Based off of this and the other responses I'm seeing in these comments, I'm disinclined to put any more effort into his pet project.
Okay I went on to see what some of the questions were like. I got caught up with the one about the invalid format, put in something just to get to the next page. I had another problem with the question about who you could talk to about sex (choose only three, including my own experience, porn and other?).
ReplyDeleteI quit for good when asked to list all of my fetishes. I don't want to spend a week filling out this survey, you know?
Also, there seemed to be an assumption that "while I was religious" my sexuality was being repressed. Since my time as a practising religion person, I was in my twenties, and the religion was pro-sex, the result was quite the opposite.
I've come to the conclusion this survey isn't really for me.
Calling atheism, agnosticism, secularism and humanism "religious affiliations," and (to add further insult) insisting they be treated as mutually exclusive is pretty much a calling card for ignorance about all those subjects. Not a good start.
ReplyDeleteI also found rather grating the unwritten assumption that asking for a "previous religious affiliation" would necessarily have an answer. (I was tempted to answer "rooster worship" or something...) There were multiple echoes of this mistake further on in the survey, too.
At first I didn't notice "transgender" being listed as a sexual orientation, but on reflection that too seems a particularly egregious mistake.
Despite the annoyingly stupid questions, I did complete it. I'd like to corner the experimenter and have a few words with them though. :P
I filled out the survey as best I could. However, some of the terms were unclear. Not everyone defines atheist the same way. The same applies to agnostic and the other terms. So, stating how the terms were to be considered in this survey would assist in ensuring more accurate results. In particular, the term non religious was unclear to me. Does that mean when one simply no longer partricipates in religion or when one deliberately rejects religion?
ReplyDeleteAll of those that said, "I tried, but I bailed out about halfway through because of [this], [that], or [another]" should have finished. At the end of the survey, there's a comment box about any recommends/problems with the actually survey.
ReplyDelete@blindmansleeps: I'd rather not have them ignore my recommendations and just use my answers from a flawed survey to try to support their erroneous findings.
ReplyDeleteI found this survey impossible to finish. As someone who is a cultural christian only, I did not fit the underlying assumption that atheists were generally believers first and then atheists later.
ReplyDelete"The problem with the survey is, I stopped being religious _before_ I started having sex. A lot of the questions seem to assume that you stopped being religious _after_ beginning to have sex, so they can't be properly answered."
ReplyDeleteMy problem with the survey as well...I explained that at the end of the survey.
On the Fetishes question - they say participated in so it could shorten your list Ibis.
When listing various religions and Christian denominations you need to include "Orthodox" as one of the choices. There are alot of Greek, Russian, and like my wife, Armenian Christians who do not fall into any of the categories.
ReplyDeleteI think people are being too critical about the poll. It cannot possibly encompass all atheists, agnostics, and the like because atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, secularists, etc. are as unique as each individual snowflake falling on the ground. The only thing we have in common is a lack of belief in supernatural deities. We come from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds, political beliefs, hobbies, occupations, sexual practices, and so on. The pollsters tried their best and included a comment box to improve things in the future. Let's give them credit for caring about atheists and their friends at all, because a lot of people don't, particularly the religious majority.
ReplyDeletePoorly written or exclusively written for ex-theists. How is a life long atheist supposed to answer a question like this:
ReplyDelete"When you were religious what was the amount of influence religion had on your sexuality?"
or this:
"Now that you are non-religious, how has your sex life changed?"
If anything, I've done as much I can to make women over-represented in my sex-life.
ReplyDeleteMy problem with this survey was that it didn't take into account people who might be justifiably angry at theists for their intrusion into their bedrooms (I'm a lesbian) but who didn't let that fact change their sex lives or sexuality, or to feel shame for above.
ReplyDeleteThe questions and possible answers near the end showed an interviewer's bias. That if we were pissed at theists and their absorption with our sex lives, then we must, ipso facto, have been shamed or had problems with our sex lives.
There was no place to say "YES I am HIGHLY angry with religion and its tactics against the gay community. But NO, I am NOT ashamed NOR have I EVER allowed it to affect my sex life OR sexuality.
The bias said that IF you were angry, then it DID change your sex life. One does NOT necessarily follow the other.
There are millions in the gay and lesbian community who feel NO SHAME in being who they are, and yet are still pissed at the theists for their stand on our sex lives.
If those questions had come at the beginning and not the end, I would never have finished the so-called study.
I was a little put off by the way some of the questions and answers were worded. I consider atheism and such to be a religious NON-affiliation. They also seemed to have "gender" confused with "sex".
ReplyDeleteI found a better list of fetishes on alt.com. The list they provided a link to seemed a little short. Although, I did get to learn about some fetishes I've never heard of.
Somebody mentioned Klingons. (Insert joke about Klingon Bath Houses here)