30 January 2008

Belief-O-Matic™: Choosing My Religion

I was answering the 20-question Belief-O-Matic™: What Religion Am I? quiz at Beliefnet and, between questions about God, the afterlife, abortion and Satan, this ad popped up.

It's for Eli Lilly's post-Prozac cash cow, duloxetine. It's the new standard-issue seratonin reuptake inhibitor for depression. An interesting choice of target audience, I thought.

Anyway, the quiz said my number one choice of religion, with a 100% match, should be Unitarian Universalism. It's a wildly liberal 1960s outfit that's pro-gay, pro-abortion and you believe what you want, when you want, read a lot and discuss everything. Sounds very me.

My next choices, if it didn't work out with the UUs, were Secular Humanism (98%), which isn't a religion at all, Liberal Quakers (89%) and Theravada Buddhism (88%). Scientology (65%) came in at number 11, which is odd given that it's a sci-fi cult masquerading as an actual religion.

Bahá'í Faith (42%) and Hinduism (41%) were 17 and 18, with a dead heat between Islam and Orthodox Judaism (both 21%) at number 22. Coming in last, just after Jehovah's Witness (17%), was Roman Catholic (9%) at number 27.

At least I just scraped in with the Catholics. I didn't make the cut at all for Falun Gong, Jainism, Nation of Islam, Shinto or Zoroastrianism. Better luck next time around, I guess.

1 comment:

Butfirst said...

Being far too busy to answer the questions myself, I left it in the capable hands of an online random number generator, which apparently makes me 100% Liberal Christian Protestant. W00t.

Does anyone else find it suspicious that the top match always seems to return a 100% match, thereby leaving you no doubt that you've stumbled upon your 'perfect' religion in 20 questions?