Religion vs Science study help

Hello, my name is Michael and I am a post graduate student currently performing research into the psychology of religion for my Msc with the Open University. I apologise if this is in the wrong section, but I really felt I wanted to gauge the community of the Yoga Forums in my research. I am trying to get as broad a spiritual and scientific base of answers as possible, so I really hope everyone doesn’t mind me posting this here. My research is in measuring similarities and differences between scientific and religious thought.I am also gathering data with people who are both scientific and religious in outlook. In this study I am looking at levels of open-mindedness between those who have religious belief and those who do not. I am in need of participants and I was wondering if there would be any chance of anyone helping me out by taking my survey? It only takes 5 minutes to complete and it is completely anonymous. If you would like to look at the survey this is the link:

surveygizmo.com/s3/434062/Composite-Actively-Open-Minded-Scale

I really would appreciate greatly any help you could give me. If you have any questions please feel free to post here . Thank you for your time.

Done.

Done

But I will admit there are a few in there that my answer would honestly be neither agree or disagree.

Yeah there are a few that I would have to say were pretty neutral for me. I’m going to mess up your data curve though -I’m the hippie-church-going-engineer!:stuck_out_tongue: Good luck!

Done.

Please share your findings with us when you finish analysis. I’m curious what will you find!

Done… it really brought top the surface something I really find frustrating about many religions. The close minded, rigid certainty one holds toward their own beliefs. A conditioned mind, is a mistaken mind.

I’ve been thinking a lot about your questions and I do wonder about your wording -it pre-supposes my beliefs can be proven wrong. There may be things I think based on my belief that can be proven wrong, but my beliefs per se for e.g that everyone has the right to worship (or not) their own God can’t be proven wrong.

In my religion faith, hope and love are grouped together and people seem to accept that hope and love defy reason and logic but still try to argue with me about faith. The opposite of faith is not doubt -it is certainty -because if you are certain about it, then there is no need for faith.

I know what you are trying to get at, but as a liberal member of the Christian left (yes we do exist) the questions seem to be written by an agnostic/atheist, designed to trip up the Christian right.

Done. In general my viewpoint is that of the scientist, that if new information arises that falsifies ones beliefs, one should abandon those beliefs. This applies in equal force to creationists who deny old earth despite geological data, evolutionists who deny fossils older than the theory evolution allows despite the fact that they exist, and materialists who continue to insist the world is material, despite hard empirical proof from quantum physics.

Michael

Done.

Just want to check that you are aware that yoga isn’t a religion. Some yogis identify with a religion. Some do not.

The problem with this survey (and generally these kinds of surveys) is that in spite of the unquestionable efforts put down by it’s creator, it cuts down options, even if the anwers are not just yes or no, but have a few more shades. (six is this case)

Example, there is no option for a balanced answer, one that neither disagrees, nor agrees. I understand that the surveyer is interested in meaningful answers, to see in what direction the scale goes down eventually, and perhaps he tought such answers would unnecessary dilute the result.

Also, such surveys can’t be designed to really reflect a reality where in different situations, totally opposed attitudes could be both justifiable, in the same time.

Example:
[B][I]I think there are many wrong ways, but only one right way, to almost anything. [/I][/B]

Here, we can have:
I think there are many wrong ways, and many good ways to do almost anything, generally speaking.
In a given situation, though, for me, there will always be one way I think is right, that one what I will actually choose to follow. Again, this does not mean, that my choice, or way, must equal that of others.

So basically, I could answer this question with " Agree strongly": because it both admits that there are many wrong ways, and also I could answer the same because that there is only one way what we could eventually enact, and that is what we find right (regardless if it is actually right or wrong) in a given situation. But than again, if I answer this way, it may be interpreted, that I have answered in agreement with the following: there is only one right way, generally speaking. Why ? because the question does not differentiate between me, and others, between actuality and generality, and most important does not differentiate between what we think is right and what actually comes out as result of that thinking.

So, if my answer is interpreted this way, than I must change my attitude to disagreement, because I do not agree that there is only one right way for everybody. That, I disagree strongly. So in order to answer this question, I can only say, my answer depends on if it is about me, in a given situation, or it is about everyone, in any given situation. And there is still the question: do I have many ways to do something right, or do I have just one ? And this leads us to the question of free will, if there is any, or there is only it’s illusion. Now, answer to that question hase been sought to greater complexity by phiosophers and a survey question having three shades of black and three shades of white could hardly contain a meaningful answer.

The possible answers do not match the complexity of the question, thus the answers will not be meaningful. This is good example on how looking through an imperfect lense, the resulted image will be also distorted.

Edit: I could not give a satisfying answer to this question so I could not complete the survey.

Done.

Michael,
you might like to share with us the ‘results’ when the survey and whatever statistics are performed on the results?

It would be very interesting to see the ‘assumptions’ the survey makers had when designing this, and especially ‘interpreting’ the results.

Best Wishes,
Dave

[QUOTE=MikeW;53828] I am trying to get as broad a spiritual and scientific base of answers as possible, so I really hope everyone doesn’t mind me posting this here.[/QUOTE]Hope this will help:
Spiritual Secrets in the Carbon Atom

very interesting questions :slight_smile:

Done.

I echo Hubert’s case as well, that many of the questions to which I answered “disagree slightly” or “agree slightly” were answered so because I could not agree or disagree, because my answer is “it completely depends” on extenuating factors and situations.

I’m interested in how you interpret the data. :slight_smile:

Beendet und abgeschlossen

I did, at first, think there should be a neutral ‘neither agree nor disagree’ option, but on further thought I slightly disagree with that because, if I were open and honest about the statement, I did tip ever so slightly to one side.