I’m by no means an expert on the Quakers (I found the url on Google), but the few people I have known to be Quakers seemed to live by their convictions and were willing to accept the consequences of doing so. Then again, I’m basing this generalization on a very small number of people.
Odd that Reform Judaism didn’t show up in the top five, since I’m a cultural Jew (though an agnostic one); it’s at number 12. And yet I could be a liberal protestant, even though I’m not really sure what they believe or even what they are. (My guess: Jesus comes into somewhere. But that’s just a guess.)
So here’s my theory on the Prevalence of the Liberal Quakers: the high officials of this church are members of the Illuminati, and they had an infiltrator in the Beliefnet HQ when this test was designed. They deliberately made it so that certain types of people - Straight Dope readers obviously being one of those types - would get the LQ result within the top 5, thus being tempted to discover more about it, thus EXPOSING THEMSELVES to the Illuminati overlords! Or perhaps even becoming their minions and tools! Want proof? Notice that ‘liberal’ has seven letters and ‘quaker’ has six, which is two times three! Fight the Liberal Quaker evil, folks, before it’s too late!
Of course, it could just be that those of us who got LQ have similar opinions on a lot of issues.
Either way, I vote we go out and hunt down a Liberal Quaker and haul him into this thread to explain the meaning of all this.
(Bottom five, just fer fun:
Roman Catholic (39%)
Jainism (37%)
Seventh Day Adventist (34%)
Sikhism (34%)
Orthodox Quaker (29%)
Hinduism (29%)
I think this pretty clearly demonstrates that whatever The Quaker Plot is, the orthodox ones aren’t in on it. Also, I’d just like to say that I am hurt, yes, and insulted that Scientology didn’t show up in the bottom five; it was number 19, with 45% agreement. The day I find myself 45% in sympathy with Scientology is the day I find myself a good shrink.
And does anyone know what Seventh Day Adventists believe? I’ve always wondered, but I’ve never known any, and in any case I’d be afraid to ask.)
Pretty accurate, as I’m a pagan with a serious interest in Buddhism. I was amused as all heck to note that Roman Catholic came in dead last - 15% - and that was the faith I was dragged up in.
Either my beliefs have shifted over the past few months, or I hit a key other than my intended answer. I always considered mysslef agnostic, but my top 90% answers:
Neo-Paganism (100%)
Mahayana Buddhism (98%)
Unitarian Universalism (98%)
Liberal Protestant (96%)
Liberal Quaker (93%)
Theravada Buddhism (91%)
Agnostic was 30%, and Roman Catholic (my original upbringing was 19%.
Have any of you tried the quiz a second time, a day or two after you first tried it? You may find slightly different results (unless you’re a person of frightening consistency).
I couldn’t remember exactly how I answered last night, and what weight I gave to each answer. This time I got my top picks reshuffled.
Reform Judaism (100%)
Sikhism (98%)
Bahá’í (97%)
Orthodox Judaism (95%)
Islam (94%)
Liberal Quaker (79%)
Well, mazel tov!
the bottom of my list:
Secular Humanism (42%)
Taoism (40%)
Eastern Orthodox (36%)
Roman Catholic (36%)
Atheism and Agnosticism (26%)
This makes sense, but what is Taoism doing way down there? I really like Taoism. Or thought I did. What went wrong here?
Apatheism is not listed, unfortunately. Maybe I should do it again based on the answers I would have given when I still considered myself to be a witch.
Uh, what the hell do you have to do to get “Atheism and Agnosticism” 100%? My number one was UU, and “Atheism and Agnosticism” was 94% . . . which is, er, not to put to fine a point on it, dead wrong. I answered almost all the questions “Not Applicable”, because if you don’t have a religion, it’s pretty hard to say what you think your religion should dictate, eh? But then I thought maybe that was wrong, and went back and did it according to my political beleifs, and that moved “A&A” even further down.
Makes me wonder if “Beliefnet”'s quiz is a bit like the Libertarian Party’s political alignment quiz, which rates almost everyone as just a little liberatarian.