Your survey questions could really use some work. The first question asks something how familiar are you with the bible, but the answers imply it's how often do you interact with it now?

Like ApochPiQ, I would class myself as reasonably familiar with the bible, but I don't believe any of it (other than the fact that it may be based around some actual historical events). I wouldn't say I was forced to read it, I just didn't comprehend as a child that there was a possibility of not reading it.

BTW, you give ApochPiQ kudos for at least reading the bible before dismissing it. I assume you've read the Quran, the Torah, the Norse mythologies, the Bhagavad-Gita, the [font="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"]Tipitaka[/font] and so on before you dismissed those religions. All of which brings us back to the far more interesting phenomenon of how geography is the over riding factor in the majority of most peoples belief systems. It would be interesting to note how many people were "born christian" and how many chose it.

Your survey questions could really use some work.

Agreed. I stumbled my way through it but some of my answers aren't going to be very useful as they're the lesser invalid choice of a number of invalid choices. For instance the school question I could only answer from a historical 25 years ago POV which I'm guessing wasn't the intent of the question.

It would be interesting to note how many people were "born christian" and how many chose it.

The latter for me. and I'm glad to see you use quotes (since the definition of "Christian" means you can't be born one).

The Bible... tl;dr

I believe I was somewhere around 6 years old and I was sitting in a doctors office waiting for something or other and I came accross a book that I guess was a condensed version of Genesis. I forget exactly how it caught my eye but I started checking it out and I recognised the names Adam and Eve from CS Lewis books that were read to me at bedtime. I glanced accross a few pages and came to something that was like "The First Man and Woman" and my mind was like, "Oh hey, cool, finally I can get some answers here." Like any kid, I was curious about the whole where do we come from thing and even though my parents explained babies come from a mom and a dad, I quickly figured out that at some point there still had to be a first and I never got an answer about that. The book was a little above my comprehension level but not by a lot. I got through as much as I could and in the end I was like, "No, this can't be right." Being 6 the whole idea of a magic guy in the clouds making stuff by waving his hands around isn't a crazy idea (I'd try and figure out where he came from later). Evolution wasn't something that I was familiar with and my parents hadn't really pushed me to nor away from religeon. But the bit that I read seemed completly rediculous to me. It just felt like I wasn't being told the truth.

As such were my first impressions of the bible so I never got into it (never got much into reading books in general). In general, I don't think there's anything wrong with people trying to find an altruistic path through the writings of others. And if there's stuff in there that's based on historic events (exagerated or not) there's immense value in that. The way that some people idolize the book creeps me out though (and I think there's something in there about not doing that sort of thing).

[quote name='ChaosEngine' timestamp='1296823106' post='4769491']
Your survey questions could really use some work.

Agreed. I stumbled my way through it but some of my answers aren't going to be very useful as they're the lesser invalid choice of a number of invalid choices. For instance the school question I could only answer from a historical 25 years ago POV which I'm guessing wasn't the intent of the question.
[/quote]


Thanks for the feedback. I agree that I could have been clearer in terms of separating out *current* habits from historic habits. Partly I was limited by the fact that SurveyMonkey only lets you have 10 questions before you have to upgrade to a paid account. That's no excuse however.

I just went through it. But like other said, there are glaring problems with some of the questions.

[quote name='Machaira' timestamp='1296823612' post='4769497']
[quote name='ChaosEngine' timestamp='1296823106' post='4769491']
Your survey questions could really use some work.

Agreed. I stumbled my way through it but some of my answers aren't going to be very useful as they're the lesser invalid choice of a number of invalid choices. For instance the school question I could only answer from a historical 25 years ago POV which I'm guessing wasn't the intent of the question.
[/quote]


Thanks for the feedback. I agree that I could have been clearer in terms of separating out *current* habits from historic habits. Partly I was limited by the fact that SurveyMonkey only lets you have 10 questions before you have to upgrade to a paid account. That's no excuse however.
[/quote]

Should have just make a custom survey in php/mysql (or something similar) and put it on a free host.

tl;dr;

Thread winnar.

I'm developing an Old Testament adventure game myself, and enjoy blogging on related topics. I guess partly I'm trying to figure out who's out there who might even be vaguely interested and what they think, so that I can think about how to reach out and engage with them.

Surveying game developers is not a meaningful way to understand the interests of gamers.

[quote name='AndyGeers' timestamp='1296770518' post='4769205']
I'm developing an Old Testament adventure game myself, and enjoy blogging on related topics. I guess partly I'm trying to figure out who's out there who might even be vaguely interested and what they think, so that I can think about how to reach out and engage with them.

Surveying game developers is not a meaningful way to understand the interests of gamers.
[/quote]

Yes, but my blog is more for game developers than for gamers.

I would bet that 80-90% of western game developers (and other engineers) are atheists or agnostics.

I think the questions/survey is poorly aimed. It'd work better targeted directly at Christians or non-Christians.

I say this because I'm not a believer in the Christian mythology and can only really assess it as a literary work. I've read all of Old Testament and most the New Testament, but couldn't really get into it. It wasn't engaging enough and had a bit too much 'bad' in it (Bigotry, Sexism, raw Hate). The more contemporary derivatives are rather nice (Constantine, Supernatural TV series, so on). Overall though, I find Norse or Greek mythology more interesting.

As for the questions in your original post, I think that it's probably time for a revision. The amount of interpretation required for a 'ultimate authority' on life and everything is a bit too much, so a concise rewriting is probably in order. Getting rid of the oppressive views and simply bad lessons would be great as well. I'm not sure what would be required for someone's rewrite to be taken seriously since anyone who claimed to be transcribing for God-- except maybe the Pope-- would probably be simply labelled a Lunatic by even the Christian communities.

Hmm... perhaps it'd be impossible. The Bible is only taken seriously because it IS old and the writings cannot be validated. Then again, Scientology was able to start up recently.

Bleh, whatever. I just hope I'm wrong about all this stuff and get a chance to join the Einherjar.