Help Sam Harris - Research Volenteers Needed

Help out by taking 4 online surveys. The responses will help to refine the experimental stimuli for the first study of religious belief at the brain level.

http://richarddawkins...

All done!

The one that caught me off guard was: "There is too much innocent suffering for there to be an all-powerful God." If you agree or disagree, aren't you implying a correlation? Maybe I'm not understanding the question completely...

There are a few questions that require a little clarification. Some were discussed in the message boards below the quiz.

The one that I came across was #40 on the first survey which suggested "Jesus was born a regular person, not coming from a God."

I couldn't agree or disagree with this notion since to agree with it would suggest that Jesus existed, even as a human, and yet to disagree with is would suggest Jesus not only existed but was of divine lineage.

I was also troubled by a few of the questions, but I think that is the point. They are going to use these questions on people while undergoing a battery of tests. The changes in the brain that occur as you struggle with the question would undoubtedly be detected. This could be really interesting to see the way different people's (i.e. believers and non-believers) brains react to questions of faith, belief, etc.

I could be talking out of my ass too though!

I found the questions to be completely habitual in nature, I mean that they are standardized
questions that fit into the norms of modern poll taking. I took the first two and was disturbed by some of the ways that most of the questions were worded and the fact that ALOT of the questions diserved a writen response. It felt like the "poll taker" was being once again lead by the science of linguistics, although I find it interesting to know the parts of the brain that different thinkers use, I can't help but wonder if the information used could be obtained in a more accurate way, instead of by (foxy)simple, not so simple questions that may challenge a thoughtful answer, which isn't one of the five choices.
The truth is is that we don't know what this information is going to lend itself to, now it's out there floating in the oceans of mosaic matrix. Information like this could be used for the next revision of the bible, "like this" being key.

Back to the MRI thing and observing the brain while it's thinking. I watched this show on IPTV,
it was on on 3-18-08 Tues. @ 2 or 2:30 AM, the program is called HRM(homeroom) Educational
Programing for Kids. The show was on the effects of alchohal on the brain, they did MRI scans
on this girl that was hosting the show and compared her tests with another girl that had taken the same tests, that had admittedly said that she drank quite heavily on the weakends.
During the MRI they were shown random scriblings on different areas of the sceen to give them something to think about, then they were shown advertisings.~~~~
The results were incredible and they may or maynot have a determining factor on the results
of alchohal "persay" but the test did point to which areas of the brain we use for deep thought and which we use for rememberd information. I thought it was so amazing because of the thoughts that I had been having about the brain and it's departments and after watching this telecast it reafermed what I was thinking. Highly recommend watching this if it is at all possible.

I guess what I was saying about the "surveys", was that if all we have is time then I wish that it was done right in our time, and not to the beat of an unheard drum. C.I.Scolfield D.D. as far as I know was the last to edit the bible, and even if he was'nt that just means that the book was reedited between 1967 and now. He edited the thing in 1909 and his copyright was renewed atleast until 1967, that's the edition that my sister inherited from her g-ma.
How easy is it for a few to recieve info from the masses in the 21 century. Info was easy to come by in the middle ages now it's just streakeing buck naked all over the place.

The masses, poor ignorant innocent fools. Hope that I dont get judged on this of all sites, today just happened to catch me taking a poll about questions I'm passionate about, as im sure alot of you are as well im just in a ranting sort of mood:)

The survey has been completed and the stimuli for the fMRI tests are being filtered down. A bonus too all of this is some really neat analysis of the answers to the survey questions. Some of the answers I found to be pretty obvious, but I did find some comparisons that surprised me. You can check them out here:

http://www.samharris....