Belief-O-Matic

Belief-O-Matic makes the serious practice of choosing a faith into an experience that resembles online dating. Answer 20 questions on a Web site and the tool spits out a list of religions or faiths best suited to your answers. The digital religion engine, which is part of the popular, multi-faith religion web site Beliefnet, welcomes guests with the one part mystical, one part pop-psychology greeting, "Even if YOU don't know what faith you are, Belief-O-Matic knows." Like online dating surveys, users can identify what they believe and rate their beliefs according to their importance. But while online daters seek compatibility with complete strangers, Belief-O-Matic is more like choosing a date from a line-up of old flames. For a question about life after death, one answer includes a reference to the final judgment, another to resurrection and another to rebirth. If people with spiritual experience answer truthfully, the idea is they will likely end up matched to the religion they already practice. So, what is the algorithm/equation that determines one’s belief system, and what, exactly, is the point? Is it just a fun game, or is it an attempt to confirm and bolster the religious identities that site visitors bring with them?

Belief-O-Matic tries to help you find out what religion or faith best suits you. It asks questions like, "What are the origins of the physical universe and life on earth?" and, "Why is there terrible wrongdoing in the world?" The multiple-choice quiz typically offers between three and eight answers to choose from. For example, users answering the first question can choose among answers like, "All matter and life forms are manifestations of the eternal Absolute," or "God is creating and controlling the phenomena uncovered by scientists." Users considering the second question will find answers like, "Humans inherited sinfulness, or a damaged nature, or tendency to yield to Satan's temptations from Adam and Eve, who committed the original sin against God. Users can also classify their answers as high priority, medium priority and low priority, according to the answer's importance in their spiritual life.

Belief-O-Matic's results are based on numbers and human research. Each possible answer in the 20-question quiz has a different numeric compatibility value for each religion. For each answer chosen, there is a religious practice that is most compatible with that belief. There is also a religion that is the least compatible with that answer. For example, if the question is, "Do you believe in God?" and the user chooses NO, then Atheism would receive 100 points, because that is the most compatible religious belief for people who say they do not believe in God. Born-again Christianity might receive zero points for this question because the answer is an emphatic yes. (The questions are more complicated than, "Do you believe in God?" but this simple example illustrates the way the quiz evaluates answers.) Most belief systems will have a number in between zero and 100 for each question. When the user finishes, the quiz uses an algorithm to total all the numeric values for each possible result and display in percentages the degree to which the user is compatible with each religion. The quiz results appear as a list of religions, with the highest compatibility percentage at the top.