Christianity
How Good Are You At Christianity? Do the AskWhy Test
Abstract
Christianity Test—Are You Inclined to be a Christian?
Contents Updated: Friday, July 30, 1999
A simple but serious psychological test in the form of a quiz to test your religiosity, or your suitability as a Christian or for conversion to Christianity. The test is ready to go. Read the question in the box, then click on the most appropriate answer. Initially one is selected but just change it to the answer you want. (But see a reader's note below.)
When you finish the test, the results appear in the questions box. You are graded on five different qualities. Right click and drag in it to highlight the result, or click "Select All" and copy it into memory to paste wherever you wish.
Sample Result
CHRISTIAN INCLINATIONS RESULT
You are judged on conservatism, acceptance, compassion, confidence and intolerance.
The Churches are hugely conservative basing themselves on unchanging creeds and holy writings that are considered the word of God himself and so cannot be changed. Your percent conservatism is 16. The higher your conservatism, the better the church likes you.
The higher your score (32) on acceptance of Christian values, the more the Churches like you because you are already indoctrinated with their conventions.
Compassion (78) is not only a Christian quality though Christians like to think it is. Many Christians today have nominally adopted the views of civilised society rather than the ideas propagated in their barbaric holy books, so many people who are simply civilised and not particularly Christian might get a high score here.
Your intolerance score is 30. More than 20 percent is intolerant. Christianity historically is an intolerant belief, though the progress of civilisation has forced it to adopt a veneer of tolerance. Today only a minority of people except in some extreme communities such as members of fundamentalist Christian Churches are likely to get high intolerance scores.
Confidence (33) is not necessarily a Christian quality but it often is because Christians have the idea that God informs them. Ordinary folk, lacking the guidance of God, are cautious rather than confident in what they say and do.
You can download (10 KB download) this applet right here in zip format. Zipped together as ChristBent.zip are an HTML file like this one (it probably is this one!) and the java applet class file, CBQuestioner.class. Just put the two in the same folder and it should work on a PC.
Hey! Why not make a quiz sheet of the questions, ask your friends, parents, teachers or ministers to tick answers or you note them, then analyse their answers privately using the applet to find out whether they are good Christians? Good, eh!
Added Note: 5 May 2012
This test has worked perfectly well for a decade but a reader, Bethanie Ludlum, recently wrote:
Mike, I have the following comments on: How Good Are You At Christianity? Do the AskWhy Test
I was enjoying your article about intelligence and religion when I came across your link for the 60 question Christianity test. I want to take it (because I think it’s funny and have nothing else to do at the moment other than stew on the ridiculous nature of Christianity). The problem is that if I want to choose the same answer twice in a row, I can’t. The app should be fixed so that you can just re-press the radio button (or something similar) and progress in the test if your answer is the same. It’s forcing you to click an answer you don’t want just to move on. I can’t go further than question 7 because I completely disagree with 6 and want to choose the same for 7.
I tested the application and she was right. The program is now broken. All I could do is suggest an inadequate workaround—to click the next best answer to your preferred one when the app does not respond. It means your score will not be precise but should not be far out, especially as the scoring algorithm is more subtle than just scoring the answers. Bethanie replied:
I went ahead and took the quiz by just choosing the closest answer if I couldn’t get what I wanted. I still enjoyed the quiz and reading the analysis. So, yes, go ahead and tell people about the issue and how to go about the quiz. If you don’t, I feel like they would just get frustrated and go away.
Well, thanks to Bethanie for the original observation, and testing the workaround. I fear I have lost the original code, so cannot just recompile it to suit Windows 7 or the latest JAVA version. I guess that some of you may not have this problem. If so, I would be glad to hear, and will post any replies that might help others right here.
