What do you believe?

We live in a world of various beliefs, and even among members of the same faith it is very likely that people will profess different beliefs. When looking at spirituality-centered sites, I have noticed it can be hard to find sites espousing a specific belief that don’t exclude or cut down other faiths. Hopefully this is changing, as this article tries to illustrate.

BeliefNet is a very interesting site that goes beyond the narrow focus many sites have. At BeliefNet, you won’t find grouchy sermons about how you will be damned if you don’t follow certain scriptures. Instead, the site is a lively mash-up of different faiths, where you can find answers to your questions and interact with people of all different kinds of beliefs.

One of the things I like about this site is that rule #4 of the site’s Rules of Conduct states this very clearly:

While it appears that the majority of the site’s audience is Christian, I certainly get the impression that everyone is welcome here. The air of debate in the forums is very tolerant.

When you enter the site, you are presented with a wealth of faith-related topics and activities—a far greater array than you would normally find. You can learn in-depth about different faiths or find spiritual direction for your family and health. You can even get better insight into your own faith or, if you still don’t know what your faith is, you can take the Belief-O-Matic test, which will tell you what faiths most closely match what you believe. You will get a “schedule of results” kind of like mine here below (lightly edited for size restrictions):

What do I believe that got these results? Find out here.

There is no direct link to the test. You just go to the Faith and Practices menu and to the Belief-O-Matic link to get it.

One small problem I had with the site is that it had too many ads. You click to go to a page and you get a huge ad for the movie Evan Almighty. I tend to find this kind of advertising extremely annoying. If this happens, just look for the “Skip this ad” on top to continue.

Overall this is a wonderful site and I will be back. I recommend it to anyone with an open mind to the future of our society.

June 20th, 2007 Posted by Michaell at 04:01pm | God and Belief | one comment