..and really has created the world and the humans. Whether from a lump of clay as some believe, or through nature's laws and evolution as others believe, shall not matter here. This is a poll about for what purpose a hypothetical God could have created us. It's not about what you might have read about God in some book - what matters is just your uninfluenced opinion. You need not even believe in God to fill in this poll. Just assume that the motives of the God you imagine are, to some extent, rational and logical.

I'm interested in the results of this poll for a religious study. You can select one or two options for any question. There is no "Other" option, so please select the answer you think most likely even if you don't fully agree with any of them. Thanks a lot for participating in the poll!

God's most likely main motivation to create humans was... multiple choice, up to 2 choices
	To be believed in and be worshipped by them
	To observe their behavior and learn from them
	To make them in his image and thus learn about himself
	To make them do good deeds and thus increase the Good
Votes accepted starting: 11/04/08 10:01 You must vote before you can view the results of this poll.

What would God mainly do to be believed in? multiple choice, up to 2 choices
	Implanting a God belief into humans from the beginning
	Appearing before humans and doing impressive miracles
	Producing books and publications about himself
	Hiding himself, for making the belief the more worthwhile
Votes accepted starting: 11/04/08 10:03 You must vote before you can view the results of this poll.

What would God mainly do to make humans do good deeds? multiple choice, up to 2 choices
	Create humans with a good character from the beginning
	Promise spectacular rewards for good deeds
	Inflict spectacular punishments for bad deeds
	Release a law that demands humans do good deeds
Votes accepted starting: 11/04/08 10:03 You must vote before you can view the results of this poll.

What would God mainly to to learn from humans? multiple choice, up to 2 choices
	Just observing them
	Causing catastrophic events and observing human reactions
	Befriending selected humans and studying them
	Releasing polls from time to time
Votes accepted starting: 11/04/08 10:04 You must vote before you can view the results of this poll.

How would God react on people not believing in him (Atheists)? multiple choice, up to 2 choices
	Not at all, anyone is entitled to his own opinion
	Proving his existence to them with miracles and visions
	Hating them, and punishing them in hell
	Liking them, as He does not believe in other Gods either
Votes accepted starting: 11/04/08 10:05
View Results

Well of course I cannot answer such a limited poll, but I commend you for looking at the possibilities. Its always beneficial to study alternatives even if you dont believe them.

As a thought experiment I have often thought about "what if God doesnt exist".

I think another engaging question would be: "If God exists, how would he answer this poll?"

Would He ignore it as being ridiculous?

yeah, interesting poll, but i cannot answer it. that doesn't make this off-topic though; perhaps you'd be interested in "why".

when you refer to God as "God", it's very difficult to separate the "God" i know from this anonymous character you're describing; a god limited by human perception and knowledge compared to my "God" i know much better and already have a faith in. this poll would be much easier to answer for atheists, and even then, it wouldn't be much of a religious poll as most answers would be from non-religious people.

for example, if you created a poll saying "Assume a Robert Neville" exists, and asked me all these questions about this hypothetical "Robert Neville", it'd be too difficult to step away from what i think the "Robert Neville" that i actually know would do (Robbie's my best friend and like a brother to me [even though i have brothers], and isn't that guy from I Am Legend).

now, i could have made that less confusing by using someone else as an example (someone not played by Will Smith), but he's the best example of someone i know well enough that i could answer most questions on his behalf.

i hope that's useful for you.

julz

To me it's obvious a God would probably be more successful in making people believe in him or her when it would try to actively impress people and let know that he does exist. One way or another some kind of divine intervention also recognized as such would be needed.

I don't think he would be interested in books or polls anymore than he would care about ants or plants or rocks. I'm sure he would have learned very fast about humans, (ironically created in his own image?), that they'd take advantage of things if there's a good chance of personal gain.

Going by the commonly used definition(s?) of Gods being all knowing and all powerful I'm thinking the purpose isn't to learn.., but at the same time I realize learning about himself may be the one thing left and the one thing hardest to 'study'.



What would you suggest when it comes "better" poll-options/questions? I know for atheists it's just a theoretical multiple choice thing, so perhaps you're right that it's easier for 'us', but wouldn't you at least agree there are options that make less sense from the perspective of logic?

Cheers

I thought the questions were okay. They were on a "what do you think" scale. For instance "To observe their behavior" is a great answer. The thing is though, some of the options are rather limited or include a little too much in them such as the "how would God react to athiests". Overall about 3 of the questions are viable, but need more options, and some options need to be split into two...

logic based on what, though? what was God's purpose in making us? the "logic" of most questions relies heavily on the choice for the first question (the "why"), and that question in itself is very limiting: either God needs our help (learning or making more good) or He made us just to worship Him.

i liked how you, PHeMoX, being an atheist, picked up on that bit as well: God by definition wouldn't be making us so He can learn from us. that should really leave one choice as far as the poll jcl's given us is concerned.

i will do my best to answer the poll; i just don't think a generalised poll for both atheists and theists will return very useful results in a study on religion. i think the survey is asking for the means to several different ends, without separating them.

julz

EDIT: i can't answer the last question. grouping "hate" (ungodly) with "hell" (the best choice for that question) was a bad decision. look up "universalism" and "annihilationism". i'm not saying i believe in those, but from my limited perspective on God's creation i would choose "universalism". none of the other answers are acceptable, but neither is ascribing "hate" to God.

I agree on the "learning from us" bit, the only problem is when I did the poll I clicked on a few answers that I didn't mean to click T_T... now if only I could redo it... anyway that's why I said what I did, the answer: "To observe their behavior and learn from them" is both a good and a bad answer, in my opinion "to observe behavior" and "learning from them" should be two different answers. I agree with the "observing" part but not the "learning" part, which is why I said the answers have too much to them or they are not as varied as they should be.

As for the last question, I also did not answer it for that reason. Hate has nothing to do with people going to hell. People go to hell because they send themselves their by refusing to believe in God, so "hate" is completely irrelevant.

This makes not much sense to me. Going to hell is a punishment. If you use a punishment to educate your kids then you will not punish them forever. You will punish them for a short while hoping they learn from that and will behave better in the future.
Punishing for all eternity is not reasonable especially if you love your kids. It is clearly an act of hate. So I have to agree with JCL.

Thank you for the answers so far! Especially interesting is that "Learn about himself" and "God likes Atheists" are leading in questions 1 and 5, as these concepts are not found in the 9 main religious belief patterns of the world.

If you do not agree to any answer on a question, you can post your differing answer here in a comment. For instance, the gods of several Christian and Islamic belief patterns burn people in hell just for their opinion. Burning someone because he disagrees to something is normally considered a hate crime. Of course it's difficult if not impossible to describe a god's feelings, so we're using words associated with human feelings. If a particular god behaves in a way that would be described as hateful in a human, "Hating" fits better than for instance "Disliking".

I copied one wrong answer from my original poll that had more options than 4 per questions. Instead of "Befriending", the option in question 4 should have been "Testing selected humans by exposing them to tough choices". But anyway, as polls can't be changed afterwards, so be it.

but hell isn't necessarily eternal. look at my edit in my last post. look up universalism and annihilationism. they're not necessarily right, but they're certainly options our "ideal God" could pick.

jcl only included one type of punishment.

julz

EDIT: that was directed at Frank, btw. jcl got in there just before me.