Which religious group would you trust the most?

[john welsford]

Here's what New Zealanders think.

https://lep.net.nz/contact/

Just in case you don't feel like looking at the linked data, Evangelical Christians are right at the bottom, least trusted, Buddhists at the top, Catholics, Muslims, and Protestants in the middle.

John Welsford

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

I think that is not the right link.

But I will trust the Quakers before anyone else.

[epoxyboy]

Yep, I was thinking Buddhists. Those Engineering Plastics though, they're a rum lot ;-)
You might want to check that link!

Pete

[epoxyboy]

I think that is not the right link.

But I will trust the Quakers before anyone else.

The sophistry they engage in, to work around their own rules, is a bit amusing. Landline in the house, verboten. Landline to a little phone booth outside the house, OK. Cellphone anywhere? That's fine, as it has no "connection" to the outside world - or some bollocks like that.

Pete

[john welsford]

Yep, I was thinking Buddhists. Those Engineering Plastics though, they're a rum lot ;-)
You might want to check that link!

Pete

I will.
Thanks,
JW

[john welsford]

Here we go, shoulda checked it first time.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/114...urch-shootings

John Welsford

[john welsford]

I will.
Thanks,
JW

Coincidentally I've got a block of UHMW coming from them in the next day or so.


John Welsford

[Hallam]

I don't trust anyone untill i get to know them.

[skuthorp]

Bhuddism is more a philosophy than a religion in my estimation.

If I have to pick a group that I know of and that has a record, I'd pitch for the quakers too. I freely admit I do not know enough about the small sects that abound in all religions, and in Bhuddism too of course.
But any group is made up of human beings, and we are all suspect by definition.

I try not to be in any camp at all. Unless believing in nothing is classified as a 'camp'.

[Phil Y]

I'm thinking religion is pretty much by definition irrational. It follows that believers cannot be relied on to act rationally. So they can't be trusted.

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[RFNK]

I can't abide the Buddhists
Or Worshippers of Goats
Born Agains and Catholics,
God help us, are there more?
But the Quakers I can tolerate
As I do enjoy their oats.

Rick

[birlinn]

The sophistry they engage in, to work around their own rules, is a bit amusing. Landline in the house, verboten. Landline to a little phone booth outside the house, OK. Cellphone anywhere? That's fine, as it has no "connection" to the outside world - or some bollocks like that.

Pete

Seems bollocks- not like any Quakers I know, and I get to a few meetings.
Our local Mull contact gives his phone number and email address online.
You sure they are Quakers?

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

What birlinn says, goes for me. I have friends who are members of the Society of Friends, I sometimes go to a meeting. A glance at the internet shows all the meetings within a reasonable radius of my home, all with web pages, contact phone numbers, emails and so on.

[Ron Williamson]

The sophistry they engage in, to work around their own rules, is a bit amusing. Landline in the house, verboten. Landline to a little phone booth outside the house, OK. Cellphone anywhere? That's fine, as it has no "connection" to the outside world - or some bollocks like that.

Pete

You might be confusing the Quakers with Amish/Mennonite.
R

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

You might be confusing the Quakers with Amish/Mennonite.
R

I think that must be the explanation. Anyway, right at the top of my trust rating scale.

[Phil Y]

Certainly Quakers seem like they might be the best of a bad lot. Those that I know do seem to be genuinely decent people, and Friends school in Tasmania seems to be first rate.

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[WX]

All religions follow a doctrine that imposes a structure on how one sees the world and defines ones place in it. Once you accept that then one blinds oneself to all other possibilities.
Just my opinion.

[David W Pratt]

Religious Society of Friends, from my limited exposure

[Bob (oh, THAT Bob)]

I think that is not the right link.

But I will trust the Quakers before anyone else.

Beat me to it. I rejected my own born faith decades ago. About ten years ago, I accompanied a woman I briefly dated to a Society of Friends wedding. No leaders, no doctrine, just people randomly standing up, saying what they felt about the wedding (all good), sitting down. Me: "It's like organized anarchy." Her: "Exactly." I also found out that you don't even need to believe in god to join. It's about communing with, well, friends, on a regular basis. I stated that if I ever joined a religion, that would be the one.

[TomF]

Had a Quaker girlfriend way back - and yeah, Quaker spirituality is cool. And quakers themselves, as a rule, are stand-up (sorry ) people.

Of course, I'm a shifty and unreliable Anglican, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

[Keith Wilson]

While the original link doesn't work, I'd say that lumping 'Muslims' into one category is spactuarly silly. There are something like 1.8 billion people that are at least nominal Muslims, and the various divisions within the religion vary at least as much as do Christians. They have murderous fanatics, old-time fundamentalists, traditionalists who seem to have gotten stuck in the 11th century, reformers, mainline middling groups, very modern tolerant folks, and some who are as enlightened and reasonable as any Quaker.

All religions follow a doctrine that imposes a structure on how one sees the world and defines one's place in it.

Most, not all.

[P.I. Stazzer-Newt]

Never met a Sikh I didn't like, they seem to live by decent principles.

[John Smith]

I think that is not the right link.

But I will trust the Quakers before anyone else.

Wasn't Nixon a Quaker?

[Rich Jones]

Had a Quaker girlfriend way back - and yeah, Quaker spirituality is cool. And quakers themselves, as a rule, are stand-up (sorry ) people.

Of course, I'm a shifty and unreliable Anglican, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

You Canadian Anglicans just can't be trusted, unlike us wonderful American Episcopalians. Oh, wait..... we're the same religion, different names...


Funny how on that list, atheists are counted as a religion. ?????

[John Smith]

As the bottom line, all religions are 'faith', not 'fact', and their faith has often butted heads with science, and science has been proven correct, so I don't find one having 'faith' in any religion an expression of character.

[TomF]

I may not have character, but I have enough pixels to make up for it.

[elf]

Many people deeply involved in their meetings are not members. Membership into the Society of Friends is taken very seriously around here in New England where I live. I was treasurer of my meeting for 12 years and never was willing to become a member. One _does_ have to believe in God to enter into membership.

And no matter how beneficently one conducts ones life, committing to being guided by a human-created fantasy is beyond me.

In addition, I find the concept of being called by the Spirit to do good very complicated. Just defining good, and being certain that one is heeding a call to good, is fraught with value judgements.

What is good? Who decides what good is? How does one differentiate between being called to do good and being called to do what one wants? Even those who do evil are called - witness the sad people who are called by their bigotry to go into groups of people and shoot them. They believe they are being called to do good, having lost or never been connected to a universal ethic.

There is also an arrogance to thinking one is doing good. And a bigger arrogance to thinking one is following a spiritual calling.

Still, those many years of knowing the elders in my meeting gave me myriad examples of how difficult it is to be a Quaker, and how positive it is at its best.

[Flying Orca]

I don't trust any religious groups. I trust some of the religious people I know, though.

[TomF]

Yet you have an innate moral sense to which you also default, Emily, and intuit where "the good" likely is, even while acknowledging human fallibility. You're drawing appropriately on that innate moral sense in order to write the observations above - it's what provides firm footing to be repelled by arrogance and hypocrisy, for instance. That aversion to arrogance and hypocrisy is something we share, and implicitly, it's both affirming that "the good" is elusive and contextually displayed, and that "the good" is not what some fervently claim it is. Which, again implicitly, requires that "the good" does exist somehow, however inadequate our attempts to define or apprehend or embody it.

[leikec]

I would trust a Unitarian, but would not necessarily ask that person for directions...

Jeff C

[Todd D]

I am with Flying Orca, although my trust of religious people is strained by their belief in fictitious beings.

[Jim Bow]

Never met a Sikh I didn't like, they seem to live by decent principles.

You stole my opening line.

[Breakaway]

Wasn't Nixon a Quaker?

He was. So were James Dean, Joan Baez and Cassius Coolidge ( Painter of, " Dogs Playing Poker.")


Kevin

[wizbang 13]

I mock religion, not trust it.
But I'm more tolerable of ,say, Ilan Omar, than my evangelical born again MAGA sister.

[TomF]

I would trust a Unitarian, but would not necessarily ask that person for directions...

which you might expect to be ... perhaps a bit diverse and vague, if awfully well intended? What's great for spiritual tolerance might not be as great for getting quickly to Toledo...