The instrument
All 85 questions
The whole question bank, with the axes each question loads on. Published for the same reason the matrix is: a claim about how something is measured that you cannot inspect is not a claim. Two rules govern the writing and both are harder than they sound — no insider vocabulary, and no presupposed theism. Judge them for yourself.
Reading these first does not break anything. The engine and the matrix already run in your browser, so nothing here is hidden from you during the questionnaire either — and a question you have thought about is not a worse measurement than one you have not.
The divine15
d01
Thinking about the universe as a whole — what is your honest sense of it?
- There is something behind all of this. I am sure of that, even if I cannot say what it is.
- There is probably something more, though I hold it loosely and could not defend it.
- I genuinely do not know, and I suspect nobody does.
- Probably not, though I would not rule it out entirely.
- It is matter and energy doing what matter and energy do. There is nothing else.
Loads on Divine reality · Origin of the cosmos
d02
Suppose something greater than us does exist. What is it more like?
- Someone. It knows you are there and you can speak to it.
- Something like a mind, but far less personal than a person.
- A pattern or a law. Real, but not the sort of thing that could notice you.
- The whole of what exists, taken together. There is nothing outside it to be personal.
- Nothing greater exists, so the question does not arise for me.
Loads on Personhood · Divine reality · Locus
d03
People across the world report encounters with many different powers, spirits or gods. What do you make of that?
- There genuinely are many. The world is full of them.
- There is one ultimate reality, and these are its many faces.
- There is exactly one, and the rest are mistakes or lesser beings.
- They are real experiences of something, but the plural language is cultural dressing.
- They are experiences people are having, and nothing is out there causing them.
Loads on Plurality · Divine reality
d04
If the sacred is real at all, where would you expect to find it?
- Right here, in ordinary things — a room, a river, another person.
- Present in the world, but not identical to it. It shows through.
- Beyond all this, in a way we mostly cannot reach from here.
- In particular places and moments set aside for it, and not elsewhere.
- Nowhere. "Sacred" is a word for how something makes us feel.
Loads on Locus · Divine reality · Centrality of ritual
d05
Someone tells you they prayed and things changed. Your first thought?
- Of course. That is what prayer is for, and it is answered.
- Something was at work, though not necessarily in the way they mean.
- Prayer changes the person praying, and that is enough to change things.
- Whatever is ultimate does not intervene in particular cases like that.
- Coincidence, and we are very good at noticing the hits.
Loads on Personhood · Locus · Divine reality
d08
How much of what happens to you do you take to be intended by something?
- All of it, ultimately. Nothing falls outside that.
- Some of it. There are moments that are clearly more than chance.
- None of it is intended, but there is an order things work out within.
- None of it. Things happen, and we assemble meaning afterwards.
- What comes to me is the working out of what I and others have already done.
Loads on Personhood · Mechanism of the ultimate good · Shape of time
d10
A tradition claims one of its figures was, in some real sense, the divine present as a person. What is your reaction?
- That is exactly right, and it is the centre of everything.
- The divine appears in human form more than once, in different times and places.
- No. Whatever is ultimate cannot be contained in a person like that.
- It is a way of saying something true about human possibility, not a fact about a person.
- People have been saying things like that about leaders for as long as there have been leaders.
Loads on Personhood · Locus · Reading of sacred text · Divine reality
d11
Do you think of the ultimate as one thing, or as many things that are somehow one?
- Strictly one, and treating it as many is a serious error.
- One, but it shows itself in many forms and all of them are real.
- Many, genuinely distinct, with their own characters and demands.
- Neither — there is no "ultimate" to count.
Loads on Plurality · Divine reality
w11
Is there a purpose to your life that was there before you decided anything?
- Yes, given to me, and my task is to find out what it is.
- Yes, in the sense that there is a right way for any person to live.
- There is a destiny I brought with me, and I can work with it or against it.
- No. There is what I decide to do with the time.
Loads on Personhood · Mechanism of the ultimate good · Shape of time
w14
When something goes badly wrong in your life, what do you reach for?
- Prayer, addressed to someone who hears it.
- A practice — sitting, breathing, working through it.
- The community. Other people are the resource.
- An accounting: what caused this, what follows, what I can change.
- Ritual — something to do with my hands, whether or not I believe it works.
Loads on Personhood · Centrality of ritual · Mechanism of the ultimate good · Source of truth · Locus of belonging
w17
Which sentence is closest to something you would actually say out loud?
- "It is in better hands than mine."
- "Everything that arises passes. Including this."
- "Nobody is coming. It is on us."
- "The world is stranger and more alive than we admit."
- "Do what is in front of you and do it properly."
Loads on Personhood · Mechanism of the ultimate good · Survival of the self · Shape of time · Plurality · Standing of nature
x07
Is there one reality behind everything, or many real things that were never one?
- One. Separateness is how it looks from here, not how it is.
- One source, and then genuinely many things that came from it.
- Many, all the way down. Unity is the thing we imagine.
- Many things and no source. It does not have to add up to one.
Loads on Plurality · Locus · Origin of the cosmos · Divine reality
x08
Do the powers worth attending to have names, characters and preferences?
- Yes — many of them, and each is dealt with differently.
- There is one, and it has a name and a character.
- Whatever is there has no name and no preferences. Naming it is our doing.
- There is nothing there to have a name.
Loads on Plurality · Personhood · Centrality of ritual · Divine reality
x09
Would you leave food, drink or an offering for something — an ancestor, a spirit, a saint?
- Yes, regularly. It is part of ordinary life.
- Yes, on particular days, for particular people.
- No, but I light candles or keep photographs, which is not nothing.
- No. There is nobody to leave it for.
Loads on Plurality · Centrality of ritual · Survival of the self
x15
Is whatever is ultimate affected by what happens here — does it change, suffer, respond?
- Yes. It is involved, and what we do reaches it.
- No. It is complete and unchanging; the movement is all on our side.
- It is not separate enough from what happens for the question to work.
- There is nothing ultimate for events to reach.
Loads on Locus · Personhood · Divine reality
Knowledge and authority18
d12
Somebody you trust describes a vivid experience of something beyond the ordinary. What do you conclude?
- They met something real. Experiences like that are how we know anything about this.
- Possibly real, but it has to be tested against what the tradition already teaches.
- Something happened to them. What it was is not settled by the experience itself.
- Brains do this. It is remarkable and it is not evidence of anything outside.
Loads on Source of truth · Divine reality · Institutional authority
k01
When you want to know what is actually true about how to live, where do you go first?
- To a teaching that was handed down. It was given to us, not worked out by us.
- To a tradition, but read through the best thinking of my own time.
- To my own experience. If I have not seen it for myself, I do not really know it.
- To argument and evidence, wherever they happen to lead.
- To the people who have lived it well. I trust practice over theory.
Loads on Source of truth · Reading of sacred text · Institutional authority
k02
A very old text says something that contradicts what we now know about the world. What gives?
- The text. It is correct and our current understanding will turn out to be wrong.
- Neither — we are reading the text wrongly. It was never making that kind of claim.
- The text is a record of people reaching for something. It can be wrong about facts.
- There is no text of that kind in my life for this to be a problem.
Loads on Reading of sacred text · Source of truth
k03
Your community holds a position on something. You have thought hard and disagree. What now?
- I defer. My private judgement is more likely to be wrong than the tradition is.
- I raise it through the proper process and accept whatever that process decides.
- I keep my own position and stay. Belonging does not require agreeing.
- My conscience decides. That is not negotiable and never has been.
Loads on Institutional authority
k04
Is there anyone alive whose judgement on these questions you would take over your own?
- Yes — a specific living person whose authority I accept.
- Yes — a body of qualified people, taken together rather than any one of them.
- Not a person, but a text or a lineage that outranks any individual.
- I take advice seriously from several people and decide for myself.
- No. Nobody has standing over me on this.
Loads on Institutional authority · Reading of sacred text
k05
How did the deepest things anyone knows first become known?
- They were disclosed, once, to particular people, and have been passed down since.
- They have been disclosed repeatedly, in different places, suited to each time.
- People discovered them, by looking carefully at themselves and at the world.
- They are still not known, and the honest position is to keep looking.
Loads on Source of truth · Exclusivity
k07
Somebody asks you to accept something you cannot check. How comfortable are you?
- Comfortable. Trust in a reliable source is a perfectly good reason to believe.
- Comfortable if I have reason to trust the source and the community that holds it.
- Uncomfortable. I would hold it provisionally at best.
- Not at all. Unverifiable claims are exactly the ones that need refusing.
Loads on Source of truth
k08
Should there be people whose job it is to mediate between others and whatever is ultimate?
- Yes. It is a real office and not everyone can do it.
- Teachers and guides, yes. Mediators, no — access is direct.
- No. Everyone has the same direct access and always did.
- The question does not apply to how I see things.
Loads on Institutional authority · Centrality of ritual
k09
A rule from your tradition no longer seems to fit the situation people are actually in. What should happen?
- Nothing. The rule stands; our situation is not special.
- Qualified interpreters work out its application. That is what they are for.
- It should change. Rules serve people and not the other way round.
- Each person decides whether it still binds them.
Loads on Reading of sacred text · Source of truth · Institutional authority
k10
Is there a single book you would call authoritative for your life?
- Yes, and I take it as it stands.
- Yes, but reading it well requires training and a tradition of interpretation.
- Several texts matter to me, none of them finally.
- No. What I have learned came from practice and from people, not from a book.
Loads on Reading of sacred text · Source of truth · Institutional authority
k11
How much can be worked out by thinking carefully, without being told?
- Almost everything that matters. Reason is sufficient.
- A great deal, but the deepest things need something more than thinking.
- Reason gets you to the door. It cannot open it.
- Very little. Thinking is how we dress up what we already wanted to believe.
Loads on Source of truth
k12
Someone raised in a tradition says the tradition is wrong about something central. What weight does their view carry?
- Less than the tradition’s. Being inside it does not license overturning it.
- Real weight. Traditions have always changed from the inside.
- Full weight. It is their life; they are the authority on it.
- It depends entirely on their argument, not on their position.
Loads on Institutional authority · Source of truth
k13
Is there knowledge that should not be freely available — that has to be earned or given?
- Yes. Some things are dangerous or meaningless outside the right preparation.
- Some things cannot be handed over even if you try. You have to get there yourself.
- No. Everything true should be open to everyone.
Loads on Institutional authority · Source of truth
k14
What would actually change your mind about something you hold deeply?
- Evidence. Show me I am wrong and I will move.
- An experience. Argument would not do it, but something happening to me might.
- A ruling from the authority I recognise.
- Honestly, nothing. What I hold is not the kind of thing that gets revised.
Loads on Source of truth · Reading of sacred text · Institutional authority
w09
Where do the rules you actually live by come from?
- They were laid down. My job is to follow them, not to audit them.
- From my community’s accumulated wisdom about how to live together.
- From thinking hard about what causes harm and what does not.
- From what I have seen work, in my own life and in others’.
Loads on Source of truth · Institutional authority · Locus of belonging
x16
A story from a tradition describes something that plainly could not have happened. What is it doing?
- It happened. "Could not" is our limitation, not the account’s.
- Carrying a truth that only a story can carry.
- Doing what stories do everywhere. It is not a special category.
- Recording something real in the only language its people had.
Loads on Reading of sacred text · Source of truth
x17
Should a tradition’s teaching be written down and fixed, or kept alive by being retold?
- Written and fixed. That is how it survives being tampered with.
- Written, but always read alongside a living line of interpreters.
- Kept alive in people. Writing it down is how it dies.
- Neither matters much. What is true does not depend on how it is stored.
Loads on Reading of sacred text · Institutional authority
x19
How much of what you hold could you explain to someone from a completely different background?
- All of it. It is meant for everyone and needs no special formation.
- The outline. The substance takes years inside it.
- Very little. Some of it is not mine to explain.
- All of it, in one sentence, because there is not much to it.
Loads on Locus of belonging · Source of truth · Institutional authority
Self and destiny14
d13
Is there an opposing force in the world — something actively working against the good?
- Yes, a real one, with intent. It is not a metaphor.
- Yes, but it is disorder rather than a being — an absence rather than an enemy.
- What goes wrong comes from ignorance and craving in ordinary people.
- Harm is caused by conditions and choices. No further force is needed to explain it.
Loads on Plurality · The human condition
c01
What happens when a person dies?
- They continue, recognisably themselves, somewhere else.
- Something continues, but it is not the personality you knew.
- They return — another life, another body, another round.
- They stop. What is left is what they did and who remembers them.
- I have no idea, and I am suspicious of anyone who says they do.
Loads on Survival of the self · Shape of time
c03
What is fundamentally wrong with people, if anything?
- We are broken at the root and cannot fix it ourselves.
- We are pulled two ways and have to keep choosing the better one.
- We are not broken, we are confused. We misunderstand what we are.
- Nothing is wrong with us as such. Circumstances and habits do the damage.
Loads on The human condition · Mechanism of the ultimate good
c04
Does a life run once, from start to finish, or does it come round again?
- Once. What you do here settles it.
- Again and again, until something is finished.
- Once for us, but the whole thing turns in cycles far larger than a life.
- Once, and then nothing at all.
Loads on Shape of time · Survival of the self
c05
Is there such a thing as a self that stays the same underneath everything that changes?
- Yes — a soul, and it is what I most truly am.
- Yes, but it is not separate from everything else. It is the same reality wearing a name.
- No. Look closely and there is a process, not a thing.
- No. There is a body and a brain, and that is who you are.
Loads on Survival of the self · Divine reality · Locus · The human condition
c11
Is suffering meaningful?
- Yes. It is part of a purpose, even when we cannot see it.
- It is the natural result of causes, and understanding those causes is the way out.
- It is meaningless in itself. Meaning is what we manage to make of it afterwards.
- It is a test, and how you bear it is the thing being measured.
Loads on Personhood · The human condition · Divine reality · Mechanism of the ultimate good
c12
Are the dead still involved with the living?
- Yes, directly. They are attended to and they respond.
- They are somewhere, at peace, and not managing our affairs.
- They can be reached, and some people are better at it than others.
- No. They are gone, and we carry them by remembering.
Loads on Survival of the self · Plurality · Centrality of ritual
c14
How do you feel about the idea that you deserve to be punished for what you have got wrong?
- It is true, and being spared it anyway is the whole point.
- Consequences follow actions. It is not punishment, it is physics.
- I reject the frame. Nobody is keeping a ledger on me.
- I have to make it right with the people involved. That is the whole of it.
Loads on The human condition · Mechanism of the ultimate good · Shape of time
w07
Is the world getting somewhere?
- Yes. It is heading to a point that has been fixed from the start.
- It turns. Ages rise and fall and then it happens again.
- It goes where we take it. There is no built-in direction.
- Things improve slowly because people make them improve, and it could reverse.
Loads on Shape of time · Origin of the cosmos · Personhood
w08
Someone you love is dying and asks you what is coming. What do you say?
- That they are going somewhere, and that they will be met.
- That this is not the end of them, though I could not tell you the shape of it.
- That they are not finished — there is more of this to come, in another form.
- That I do not know, and that I am here.
- That it will simply stop, and that this is not the same as it being bad.
Loads on Survival of the self · Personhood · Shape of time · Divine reality
w16
If it turned out there is nothing beyond this life at all, how much of what you do would change?
- Everything. The whole structure would come down.
- Some of it. I would keep the practice and lose the hope.
- Almost nothing. What I do is about this life anyway.
- Nothing at all — that is already my working assumption.
Loads on Survival of the self · Divine reality · Mechanism of the ultimate good
x10
Do you expect to see people you have lost?
- Yes. I expect to know them and be known.
- We will meet again, though probably not as who we were.
- No, but something of them continues in the world.
- No. That is the thing about losing people.
Loads on Survival of the self · Shape of time
x11
If you could know for certain, right now, whether anything survives death — would you want to?
- I already know, so the question is hypothetical for me.
- Yes. I would rather have the truth than the comfort.
- No. Not knowing is doing real work in how I live.
- It would not change much. This life is the one I am in either way.
Loads on Survival of the self · Source of truth
x12
Does anything about you predate your birth?
- Yes — I have been here before, more than once.
- Yes, in that I was intended before I existed.
- Only ancestry — genes, family, a history I inherited.
- Nothing. I start where I start.
Loads on Shape of time · Survival of the self · Personhood · Locus of belonging
Practice16
d09
Is there anything you would describe as holy — something that must not be treated casually?
- Yes, and it is specific: certain texts, places or rites.
- Yes, but it is everywhere — in living things, in land, in people.
- Yes, but it is human: dignity, promises, the dead.
- Not really. I take things seriously, but nothing is untouchable.
Loads on Centrality of ritual · Locus · Standing of nature · Divine reality
c02
Someone has done serious harm to another person. What has to happen for things to be genuinely put right?
- They face the consequences their action set in motion, in this life or another.
- They repair what they can and make restitution to the person they harmed.
- They are forgiven — not because they earned it, but because forgiveness is given.
- They come to understand what they did and why. The understanding is the repair.
- Nothing cosmic happens. Harm is harm, and what we do about it is a human matter.
Loads on Shape of time · Mechanism of the ultimate good · The human condition · Personhood · Source of truth · Divine reality · Survival of the self
c06
The best possible outcome for a human being — how is it reached?
- It is given. Nothing you do earns it; you accept it.
- It is given, but you have to co-operate with it over a lifetime.
- You do it. Sustained effort, discipline, and no shortcuts.
- You see through something, and once you have seen it there is nothing left to do.
- There is no single best outcome. You build a decent life and that is the whole of it.
Loads on Mechanism of the ultimate good · Personhood · The human condition · Source of truth
c07
How much does regular, prescribed practice matter — fixed times, fixed forms, done whether or not you feel like it?
- It is the substance of the thing. Without it there is nothing.
- It matters a great deal, and the form is not arbitrary.
- Practice matters, form does not. Do what actually works for you.
- Not at all. How you treat people is the only practice there is.
Loads on Centrality of ritual
c08
Your body — what is it, in relation to the life you are trying to live?
- Something to be trained and reined in. Its appetites are the problem.
- A responsibility. Look after it, do not make it the point.
- A good in itself. Pleasure, appetite and the senses are not obstacles.
- The place where everything happens, including whatever is sacred.
Loads on The body · Locus
c09
Fasting, silence, abstinence, hard physical discipline — what do you make of practices like those?
- Necessary. There is no way through without them.
- Useful in season, and not the heart of it.
- Suspicious. They mostly produce self-regard rather than anything good.
- The opposite of what is needed. The world is to be received, not refused.
Loads on The body · Mechanism of the ultimate good
c10
Something very good happens to someone who did nothing to deserve it. How does that sit with you?
- That is how the best things always arrive. Deserving was never the mechanism.
- Fine — but the accounts do balance eventually, over a longer span than one life.
- It is luck, and pretending otherwise is how people justify inequality.
- Uncomfortably. I want effort and outcome to line up, even when they visibly do not.
Loads on Mechanism of the ultimate good · Shape of time · Divine reality
c13
When you do something you know is wrong, what is the worst part of it?
- That I have broken faith with someone who is owed better.
- That it leaves a mark that will have to be worked off somehow.
- That I have become, slightly, the kind of person who does that.
- The harm itself. Everything else is bookkeeping.
Loads on Personhood · The human condition · Mechanism of the ultimate good · Shape of time · Divine reality
c15
Set aside what you believe — what do you actually do, most weeks, that you would call practice?
- Prescribed prayers or observances at set times.
- Meditation or sitting, alone, with some regularity.
- Gathering with others — a service, a meal, a meeting.
- Service and volunteering. That is my practice.
- Nothing that would count. I think about it and I do not do anything.
Loads on Centrality of ritual · Source of truth
c16
Is there a state a person can reach in this life that genuinely ends their struggle?
- Yes, and reaching it is the entire point of a human life.
- Yes, but it is received rather than reached, and not by everyone.
- Not in this life. What is promised comes after it.
- No. There is no final state. You get better at living and then you die.
Loads on Mechanism of the ultimate good · The human condition · Shape of time · Survival of the self
w12
Food, drink, sex, money — does what you hold place real restrictions on any of these?
- Yes, specific ones, and I keep them.
- Yes, but they are my own, chosen because they help.
- Only the ordinary ones about not harming anyone.
- No, and I would be suspicious of a tradition that wanted to impose them.
Loads on Centrality of ritual · The body · Institutional authority
x01
A tradition tells you to give up something you enjoy, and gives no reason beyond the practice itself. How do you hear that?
- As entirely reasonable. Giving things up is how you get anywhere.
- As worth trying, for a season, to see what it does.
- As a red flag. Reasonless restriction is how control works.
- As beside the point. What I enjoy is not the problem in my life.
Loads on The body · Centrality of ritual · Institutional authority
x02
Dancing, drumming, feasting, physical ecstasy in a religious setting — reverent, or a distraction?
- Reverent. That is where the sacred actually shows up.
- Fine in its place, but stillness goes deeper.
- A distraction. Those states feel profound and are not.
- Neither. It is people enjoying themselves, which needs no defence.
Loads on The body · Locus · Centrality of ritual
x03
Sex — where does it sit in a serious life?
- Hedged carefully. It has enormous power to pull a life off course.
- Good, within commitments that are themselves taken seriously.
- Plainly good, and the anxiety about it has caused more harm than it has.
- Something to renounce entirely if you are serious.
Loads on The body · Mechanism of the ultimate good
x04
Is physical existence itself a good thing, or a predicament to get out of?
- A good thing. Being embodied is not a mistake to be corrected.
- A predicament. The goal is to be free of it.
- A gift with a shelf life. Enjoy it, do not cling to it.
- Simply what is the case. "Good" and "predicament" both overstate it.
Loads on The body · Shape of time
x18
Is there a difference between what you do in a place of worship and what you do at home?
- A large one. Some things can only happen there.
- A difference of company, not of kind.
- None. The distinction is one I do not recognise.
- I do not go to one, so the question is moot.
Loads on Centrality of ritual
World and others22
d06
Where does the universe itself come from?
- Someone made it, deliberately, and it exists because they meant it to.
- It was shaped out of something that was already there.
- It has always been going, in cycles, with no first moment.
- It came about naturally. There is a physical account and it does not need a why.
- Nobody knows, and answers in either direction are overreach.
Loads on Origin of the cosmos
d07
A friend says the natural world is not just alive but owed something — that a forest has standing. Do you follow them?
- Completely. It is not a resource, it is a participant.
- Yes, in that it was given to us in trust and we answer for how we treat it.
- It matters because people and animals in it can be harmed, not in itself.
- That is a category error. Standing is something only minds have.
- The world is itself divine, so the question answers itself.
Loads on Standing of nature · Locus
k06
Two traditions disagree flatly about something important. How do you hold that?
- One of them is right and the other is simply mistaken.
- They are describing the same thing in different languages. The conflict is surface.
- Both may be true for their people. Truth here is not one-size.
- Neither is likely to be right, and the disagreement is evidence of that.
Loads on Exclusivity · Source of truth · Divine reality
k15
How do you regard traditions other than your own — or other than the one you grew up around?
- Mistaken about the things that matter most, however decent their people are.
- Partly right. They have real things and are missing the decisive one.
- Different routes up the same mountain.
- Different mountains, and that is fine. They are not all trying to do the same thing.
- All roughly equally unfounded.
Loads on Exclusivity · Divine reality
w01
How did you come to whatever you now hold?
- I was born into it. It is my family and my people as much as my belief.
- I was raised in it and later chose it again, deliberately, as an adult.
- I found it. It was not where I started.
- I assembled it. Bits of several things and my own judgement.
Loads on Locus of belonging · Institutional authority · Exclusivity
w02
Could someone join what you hold, if they wanted to?
- Yes — anyone, and we would be glad. That is rather the point.
- Yes, but through a real process — instruction, initiation, a commitment.
- Not really. You are born into this or you are not.
- There is nothing to join. It is not that kind of thing.
Loads on Locus of belonging · Centrality of ritual
w03
What obligation do you have to people outside your own circle?
- The same as to anyone inside it. The circle is not morally real.
- Real obligations, but stronger ones to my own. That is not a failing.
- To tell them what I have found, because it matters and they are missing it.
- To leave them alone. Their path is theirs.
Loads on Locus of belonging · Exclusivity
w04
Should what you believe shape how a society is governed?
- Yes. Law should reflect what is actually true about how people should live.
- It shapes how I vote and argue, like anyone else’s convictions do.
- No. Public life should be run on reasons everyone can access.
- My community largely governs its own affairs and asks little of the wider state.
Loads on Exclusivity · Institutional authority · Locus of belonging · Source of truth
w05
What is a human being, set against everything else that lives?
- Categorically different. We were given charge of the rest.
- Different in degree, not in kind. One animal among others.
- One kind of person among many — animals, rivers and mountains are also persons.
- A temporary arrangement that mistakes itself for a permanent one.
Loads on Standing of nature · Plurality · Survival of the self · The human condition
w06
Do you belong to a community that would notice if you stopped showing up?
- Yes, and that mutual claim is most of what belief means to me.
- Yes, and I value it, but I could leave without it unmaking me.
- No, and I am not looking for one. This is between me and whatever is true.
- No, and I miss it. That absence is part of why I am here.
Loads on Locus of belonging · Centrality of ritual · Institutional authority
w10
A stranger asks what you are. What comes out of your mouth?
- The name of a tradition, without hesitation.
- The name of a tradition, with a qualification attached.
- Something about being spiritual without being part of anything.
- Nothing religious at all. It is not a category I use.
- A long answer, because none of the short ones are true.
Loads on Locus of belonging · Exclusivity · Centrality of ritual · Divine reality
w13
Two people you respect give opposite answers on something central, and both are inside the same tradition. What does that tell you?
- That one of them is outside the tradition and has not realised it.
- That the tradition is bigger than either of them and holds both.
- That this is what a living tradition looks like from the inside.
- That the whole thing is less settled than it presents itself as being.
Loads on Exclusivity · Institutional authority · Reading of sacred text · Source of truth
w15
Should the natural world be left alone where possible, or improved where we can?
- Left alone. Interference is the standing human error.
- Tended. We are responsible for it and answer for what we do.
- Improved. Suffering is bad wherever it is and we can reduce it.
- Neither framing works — it is not ours to dispose of either way.
Loads on Standing of nature
w18
Where does the strongest pull toward whatever you hold actually come from?
- Being convinced it is true.
- Belonging — the people, the calendar, the shared life.
- It works. My life is better when I do it.
- Something happened to me that I cannot explain away.
- Nothing pulls. I am describing what I think is the case, not something I am drawn to.
Loads on Source of truth · Locus of belonging · Centrality of ritual · Mechanism of the ultimate good · Divine reality
w19
Does it matter which tradition a good person belongs to?
- Yes. Being good is not the same as being right, and the difference is decisive.
- It matters, but a good person is not lost for having the wrong label.
- No. How you live is the whole of it.
- It matters to them and to their community, and not cosmically.
Loads on Exclusivity
w20
What would you most want a child of yours to end up with?
- The faith I was given, intact.
- The practice and the community, whatever they end up believing.
- The habit of thinking for themselves about it.
- Attention to the world and to living things.
Loads on Locus of belonging · Exclusivity · Centrality of ritual · Institutional authority · Source of truth · Standing of nature
x05
Standing somewhere very old — a grove, a mountain, a spring — do you feel you are somewhere, or with someone?
- With someone. The place is a person and it knows I am there.
- Somewhere made, and I feel the maker rather than the place.
- Somewhere very large and very old, and moved by exactly that.
- Somewhere pleasant. I do not think the feeling is about the place.
Loads on Standing of nature · Plurality · Locus · Personhood · Divine reality
x06
An animal and a person are both in danger and you can only help one. Is that a hard question?
- No. People come first, categorically.
- Yes, genuinely hard. The line is not as clean as we pretend.
- Hard, and I would still choose the person — but I would not feel entitled about it.
- It depends on the animal and the person, which is itself the answer.
Loads on Standing of nature
x13
Has the universe always existed?
- No. It began, and it began because something started it.
- It has always been going — no beginning to find.
- It began, physically, and "why" is not a question it answers.
- It is one of many, arising and ending, and ours is not special.
Loads on Origin of the cosmos · Personhood · Divine reality
x14
Is it strange that there is something rather than nothing?
- It is the strongest evidence there is that something intended it.
- Strange, and I do not think an answer is available to us.
- Not strange. "Nothing" was never a live option.
- Strange, and strangeness is not evidence of anything.
Loads on Origin of the cosmos · Divine reality
x20
Somebody converts away from what they were raised in. Your instinct?
- They have lost something that was theirs and cannot be replaced.
- Good — better an honest choice than an inherited habit.
- They were rescued, and I am glad.
- It is their business and I have no instinct about it at all.
Loads on Locus of belonging · Exclusivity · Institutional authority
x21
Which would you find harder to give up — believing what you believe, or belonging where you belong?
- Believing. I could leave the community; I could not leave the truth.
- Belonging. These are my people whatever I end up thinking.
- Neither is separable from the other in my case.
- I have neither, in any strong sense.
Loads on Locus of belonging · Exclusivity
Every question also accepts “I don’t know”, which is a real answer rather than a skip.
Ready?
Eight to fourteen of these, chosen from your answers as you go. Take it.