Who Reads This Group, and What Do They Believe?
by David Norris
In early February 1984, a Boeing Aerospace engineer named David Norris posted a short questionnaire to net.religion: six questions about religious identity, upbringing, posting habits, attitude toward other religions, and opinion of the group itself. The results, compiled and posted on February 28, 1984, are almost certainly the first survey of religious beliefs ever conducted on the internet.
The network that received these results was nothing like the internet we know. Usenet in 1984 was a loose cooperative of university computers and corporate workstations, passed along telephone lines by store-and-forward protocols that could take days to deliver a message across the country. The people reading net.religion were scientists, engineers, and academics — not a random cross-section of humanity, but a self-selected group of technical professionals who had discovered that the network could carry not just bug reports and technical discussions but arguments about God, scripture, and the nature of the cosmos.
Thirty-six people responded. They were, in the aggregate, more Christian than anything else, more often raised Christian than they currently identified as Christian, more pluralist than dogmatic, and deeply frustrated with the quality of discussion around them. Several had never posted before. Several said they wished for a friendlier climate. One — who identified as Jewish — longed for a net.religion.jewish where they might feel less embattled. They got it within a couple of years.
David Norris posted his survey results without editorializing — "I tried hard to include everyone's response here, and even harder not to proselytize." What he preserved, without knowing it, was a snapshot of the spiritual demographics of early Usenet: the first community of people who had ever had the technology to ask their neighbors, across a continent of wires, what they actually believed.
As I promised, here are the results of the net.religion survey. All in all, 36 people responded to the survey (not a very good showing). Is that all that is out there? I also note that the people who are most active in this newsgroup did not respond to the survey (I can think of five off the top of my head — you know who you are). Comments about each question are included with that question, and general comments are listed at the end. I tried hard to include everyone's response here, and even harder not to proselytize. :-)
1. Basic Religious Preference
- 9 — Christian
- 6 — Jewish
- 0 — Buddhist
- 0 — Hindu
- 1 — Muslim
- 4 — Atheist
- 4 — Agnostic
- 11 — Other, including:
- Agnostic with theistic/pantheistic overtones
- a, c, d, e, f (Those are all serious answers, believe it or not. Hail Astarte!)
- Traditional Egalitarian Jewish + agnostic
- Monotheistic non-sentient all-powerful [being|life force]
- LDS, Scientology, my own observations
- Hellenistic polytheist
- Skeptic
- "Other"
- Between Christian and Agnostic
- Bahá'í
Comments:
"Unaffiliated personally, though the church I attend happens to be a combination Disciples of Christ and United Church of Christ. I have strong views that the current denominational structure of the Christian church is very much un-Biblical. I most often refer to sections in Ephesians on the need for Unity, and how the Bible's description of the church refers to either all believers everywhere or a (geographically) local subset, never a division based on 'we're right and you're wrong.'"
"Skeptic, i.e. I think God is a possibility, but have yet to see sufficient evidence. Strictly speaking, this is different from an agnostic, who believes it is impossible to know if God exists."
"I'll admit to belief the reality of the mystical, I'm extremely suspicious of any statement as to the nature of this mystical reality."
"Agnostic (more or less) have certain Buddhist and Satanistic leanings — on the whole, quite a mongrel."
2. Religious Upbringing
- 20 — Christian
- 6 — Jewish
- 0 — Buddhist
- 1 — Hindu
- 1 — Muslim
- 1 — Atheist
- 1 — Agnostic
- 5 — Other, including:
- Jewish (Conservative) + agnostic
- 2 Unitarian
- LDS, my own observations
- None
3. How Long Have You Subscribed to This Religion?
Answers varied between 3 months and "all my life" (9 responses). Numbers given in years, with number in parenthesis indicating number of identical responses.
¼ — ⁵⁄₁₂ — ²⁄₃ — ¾ — 1 — 1.5 — 2 (2) — 5 — 7 (2) — 9 (3) — 10 (4) — 12 — 15 — 20 — 23 — "all my life" (9) — "Don't subscribe — get it at the newsstands" — "various"
Comment:
"Seems like forever. At times the ideas of specific religions become attractive and I'll half-believe, then common sense asserts itself. I resist conversions."
4. I Post to Net.Religion...
- 2 — Often
- 10 — Sometimes
- 12 — Rarely
- 9 — Never
- 2 — New on the net
Comment: "It's more fun just watching it..."
5. My Basic Attitude Toward Other Religions
- 0 — They are all wrong and deserve death
- 0 — They are all wrong and need to be zealously converted
- 1 — For the most part, they are wrong and need correction
- 3 — They are partly right and partly wrong, just misguided
- 5 — They are all right to some extent
- 12 — To each his own (don't care)
Comments:
"Most have good and bad aspects. All consider themselves RIGHT."
"Wrong and mustn't be attacked (unless they attack others)."
"We can all learn from each other."
"At least three things are called religion: social organizations, mythologies, and mysticism. Social organizations must be judged individually. A mythology can be criticized on grounds of the morals it teaches. If a mythology makes claims of literal truth it is subject to experimental criticism, but I'm not sure that's useful, since mythologies do not serve the function of empirical knowledge. Mysticism, since it involves perception, albeit unusual perception, cannot be criticized; mystics are subject to the usual criticisms one applies to people."
"I, as a Christian, know that the only way to God is through Christ; that is explained to me in the Bible. However, I do not know that I have the only way to Christ. When the Bible says, 'Believe in the Lord and you shall be saved,' I view that as sufficient but not the only 'necessary' condition. Other things of which I'm not aware might be sufficient, too. I can't say that all American Indians, for example, are completely wrong in their belief in the Great Spirit. They might be identical, in a different context, to our view of Jesus Christ."
"Note that I have taken out the 'don't care.' I do care. Jews are Jews and I encourage them to be observant. I would never encourage non-Jews to become Jewish. Conversion to Judaism is possible but should be discouraged. I am mildly interested in others' views. All are 'right,' to an extent."
6. My Opinion of Net.Religion
- 0 — Serves no useful purpose
- 10 — Some pearls, but mostly swine
- 2 — Half good, half bad
- 12 — Useful forum of discussion, with some reservations
- 4 — Excellent medium to discuss religious matters
- 2 — A joke
Comments:
"Usually useless in terms of convincing anyone of anything, but an interesting medium for finding out what other people believe."
"As I've said in net.religion, the quantity of hatred expressed is horrendous and completely inexcusable. The overly-used technique of sarcasm adds little to the discussion, too."
"It shows beyond all doubt that there are a large group of people with simple-minded attitudes who wish everyone to be similar."
Other Comments
"Too many people are trying to convert everyone else in a highly personal area for this forum to be effective. I originally thought that I would learn about a variety of religious beliefs when I started reading this group. Unfortunately, whenever a non-Christian belief is stated, rather than learning much about it, I end up reading the defenses of why they should not be converted to Christianity. I don't want to read that! I want to find out what makes that religion different from Christianity. I admit that there are some admirable parts of Christianity, but too often the religion is pushed down your throat by zealots. That is why I no longer want to say 'I am a Christian.' Christianity is too hypocritical for my taste. Please let other religions state their beliefs without telling they are going to burn in hell. Every person has his or her own reasons for choosing his religion."
"It's amazing how many people try for so long to argue the same points with the same arguments. Does no one know anything about history of religion? (Excepting Laura Creighton and Tim Maroney, who do.) The newsgroup is basically filled with naive Christians who don't know a) very much about their own religion nor b) how to distinguish it from religion in the abstract."
"I feel somewhat intimidated posting to the net right now, given the types of discussions now prevalent. I really wish that either there were a net.religion.jewish that I could submit to, or that net.religion posed a more favorable climate for me to post to it."
"People need to learn how to live with people who have different wants/needs. These wants/needs also cover religion and religious expression. A good part of the world's problems (not all of them) are that people can't live with one another knowing that each is of a different faith."
"I think net.religion could be used by people interested in religious questions to broaden their knowledge and understanding of one another's point of view. Instead, most of the articles are about a few dead-end debates such as why one should/should not believe in God, evolution vs. creation etc."
A personal comment on the survey? I'm surprised at the number of Christians that read this forum, although they are not in the majority. I'm also surprised at the very limited readership of this forum, although I don't know how many people didn't respond. The content of some of the replies would be comic, if they weren't so very serious.
— David Norris
Colophon
Survey conducted and compiled by David Norris ([email protected]), Boeing Aerospace, Seattle. Posted to net.religion on February 28, 1984. Original Message-ID: [email protected].
This is the first survey of religious beliefs conducted on the internet, based on responses from 36 participants in net.religion in February 1984. It preserves a rare demographic snapshot of early Usenet's spiritual population — scientists, engineers, and academics from across North America who had found in the network a space to speak, for the first time, about what they actually believed.
Preserved from the UTZOO Usenet archive (University of Toronto), batch b23, for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
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