Religion tweak suggestion for questionnaire & MH/CS


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NJGeek81 is offline NJGeek81 Post #1  May 21,2010, 8:09am
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Hi eHarmony,

I wanted to suggest a tweak to the questionnaire and Must Have / Can't Stand features. I, like many others on eHarmony, am not religious. As such, I was a bit confused on how to properly answer some of the eHarmony questions about religion. Secifically, the "How important is your partner's faith to you". What if it's important that our partner has no faith? The best I could figure is to set the bar to "not important at all", since it would seem strange for an atheist to state that faith is important to us. Likewise with the MH/CS list, it would be a benefitial option to choose in the MH: "Non-practicing: It is important that my match either not be religious or not actively practicing in the faith they were raised in", or something along those lines. That way the needs of matches who require the other to be religious and the needs of matches who require the other to be non-religious are both met.

Thanks!
 
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Gr8Guyn2008 is offline Gr8Guyn2008 Post #2  May 21,2010, 8:44am
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NJGeek81 not to take away from your suggestion but a different way to look at this is that an atheist may have just as strong a "faith" as a Christian, Jew, Muslim, etc.

What would be more beneficial would be for eHarmony to add atheist, agnostic and maybe "some other religion" to their choices of "Your Religion". The choice of "Neither Spiritual nor Religious" does not necessarily mean atheist to me.

You may also want to remember that eHarmony was originally created as a Christian dating site and is still widely viewed as such by many.
 
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NJGeek81 is offline NJGeek81 Post #3  May 21,2010, 9:04am
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That's interesting, I never knew that. And the "Neither religious nor spiritual" tag works fine for me, but I was suggesting that since there is a "Must Have" that reads "Religious Practice - My partner must be committed to being an active member of a church or temple congregation.", then having one that reads "Not Practicing - My partner should not be committed to being an active member of a church or temple congregation" would make sense. To a lot of people that's important.
 
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mrflyer is offline mrflyer Post #4  May 21,2010, 9:25am
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NJGeek81 wrote :
Hi eHarmony,

I wanted to suggest a tweak to the questionnaire and Must Have / Can't Stand features. I, like many others on eHarmony, am not religious. As such, I was a bit confused on how to properly answer some of the eHarmony questions about religion. Secifically, the "How important is your partner's faith to you". What if it's important that our partner has no faith? The best I could figure is to set the bar to "not important at all", since it would seem strange for an atheist to state that faith is important to us.
I think it takes a lot of faith to be an atheist, more faith than I can muster...

In your case I would interpret that question as "How important is it to you that your partner is an atheist?" - or in other words, would it bother you if they weren't. That would be the most logical interpretation.

However I don't know how eharmony interprets that question in your situation.
 
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mrflyer is offline mrflyer Post #5  May 21,2010, 9:29am
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NJGeek81 wrote :
That's interesting, I never knew that. And the "Neither religious nor spiritual" tag works fine for me, but I was suggesting that since there is a "Must Have" that reads "Religious Practice - My partner must be committed to being an active member of a church or temple congregation.", then having one that reads "Not Practicing - My partner should not be committed to being an active member of a church or temple congregation" would make sense. To a lot of people that's important.
Here's the problem I see with your idea- a lot of people consider themselves religious but rarely attend services. Some of them don't belong to a particular church but still identify with a specific religion or denomination. So your wording would attract those people, which I don't think is what you want.

It would be more clear to say "My partner must not be religious" or "My partner must share my atheism".
 
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Gr8Guyn2008 is offline Gr8Guyn2008 Post #6  May 21,2010, 9:31am
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NJGeek81 wrote :
That's interesting, I never knew that. And the "Neither religious nor spiritual" tag works fine for me, but I was suggesting that since there is a "Must Have" that reads "Religious Practice - My partner must be committed to being an active member of a church or temple congregation.", then having one that reads "Not Practicing - My partner should not be committed to being an active member of a church or temple congregation" would make sense. To a lot of people that's important.
With respect to the MHCS: You have to select 10 MH and 10 CS from the 40 or 50 in each category. This means that there are a whole lot that don't get selected. You just have to choose the ones that are most important to you (the generic you, not you personally). Therefore if you or your match has not selected the Religious Practice MH then the implication is that it is of lesser importance or not important.

I have in my profile that my MHCS are more like would like to have and would rather not have. If it is important that your match not be a member of a church then you can put that in your profile.

Another thing, in my opinion, is the most important thing is to get to the point of Open Communication where you can then ask detailed questions on any subject, including what your match has in their MHCS. In my experience the MHCS are very open to interpretation and because of this many people will choose to close at the MHCS stage because they see something that they disagree on. It may be that each person has interpreted that item differently and they are actually on the same page yet will never find out because one closed based on their interpretation. This is why I have chosen to have the most benign MHCS so that I can get to Open Communication with most of my matches and then really see where we stand on such things as religion.
 
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Spider is offline Spider Post #7  May 22,2010, 5:03am
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If you've indicated that you're atheist, or not religious or whatever the eH designation is, then you need only set the religion preference for "neither spiritual nor religious" and the importance setting all the way to very important, and it should send you only atheists.

That's what I did, and it worked just fine.

You may, however, still get matches who are into New Agey beliefs, so you still have to screen for that in communication.
 
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annother is offline annother Post #8  May 22,2010, 8:43am
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I agree with the OP that this MH/CS question needs tweaking. In the mean time, Spider's solution is excellent.
 
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chemgal is offline chemgal Post #9  May 22,2010, 10:04am
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It's not exactly the perfect fit but there's always the "intolerant" can't stand (the one about not wanting someone who's so into their religion that they think it makes them better than others or that it's "more right" than others; it should signal that you aren't looking to be converted).
 
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NJGeek81 is offline NJGeek81 Post #10  May 24,2010, 2:54am
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Spider wrote :
If you've indicated that you're atheist, or not religious or whatever the eH designation is, then you need only set the religion preference for "neither spiritual nor religious" and the importance setting all the way to very important, and it should send you only atheists.

That's what I did, and it worked just fine.

You may, however, still get matches who are into New Agey beliefs, so you still have to screen for that in communication.
That's what I did, at first. That's when I got that lovely message from eHarmony at the end of the "entrance exam" that said "Sorry, no matches for you. NO you can't go back and adjust anything. Good luck buddy!"
 
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