…and this is a 
It's like they're just begging me to crash it
Category: Pointless polls
Posted on: November 10, 2008 4:46 PM, by PZ Myers
How can I resist when they name it THE GOD POLL? There are several questions there: Does god exist (currently tied between yes and no)? Is there life after death (roughly tied, with yes in a slight lead)? Do humans have souls (yes is leading, 50%:34%)? Can an atheist be ethical (Yes is way ahead, fortunately)? Is evolution accurate (yes is at 64%, not bad)?
Vote on 'em all!
I think we have discovered the most pathetic online poll ever. The creator is jacking around the numbers now to whatever he feels like; he has left a comment here to complain; he's playing a little game of sockpuppetry ("Dorfus" and "tgp" are the same person); and he just sent me email saying, "I've asked seed to remove your blog. I hope they do." Whatta maroon.
Comments
Posted by: cactusren | November 10, 2008 4:50 PM
Done.
Though I have to say, the current numbers aren't bad for an unpharyngulated poll.
Posted by: Shirley Knott | November 10, 2008 4:51 PM
It would have been SO much more interesting, and ever so much more fun, if they had asked if it were possible to be a Christian and be moral...
no hugs for thugs,
Shirley Knott
Posted by: Michelle | November 10, 2008 4:51 PM
Oh yea baby. That bad boy just BEGS for a votin' crashin' lovin'.
Posted by: katjo | November 10, 2008 4:52 PM
Who is this, why are they doing it?
Voted, sent link on MSN to son at uni.
Posted by: Reginald Selkirk | November 10, 2008 4:54 PM
You need to click separately to vote on each question, that's a bit odd.
Posted by: freddie | November 10, 2008 4:57 PM
Considering all the questions are stated in the declarative, I would have expected more votes for "MAYBE".
I'd guess most people would just vote based on what they "believe", and of course the whole point of crashing this is to show how un-scientific these polls are, but still, it makes you wonder what the reasons are for asking these questions.
Posted by: JohnA | November 10, 2008 4:58 PM
I went, don't see how to vote. I'd sure like to....
Posted by: Watchman | November 10, 2008 4:58 PM
Now "Maybe" is WAY ahead for the atheist/ethical question. Strange, and strangely annoying.
Posted by: Andreas Johansson | November 10, 2008 4:58 PM
Surprisingly, 'maybe' currently has 91% in the atheist ethics poll.
I guess it'd killed them to specify what they mean by "soul"? I voted 'no' on the assumption they're thinking of the immortal, immaterial variety.
Posted by: Somnolent Aphid | November 10, 2008 4:59 PM
Spiffy animation when you click the vote buttons, eh?
Posted by: Glen Davidson | November 10, 2008 5:01 PM
Ooh, great, they have to treat evolution as if it were important to the "God question" in isolation. I'm sure that makes the DI happy, because they count on people simply reacting to "godless evolution."
So I'll assume that any legally competent adult answering "No" to the evolution question is dumb, ignorant, dishonest, or some combination thereof.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Reginald Selkirk | November 10, 2008 5:03 PM
People are probably misunderstanding the question. Atheists also can be unethical. Probably people are deciding that being atheist does mandate being ethical, which you and I understood is not the question.Posted by: gypsytag | November 10, 2008 5:04 PM
what is a soul?
Posted by: BobC | November 10, 2008 5:04 PM
I saw the poll, tried to vote, but nothing happened. Maybe the problem is I'm using Apple's Safari browser.
I agree it would have been a good question to ask "if it were possible to be a Christian and be moral." I would vote "probably not" since most Christians have no problem with abusing their children with Jebus stupidity.
Posted by: gypsytag | November 10, 2008 5:06 PM
its funny how eveything seems to be skewed to a rational perspective except for the ethical question
51/49%
strange.
Posted by: Owlmirror | November 10, 2008 5:08 PM
There's something weird going on with this thing.
I am nearly absolutely certain that "Is there life after death" was not at 0 votes for "Yes", or only 10 votes for "yes" on "Do humans have souls", when I voted just a few minutes ago. And ditto about the strangely high "maybe" for "Can atheists be ethical".
I call shenanigans!
Posted by: watercat | November 10, 2008 5:09 PM
Here's another poll. You get to vote on a replacement for the Koran. Calvin & Hobbes is leading
http://lolkoran.blogspot.com/
Posted by: CrypticLife | November 10, 2008 5:10 PM
"Is Evolution Accurate?"
What the heck is their standard for accuracy? Obviously there are debating points within evolution and it's not a "finalized" theory.
Interesting that "Is there a God?" is about 50-50 but "Is there an afterlife?" is tilted heavily towards there not being one. So, for a lot of people there's a God but he sends us to oblivion?
Posted by: Owlmirror | November 10, 2008 5:11 PM
And now "God exists" is 98% "maybe" and 0 "yes". And evolution is 92% "maybe"
Shenanigans squared!
Posted by: gypsytag | November 10, 2008 5:11 PM
Owl,
i agree.
It seems everytime i look the numbers are completely different.
Maybe they're trying to screw with the pharnguloids.
If so they must be punished.
Posted by: Dale D | November 10, 2008 5:11 PM
It appears someone is switching votes and/or deleting voted. All of a sudden, god exists is 1% no and 99% maybe and the ethical atheist question only has 16 total votes.
Posted by: scooter | November 10, 2008 5:12 PM
Looks like the agnostics are coming out for this one.
Posted by: BobC | November 10, 2008 5:13 PM
Good question. People only believe in this invisible body part because they were brainwashed to believe it. Apparently only the human ape species has a soul. I think it was invented to support the idea that people are completely separate from the rest of nature. After a human ape drops dead, the invisible soul magically flies up to heaven and then magically transforms itself into the body it came from, except now the human ape is alive, not dead. Even the most moderate Christians believe this childish nonsense, which I why I think all Christians are idiots.
Posted by: Andreas Johansson | November 10, 2008 5:14 PM
On last check, all the 'maybe's for the atheist ethics question are simply gone.
I guess it's called the God Poll because, like Yahweh, it's arbitrary and nonsensical?
Posted by: Wicked Lad | November 10, 2008 5:15 PM
It's definitely not keeping track of votes. It's clearning them out every minute or two, or it's posting random results. Something even more bogus than usual, anyway.
Posted by: TurboFool | November 10, 2008 5:16 PM
I think we've already managed to break this one... or someone has. Either way, the results are currently nothing as you described them, and a little odd. God's existence is almost fully Maybe, and Evolution's almost fully Yes (not only in percentage, but in total votes). Not quite what one would expect, and definitely not what was already reported here.
Posted by: Owlmirror | November 10, 2008 5:16 PM
The vote count seems to change randomly.
Right now, the page shows 2 votes for "no" on God, and 0 for "yes" and "maybe".
I'm sure it will change again if I reload the page again.
WTF?
Posted by: JohnA | November 10, 2008 5:19 PM
I went to another PC, running Win98 & IE6, and was able to vote, but the numbers are screwy, as others have noted. Seems to be well and truly crashed.
Posted by: BrianA | November 10, 2008 5:19 PM
I have reloaded the page several times to check the results and each time the results changed. It looks like the results are reset each time I reload.
Maybe God didn't like our answers?
Posted by: Barack Obama | November 10, 2008 5:20 PM
Present.
Posted by: gazza | November 10, 2008 5:20 PM
I'm not sure this is a real poll either - I wouldn't be surprised if the "TGP" response in the Comments section is computerised. It's so damn neutral it could be a Turing Test exercise! If it isn't then the intelligence behind "TGP" is just taking the piss out of us!
Posted by: Pete Rooke | November 10, 2008 5:22 PM
I voted Yes.
Posted by: Stardrake | November 10, 2008 5:23 PM
I just voted, and the "can an atheist be moral" poll read 100% yes!
Possibly someone just doesn't know how to program a poll?
Posted by: scooter | November 10, 2008 5:23 PM
gypsytag @ 13: what is a soul?
I think it has something to do with African Americans
Posted by: Katkinkate | November 10, 2008 5:26 PM
Probably a joke. The perp is probably LHAO watching Pharygula commenters going nuts.
Posted by: Ryan | November 10, 2008 5:28 PM
Reading the comments section it appears that the webmaster has been paying for advertising to get people to come to the site. You basically just trashed something they paid (probably a lot) to create. Shame on you, PZ.
I will state that I do like it when you crash other polls.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead | November 10, 2008 5:30 PM
We aren't suprised. But why did you have to report it here, as we don't care how you voted.Posted by: Josh in California | November 10, 2008 5:32 PM
Looks to me like they may have reset the vote counts. I just voted, and most of the questions had less than 10 votes.
Posted by: ix | November 10, 2008 5:34 PM
Wouldn't be surprised if the webmaster keeps resetting the votes because s/he does not like the results.
Posted by: Nick | November 10, 2008 5:34 PM
Whoever registered the site did it through contactprivacy.com. So it's just as likely to be a joke as it is to be real. Transparency doesn't apply to either situation.
Posted by: jj | November 10, 2008 5:38 PM
Note that there are way more total votes for the atheist question then any of the others (well life after death is close), only 2 vote tallied for the "soul" question?????
Posted by: scooter | November 10, 2008 5:38 PM
Is there life after death 400 votes
Does god exist 100 votes
resembles 2004 Ohio election returns
----------------------------------------------
Jesus live on the radio
Posted by: Owlmirror | November 10, 2008 5:49 PM
Hm. The raw data appears to be here:
http://www.thegodpoll.com/qN.txt, where N=1..5
just a few moments ago (presumably, in "Y,N,M" format):
q1: 3,134,13
q2: 1,148,18
q3: 0,5,16
q4: 99,0,0
q5: 78,0,1
Posted by: frog | November 10, 2008 5:50 PM
Why doesn't anyone ever add "Kinda" as an answer?
Or "Unask that"?
So lazy.
Posted by: Owlmirror | November 10, 2008 5:53 PM
And just this past minute:
q1:1,27,7
q2:7,249,28
q3:10,103,26
q4:217,0,0
q5:62,0,1
Posted by: Owlmirror | November 10, 2008 5:58 PM
I am starting to suspect some sort of bug in the data handling code, rather than deliberate mischief.
But I no longer feel interested in pursuing this.
Posted by: Stark | November 10, 2008 6:02 PM
Interesting little poll. It appears to have been reset now.
More interesting than the poll, to me at least, is that the owners went to the trouble of protecting the WHOIS data on the site. This is not a normal practice for those who regularly put up religiot polls (which this doesn't appear to be). For one thing, anonymizing the WHOIS records would require some knowledge of how the Internet actually functions... which is well beyond most of the religiot groups.
The comments and the responses to them lead me to believe it's somebody's university research project. That is just a guess of course but it seems that way to me.
Posted by: WTFWJD | November 10, 2008 6:03 PM
This site is smartened up. Clearing cookies won't let me vote a second time, nor will negotiating a new IP via DHCP.
Posted by: watercat | November 10, 2008 6:07 PM
The poll is fine. It's just that someone is praying, and with each prayer an angel comes and shifts a vote.
Posted by: CrypticLife | November 10, 2008 6:09 PM
I just want to say I've officially become a bad atheist parent.
I used to be a good atheist parent -- one who wanted their children to come to their own determination on religion and whether God exists, trying not to influence them directly.
After seeing more of how religious parents raise their children and the lengths to which they'll go to indoctrinate other people's children, I've given up. I'm not going to handicap my children against their techniques. Here on out, I don't hold back -- let those hypocrites accuse me of indoctrination, I really don't care anymore.
Thanks. Sorry for the OT post, just needed to rant a bit.
Posted by: JD | November 10, 2008 6:11 PM
It seems so. The ethics question is showing only 6 votes, while the others are in the hundreds. Is the polling site located in Alaska?
Posted by: Mike | November 10, 2008 6:15 PM
The results are so lopsided now, it's hardly even fun - NOT. What a hoot.
Posted by: Michelle | November 10, 2008 6:26 PM
huh? The results were only in the three digits now.
Posted by: Josh West | November 10, 2008 6:31 PM
Off topic, but very interesting news.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122602394113507555.html
Posted by: Anon | November 10, 2008 6:34 PM
It says I just voted for McCain/Palin.
Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | November 10, 2008 6:45 PM
That's still the case. Yes: 117 votes, no: 1 vote, maybe: 0 votes.
And the top question has yes: 5 votes, no: 236 votes, maybe: 35 votes.
Reminds me of Diebold voting machines. Except that those machines lost every tenth vote; this poll only keeps every tenth vote, or something.
Posted by: JFKman | November 10, 2008 6:52 PM
Question 1,2 +3 don't work... Didn't like my answer...
Posted by: Astrotreen | November 10, 2008 6:58 PM
Yeah, voted, went back 2 minutes later and 2 of the answers i voted for are back down to 0 votes...
Posted by: gyokusai | November 10, 2008 7:09 PM
Yeah, looks like mischief.
>> They're making FUN of us!!!
But quite a nice riposte, if you think about it...
^_^J.
Posted by: Glen Davidson | November 10, 2008 7:12 PM
Anyhow, why would the above be asked when, "Can a religious person be ethical?" is not asked?
The whole thrust of the question is to make it sound iffy that an atheist could be ethical, while apparently saying that an invisible, evidence-free, but extremely powerful being of overriding importance (lying, IOW) automatically favors the idea that this intellectually dishonest person in fact is ethical.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Vitis01 | November 10, 2008 7:14 PM
Did y'all catch the comment by TGP saying that considering ID next to Evolution required that you be "open-minded".
Hey! Was that a cat? Did it just come out of that bag?
Posted by: Glen Davidson | November 10, 2008 7:17 PM
Oops, #60 should have said,
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Owlmirror | November 10, 2008 7:18 PM
See those crazy numbers jump around (2 minutes ago):
q1: 2,23,1
q2: 6,221,39
q3: 16,213,28
q4: 253,0,1
q5: 187,0,6
Posted by: blueelm | November 10, 2008 7:38 PM
@ #61
I was just coming back to post that. Open minded... why does that one always bug me so much?
Anyway I do think that cat is unbagged.
Posted by: notedscholar | November 10, 2008 7:43 PM
What a silly idea! It's like they think truth can be decided by majority vote! And even if it could, this wouldn't indicate the majority. I wonder what the blogging bias is? What is more likely on the Internet, God or not God? I look forward to the results.
Posted by: Richard | November 10, 2008 7:49 PM
I'll bet it's some kind of prelude to a marketing scheme, or to statements about poll responders (or even poll crashers).
The lack of any info on who or why this is seems odd. Check the source, it contains a call to "urchintracker", which I believe is part of Google Analytics. So I conclude that someone is gathering statistics on the kind of people who respond to such a poll - for what use we'll see.
Posted by: Rob the Lurker FCD BMWCCA | November 10, 2008 7:51 PM
I see that the "can atheists be ethical" question that "no" has 0 votes while "maybe" has 000 votes. So "maybe" is way zeroer than "no".
Posted by: Owlmirror | November 10, 2008 7:53 PM
One minute ago:
q1: 2,61,11
q2: 0,106,122
q3: 16,301,36
q4: 143,0,000
q5: 134,0,10
Posted by: gyokusai | November 10, 2008 7:54 PM
Oh, and another thing (apropos "they're making fun of us!!!")---the domain is registered at contactprivacy.com.
Now who'd go to such lenghts and pay money to the man for a stupid poll? I wonder.
^_^J.
Posted by: gyokusai | November 10, 2008 8:01 PM
It's a honey jar, I'd say, for atheists in general and poll crashers in particular. And the first blogs on the interwebs already started to quote from the poll's comment section.
So is there something fishy about this? Well if you'd call "smelling rotten" fishy, then yes.
^_^J.
Posted by: bsk | November 10, 2008 8:11 PM
Seems to me that each question resets every 450-odd votes. This could be to prevent the results appearing skewed (with the actual votes saved separately), though perhaps it's also encouraging poll-crashers to keep going, rather than to resign on a job well done.
Posted by: Joel | November 10, 2008 8:17 PM
Monks gone wild!!!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081109/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_brawling_monks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX470zoKWIo
Posted by: gyokusai | November 10, 2008 8:19 PM
Oh, and google analytics's been set up for the poll, too. Check the source code.
Which doesn't rhyme with the privacy section's claims, to boot. If you check the google recommendations for privacy statements when using google analytics (scroll down to 8.1, 2nd paragraph), you will see that this grates quite a bit with thegodpoll's "No IP addresses or other personal information is collected during the voting process." Nice.
Yeah, and now I'm shutting up.
^_^J.
Posted by: Daniel Pope | November 10, 2008 8:20 PM
It's tracking you using Flash local storage, not browser cookies. Right click and choose "Settings..." and on the "local storage" tab drag the slider down to zero if you want to experiment with voting again.
Posted by: Michael Hawkins | November 10, 2008 8:20 PM
Bill O'Reilly has a poll asking if anyone wants to see Palin for in 2012.
http://www.billoreilly.com/
Posted by: Corydoras | November 10, 2008 8:22 PM
Voted!
Posted by: Desert Son | November 10, 2008 8:28 PM
From Joel's posted link at #72:
Indeed.
Safety of visitors soon to be well in hand, thanks to divine insight into fire code violations.
Talk about going from the sublime to the ridiculous . . . .
No kings,
Robert
Posted by: Peromyscus | November 10, 2008 8:44 PM
Hmm...four hours later and it's been heavily pharyngulated. Hee hee. I gave it a little mouse-y push further in that direction.
Posted by: Bronze Dog | November 10, 2008 9:21 PM
I just checked back. Before, we really nailed it up, but it looks like it might have been anti-Pharyngulized, since it's closer to 50-50, now.
Posted by: Philip Cunningham | November 10, 2008 9:33 PM
Atheism: A World Of Lies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM8EfkiR_tU
Posted by: dorfus | November 10, 2008 9:40 PM
terrorists. that's what you all are. think you're something better. you're not. just a bunch of pathetic dorks..
Posted by: dorfus | November 10, 2008 9:45 PM
The masthead of this blog says, "PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris." Would the University of Minnesota like to know that one of their associate professors is using a science blog to urge hackers to take sites down? We'll find out.
Posted by: apthorp | November 10, 2008 9:47 PM
wtf? barely over 1/2 no on god ... 99% maybe life after death, 96% maybe on evolution?? No god, but maybe souls, life after death and not evolution. my head is exploding.
Posted by: Owlmirror | November 10, 2008 9:49 PM
Since he is in fact doing no such thing, I think the UoM will reject any such false accusation.
Posted by: dorfus | November 10, 2008 9:51 PM
"Since he is in fact doing no such thing, I think the UoM will reject any such false accusation."
The title of the blog post is "'they're just begging me to crash it," clearly a call to the minions to crash it. And crash it they did.
Posted by: Tizo | November 10, 2008 9:53 PM
There's some serious tampering going on in this one... maybe they're using those Diebold voting machines you americans fear so much!
When I voted the Evolution question had a huge majority for Yes and now it's overwhelmingly Maybe. Either the webmaster is somehow messing with the totals or it simply doesn't count the votes and gives us random totals for each option.
Posted by: Owlmirror | November 10, 2008 9:54 PM
Liar.
Better than a liar like you.
Are too.
Posted by: Kobra | November 10, 2008 9:54 PM
@85: Hey doofus, there's a difference between poll-crashing and taking a site down. Go back to Microcomputer Skills 101.
Posted by: bastion | November 10, 2008 9:55 PM
At #77, Desert Son wrote:
Safety of visitors soon to be well in hand, thanks to divine insight into fire code violations.
Maybe they should just issue all visitors magic underwear.
Posted by: Ben Abbott | November 10, 2008 9:56 PM
@ apthorp: My head is spinning over the life after death, evolution, and soul questions as well.
Perhaps PZ needs to be a bit more clear that *all* supernatural superstitions are silly? ... not just the religious ones ;-)
Posted by: Kobra | November 10, 2008 9:56 PM
Tsk tsk. http://www.kobrascorner.com/opine/willful-ignorance.phpPosted by: Wowbagger | November 10, 2008 9:59 PM
I guess dorfus is a new word. It probably means: 'like a doofus, only far, far stupider'.
Posted by: Kobra | November 10, 2008 10:00 PM
@92: A portmanteau of moron and doofus?
Posted by: tgp | November 10, 2008 10:03 PM
hi folks. i've enjoyed reading the forum. i would ask that you stop crashing the site, but if that's really what you need to do, then i guess i understand.
to address some of the points above:
the site was a personal experiment, nothing more. i did pay for some ads on facebook, mainly for a short period to see if it was an effective way to drive traffic to the site. i did ask for privacy on the domain, and now you can see why. i understand some of the questions are 'scientifically' inaccurate, and may frustrate some users, but as i say many times on the site, it is not meant to be a scientific poll, just a personal curiosity experiment. if you read the comments you'll see negative and positive comments from both sides of the fence (pro-creation, pro-evolution). i specifically added a 'maybe' comment because i was curious how many people, if forced to make a decision, might choose 'maybe.' as it turned out, many do, which i also find interesting.
anyway, if you really must destroy something to make your point, i have a hard time understanding that impulse, as i'm someone who likes to make things. but i did feel the forum deserved the courtesy of an answer to the comments above.
enjoy your evening.
Posted by: Lizbeth | November 10, 2008 10:04 PM
A religious group (a more-kooky-than-usual group) is attempting to place their own religious guidelines in a public park in Utah. Their rationalization? There's a huge ten commandments there.
Although I dislike all religions, it makes me happy that they're infighting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/washington/11sect.html?hp
Posted by: Owlmirror | November 10, 2008 10:57 PM
I don't understand the use of the word "destroy". Unless your server is so physically weak that it can't cope with an increase in bandwidth, all we do is skew the numbers. Big deal.
Look, I'm sure that you are aware that the poll was in no way scientific. All you got were self-selected browsers who happened to find the site; that in no way takes into account actual demographics and population sampling.
All that happened was that for a brief while, you received answers from a highly unusual demographic, which is to say, Pharyngula readers. And given that Pharyngula has more than a few creationist/theist/agnostic readers and stalkers, I'm sure that the results would not have been uniform.
And as for "why", well, primarily because it's an amusing group effort. We know that in reality, we are generally a tiny minority of empirical skeptics in a vast sea of credulous believers. For a brief while, we can create the illusion — and we all know that it's an illusion — that our skepticism is in the "majority", even if it's not real.
I notice that you didn't address a particularly important point: Is your poll registration software defective, or were you (or someone) manually resetting or changing the poll values? It isn't important for us, since we know that the poll is pointless, but I would assume that you would want for the votes actually being made to register properly. Unless the point of the poll was something far more subtle?
Posted by: Nick | November 10, 2008 11:12 PM
Wait a second, TGP. You created a website, advertised it and then complain when people use it? I'm confused.
Posted by: John Morales | November 10, 2008 11:18 PM
Seeing how the numbers skipped around after a refresh, my first impression was (as the title of this post indicates) that it was deliberately set up to be Pharyngulated.
BTW, I disbelieve tgp @94.
Posted by: Jeremy | November 10, 2008 11:24 PM
I don't understand how advertising and getting people to vote in a poll is "destroying" it.
I also don't understand what is meant by the question; "Is evolution accurate?"
Is that asking if I believe if evolution occurs or not, or is it asking if I believe that the specific details of the theories of why evolution occurs are accurate? Or I guess it could be asking if the process of evolution has an accurate outcome on some measure, although I have no idea what would be being measured. I guess genetic drift could be seen as "inaccurate evolution" perhaps, on the assumption that evolution occurs to improve the "fitness" of an organism - pardon the anthropomorphism :P
Posted by: Nick | November 10, 2008 11:25 PM
The numbers are all over the board. This thing is a scam.
Posted by: Craig | November 10, 2008 11:38 PM
#74. Thanks for mentioning Flash local storage. I had never heard of it, and just looked it up only to find a cavalcade of website crap left behind on my computer. And here I had thought that I was privacy conscious. What a chump I've been.
Posted by: blueelm | November 10, 2008 11:56 PM
@ #99
I didn't understand the question "Is evolution accurate" either.