Hardhat

You are an atheist, a rationalist, a believer in the triumph of science and of reason over libido. You can’t stand mumbo jumbo, ritual, spiritual nonsense of any kind, and you refuse to allow for these longings in others.

Astrologers, Scientologists and new–age crystal ball creeps are no different in your view from priests, rabbis and imams. They’re all just weak–minded pilgrims on the road to easy answers. Nature as revealed by science is awesome enough for you, but it’s a nature that needs curbing and taming by us on our evolutionary journey to perfection.

Your heros are Einstein, Darwin, Marx and — these days — Gould, Blakemore, Watson, Crick and Rosalind Franklin. Could you be hiding a little behind those absolutist views, worried that, if you let in a few doubts and contradictory ideas, the whole edifice might crumble? Loosen up a bit and try to enjoy the amazing variety of human belief systems. Don’t worry — it’s unlikely you’ll end up chanting your days away in some distant mountain cult.

What kind of humanist are you? Click here to find out.

My desire for a tidy garden--actually, I don't even own a houseplant because they're too much effort--means I think we're on an evolutionary journey to perfection? I don't think that. Evolution has nothing to do with perfection. It has everything to do with effective breeding and food gathering. Take the Bush family. They suck, both as individuals and as a community, but they breed prodigiously and have plenty of resources. Morally, they seem to be worsening with successive generations, but unless that becomes a factor in sexual selection, it won't stop them.

As for the other charge, I don't think that my impatience with those people in the 60s who imagined they could lift the Pentagon with their minds makes me guilty of absolutism. When it comes to the woo-woo stuff I have an open mind, just not one so open that my brains fall out.

Nice quiz.