The mixing of religious and non-religious beliefs in an individual.

What is the Belief Genome?

Alright everyone. Here it is. This is the information I will be posting on our Kickstarter project to fund the Belief Genome. Preview of our Kickstarter campaign here.

What is Belief Genome?

The Belief Genome is an open source web app that aims to map all human beliefs and their connections to one another. The intent is to provide a platform for both personal discovery and a living database of information for anthropological research.

How Does it work?

All the information entered into the Belief Genome will be done on an individual level. The project will offer personal profiles which will provide statistics on your personal beliefs. (reference this more in the features section). If a belief is already present in the belief genome, users can simply subscribe to that belief which will add it to your personal profile. If a belief is not present you may create the belief yourself and upload it. Every belief you subscribe to will affect the entire network of connections.

The Belief Genome will be able to provide in depth data about religions, beliefs, and spirituality that could be useful in educational, psychological, and research organizations.

Early mockup of the main BG map

What could we measure?

Are there beliefs that are more predominant in specific age groups?
What percent of each religion believes in non-religious beliefs such as love at first sight?
Would there be spikes in particular beliefs after a major world event?
Currently, institutions like PEW must conduct individual surveys to gather information about these topics. But BG can act as one ever-evolving (living) survey.
How do the beliefs of Republicans and Democrats compare or contrast?
Does the belief that “Life is Unfair” predispose you to belief in “Fate” as opposed to “Free Will”?

Beta Testers

Your feedback will be invaluable in the early stages of the project. As a beta tester, you will be influencing direction, feature development, organization, user experience and more.

Funding

Development of the core product
Hosting
Viewing modes
Adjustable thresholds
Redundancy mitigation (cutting down on multiple belief submissions that are too similar)
Spam prevention
API’s
Real time physics
Integration into Facebook’s Open Graph

And that's just the development! We're going to need some other talent, such as people knowledgable in statistics in order to make sure the data is clean and accurate, and also data visualization.

We're Looking for Great Minds

Are you experienced in theology, statistics, data visualization, data management, or other relevant fields to Belief Genome? Jump into the project and tell us about yourself. It's people like you who will take BG from being good to amazing.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Sidian M.S. Jones on August 13, 2012 at 9:42pm

And since we have a couple hundred belief modules ready to go here on the site, we can start right off with really interesting content.

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Permalink Reply by RonPrice on October 5, 2012 at 8:18pm

Since all the information entered into the Belief Genome will be done on an individual level; since the project also offers personal profiles which will provide statistics on my personal beliefs; since users like myself can simply subscribe to that belief which will add it to my personal profile and since, if a belief is not present, I can create the belief myself and upload it, it seemed logical to post the url of the official international website of the international Baha'i community, a community I have been associated with for 60 years(1952-2012) It's url is: http://www.bahai.org

I felt like making this post, after reading your preview link to the Belief Genome Kickstarter which you sent out today(6 October 2012) at: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sidianmsjones/232615502?token=4...

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Permalink Reply by Sidian M.S. Jones on October 6, 2012 at 11:43am

Interesting link, Ron, thank you. Were you able to get the Kickstarter link to work for you? I've heard that others had trouble.

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Permalink Reply by Kate Dalton on March 10, 2013 at 4:30pm

I am so crazy for this idea! The anthropological ramifications of having all of the worlds beliefs and religions grouped together like this is amazing My biggest fear is that the data would not be sourced, or am I missing something on that front?

I would like to offer my assistance in any capacity where you could use me. I am a student majoring in anthropology and have access to a practically limitless database of religious papers and studies. On the more selfish front, I would really like to write a series of papers on this, both as it is moving along and on the eventual outcome.

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Permalink Reply by Sidian M.S. Jones on March 12, 2013 at 5:26pm

Kate, my apologies for not getting to this sooner. Just swamped with work is all. I'm with you on the excitement, and there are some really super cool things to come!

I assume by "sourced' you mean recorded? If so, Belief Genome is our attempt to do just that. I need to put more info up about it but check this out in the meantime: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sidianmsjones/the-belief-genome...

What I could really use right now is more members, which publicity can certainly help with. If you'd like to invite some friends who you know are interested in religion, or you can write about our movement, that would be wonderful. We've had articles written about us before and would love to see more. :)

Press Page here: http://www.opensourcereligion.net/Press-Page

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Permalink Reply by Roman Kozlowski 9 hours ago

What do you want to really know?

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Permalink Reply by Roman Kozlowski 8 hours ago

This multi-fragmentational disintergration of proposed thought en-mass in this way is the most disengenous abstraction I've seen on this site so far. I therefore put to you to reach beyond your confoundational pretexts to simply ask the fundamental questions (that is, if you really have any?) that you require genuine answers to, and thereafter respond directly and succictly to questions you put to us. Or else you'll simply become known to us as Mr Waffle.

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Permalink Reply by Roman Kozlowski 8 hours ago

Please show some backbone and at least take part in leading discussion from time to time if you think this site is worth it.

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Permalink Reply by Sidian M.S. Jones 7 hours ago

I don't mind being called out too much but my general experience is that people's understanding of the situation are a bit one sided...

For instance, I'm the only one willing to run and pay for the site. On top of that I'm the only one willing to run and pay for development of Belief Genome.

At some point I reach the human limit of my ability to take care of all the things.

Right now I'm making a site for a 2,800$ contract, baby due in less than a week, full time job, etc.

I'm not concentrating on the OSR site, because what the site needs is a community project (Belief Genome) so instead I am about to dump about 2 grand into that project, literally within the next week or so. I work with someone who is willing to take it on. Altogether that will be around 5 grand I've put into it.

So if backbone only consists of showing my face and having conversations, I can't say I'm interested in growing one, as I'd rather concentrate on the things I believe will truly help in the long run. To me, that is backbone. Putting my money and resources (that I could just buy myself awesome things with) into the project.

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Permalink Reply by Roman Kozlowski 5 hours ago

Sid, now I understand, and you state your position well.

It's one of the finest sites of its kind in the world.

And we as members will do all we can to spread the word to help in its progress to the heights it deserves.

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Permalink Reply by Sidian M.S. Jones 3 hours ago

I'm just glad people still care. :)

And to be fair, I should be here commenting, sharing articles, etc. I just can't do that effectively at this time. Not without some outside help. I have tried to find outside help as well, by the way, but nobody has stuck around for long.

I'm looking forward to making more room in my schedule to work on the new site as well. Just thought I'd let you all know that is still on my roadmap.