What's up with ratings?

I am operating under the assumption that a good rating is given for those who give factual or helpful, on-topic advice. A bad rating would be given for someone who posted an answer that was either ugly/offensive, completely off-topic, or potentially harmful.

In the Religion section, we seem to have people who are rating advice based on whether or not they agree with it. This appears to be happening on both sides of the fence (believers and non-believers).

Is my original assumption correct or is rating based on personal approval of the answers? Or is it maybe based on something else entirely?

no you're right, it's SUPPOSED to be rated if the answer was helpful to the particular question, or not. but most of the time people just rate it based off of their own personal opinions. but theres really nothing you can do to change that. people will always rate the answers usually based on whether THEY agree or not. but it's no big deal, just a rating..I don't really care for them.

This doesn't only happen in the religion section, it happens in all the sections, but you are right, it does seem to happen a lot in the religion section.

There's no much you can do about it, people are supposed to rate according to how helpful an answer is, but honestly when it comes to something as subjective as religion, people will just rate according to what they believe...

I wouldn't pay much attention to ratings... I mean I think they are there so the most helpful answers appear first, but when it comes to an argument involving beliefs (religion, God, abortion, politics, etc...) then the ratings aren't very helpful...

I just noticed on a religious question I aswered what my beliefs were...not in a nasty way btw...and someone gave me a bad rating!

Thanks for helping clear this up. I try to rate answers according to the criteria I listed above. I will often give a good rating to someone I completely disagree with if their answer is well thought-out and on topic. If other people want to be juvenile, that's on them. I just wanted to use the system properly.