Field of Science

Interesting philosophy quiz - Battleground God

Battle ground God quiz

How I did...

Battleground Analysis

Congratulations!

You have been awarded the TPM medal of distinction! This is our second highest award for outstanding service on the intellectual battleground.

The fact that you progressed through this activity without being hit and biting only one bullet suggests that your beliefs about God are internally consistent and well thought out.

A direct hit would have occurred had you answered in a way that implied a logical contradiction. The bitten bullet occurred because you responded in a way that required that you held a view that most people would have found strange, incredible or unpalatable. However, because you bit only one bullet and avoided direct hits completely you still qualify for our second highest award. A good achievement!

Bitten Bullet 1

You answered "True" to questions 6 and 13.

These answers generated the following response:

You stated earlier that evolutionary theory is essentially true. However, you have now claimed that it is foolish to believe in God without certain, irrevocable proof that she exists. The problem is that there is no certain proof that evolutionary theory is true - even though there is overwhelming evidence that it is true. So it seems that you require certain, irrevocable proof for God's existence, but accept evolutionary theory without certain proof. So you've got a choice: (a) Bite a bullet and claim that a higher standard of proof is required for belief in God than for belief in evolution. (b) Take a hit, conceding that there is a contradiction in your responses.

You chose to bite the bullet.


The questions...
Question 6. Evolutionary theory maybe false in some matters of detail, but it is essentially true.
Question 13. It is foolish to believe in God without certain, irrevocable proof that God exists.

I bit the bullet but think these questions are loaded. If there was any evidence to support the existence of god, then things might be different.

Hat Tip: Sandwalk

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ha! i win!

Congratulations!

You have been awarded the TPM medal of honour! This is our highest award for outstanding service on the intellectual battleground.

The fact that you progressed through this activity neither being hit nor biting a bullet suggests that your beliefs about God are internally consistent and very well thought out.

A direct hit would have occurred had you answered in a way that implied a logical contradiction. You would have bitten bullets had you responded in ways that required that you held views that most people would have found strange, incredible or unpalatable. However, you avoided both these fates - and in doing so qualify for our highest award. A fine achievement!

Woot! Of course this quiz in all honesty seems to be from a philosophical instead of from a scientific view.

From a philosophers view, science is never absolute proof, and if you get stupidly technical it isn't.

Likewise, there is much less (if any) proof for the existence of god, so it does come out as a different level of proof required.

but it's a splitting of hairs quibble as the assertion of a god (especially with all the inherant christian acoutrements) is much more absurd than evolution and therefore WOULD need better proof.

Ah well, time to do the quiz over and see if i can fail the whole thing! tee hee!

Anonymous said...

Wow, the pictures are funney as you screw up!

It's surprisingly tough for me to answer illogically. i mean actually hard to choose something illogical. weird. I guess I liked logic just a bit too much.

lytefoot said...

I took one direct hit, but I disagree on the logical inconsistency. I got caught on one that is common enough to be mentioned in the FAQ (it's rational to disbelieve the Loch Ness monster, atheism is a matter of rationality and not faith). But the way they posed both questions was loaded incorrectly.

In the Loch Ness monster case, my answer was based on the fact that there is plenty of evidence for the NONexistence of the Loch Ness monster: ecological inviability, for example.

On the other hand, there is no evidence for the NONexistence of magic imperceptible pink unicorns of any kind. So asserting their nonexistence requires exactly the same kind of faith as asserting their existence.

There is also the distinction to be made between what one could call "moral" atheism--the assertion that magic pink unicorns absolutely do not exist--and "methodological" atheism--the choice to function as though they don't exist unless and until some evidence comes along. The former is a matter of faith, the second one of rationality. I tend to associate the former with the term "atheism", the latter with terms like "agnosticism" or, well, "rationality," while I suspect the author didn't draw that distinction.

The Lorax said...

I realize that I did make a logically inconsistent reply. However, my personal issue with Question 13 "It is foolish to believe in God without certain, irrevocable proof that God exists." is that we have had god shoved down our throats since our knuckles dragged down the jungle path, without any justification other than "I don't understand, ergo god." So with millennia of no evidence supporting god, it would take a profound amount of evidence to be a viable hypothesis. So I agree it would not have to be irrevocable, but it would have to be so far from where it is today that it would seem irrevocable.