Are Your Religious Views Rationally Consistent?

[Matilda]

I found this rather challenging quiz on a blog on the website of the ABC, Sydney. Try it, and see how you rate.

http://www.philosophersnet.com/games/god.htm


I thought very carefully about my answers, but was unable to come out unscathed. This was my result:

Battleground Analysis
Congratulations!
You have been awarded the TPM service medal! This is our third highest award for outstanding service on the intellectual battleground.

The fact that you have progressed through this activity without suffering many hits and biting only one bullet suggests that whilst there are inconsistencies in your beliefs about God, on the whole they are well thought-out.

The direct hits you suffered occurred because some of your answers implied logical contradictions. 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. At the bottom of this page, we have reproduced the analyses of your direct hits and bitten bullet.

The fact that you did not suffer many hits and only bit one bullet means that you qualify for our third highest award. Well done!

[CBHagman]

1. I tried that today...

...and opted to answer fairly swiftly, based on what I believe/don't believe now, and not on what I believed for many years. I've recently undergone a very disconcerting spiritual shift.

In any event, I didn't copy down my results but basically came out without bitten bullets or hits. I'll have to take it again when I have more leisure and see how it comes out.

In a way, it was a bit disturbing and heartening at the same time!

[Soylent Brice]

2. .

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 being hit only once and biting no bullets suggests that your beliefs about God are well thought out and almost entirely internally consistent.


The direct hit you suffered occurred because one set of your answers implied a logical contradiction. At the bottom of this page, we have reproduced the analysis of your direct hit. 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, this did not occur which means that despite the direct hit you qualify for our second highest award. A good achievement!

Click here if you want to review the criteria by which hits and bullets are determined.



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How did you do compared to other people?

459809 people have completed this activity to date.
You suffered 1 direct hit and bit zero bullets.
This compares with the average player of this activity to date who takes 1.39 hits and bites 1.10 bullets.
45.73% of the people who have completed this activity, like you, took very little damage and were awarded the TPM Medal of Distinction.
7.81% of the people who have completed this activity emerged unscathed with the TPM Medal of Honour.

[hedgehog]

3. I did well, but I still think trying to reduce many of these questions to a simple true or false is

misleading. Language is only a symbol for reality, and symbols can be used to mean the opposite of the reality they purportedly stand for.

The swastika: symbol of life or death? For millenia, it was a symbol of the sun, of life, then it was twisted. So, is the sun a symbol of death now, too?

[rug]

4. Some problems with the test.

Question 11
People who die of horrible, painful diseases need to die in such a way for some higher purpose.

I answered false.

You've taken a direct hit!

You have claimed that God exists, that she knows about suffering, wants to reduce it and can reduce it. But now you say you don't think that there is any higher purpose which explains why people die horribly of painful diseases. Why then does God allow it? Surely, a God which knows about, wants to stop and can stop suffering would put an end to pointless suffering.

The problem: Not needing to die a horrible death is not the same as there being no higher purpose.

Question 16
If God exists she would have the freedom and power to create square circles and make 1 + 1 = 72.

You've just bitten a bullet!

In saying that God has the freedom and power to do that which is logically impossible (like creating square circles), you are saying that any discussion of God and ultimate reality cannot be constrained by basic principles of rationality. This would seem to make rational discourse about God impossible. If rational discourse about God is impossible, there is nothing rational we can say about God and nothing rational we can say to support our belief or disbelief in God. To reject rational constraints on religious discourse in this fashion requires accepting that religious convictions, including your religious convictions, are beyond any debate or rational discussion. This is to bite a bullet.

The problem: Rising from the dead is not logically possible. Therefore this question asserts that logic is the only measure of existence, rather than a measure of human intelligence.

[Soylent Brice]

5. if rising from the dead is not logically possible, then wouldn't that mean the resurrection

is therefore not logically possible?

[rug]

6. Correct. But the Resurrection is not a demonstration of logic but of power over death.

The problem with the question is that it assumes logic is the only measure of God.

[Soylent Brice]

7. wouldn't that dictate that the idea of a god itself be illogical?

by the nature in which you propose that the question is flawed, saying that the only measure by which a god exists not relying on logic alone, it demands that you adhere to illogical thinking to accept the existence of a divine being.

[rug]

8. Logic is a human tool. i doubt a truly divine being is limited to such linear reasoning.

[Soylent Brice]

9. so, god itself/himself/herself is illogical?

that would certainly explain a lot.

[rug]

10. It's probably more correct to say he is not simply logical.

Look, this thread is in a Catholic Group. Catholic points of dogma include creation ex nihilo, immaculate conception, virgin birth, miracles, resurrections of the dead, and myriad examples of events that are, simply, not paragons of logic.

Yet, the Church also teaches that belief is rational, that God has endowed human beings with natural reason, and that God is not an arbitrary trickster.

So, where does that leave you?

It leaves me with a belief that God is certainly capable of suspending natural law and can do things that defy human logic.

Logic, in its essence, is a human exercise. A God that is indeed a God is not bound by it. But that does not mean that God is defined as illogical, other than from a purely human perspective.

[Soylent Brice]

11. where does that leave me?

dumbfounded.

dumbfounded at the thought that humans have the innate ability to completely ignore truths around them. the Greeks felt pretty confident that they knew what gods existed. as did the Ancient Egyptians, and to this day Hindus... etc.

it's just interesting that people would willingly choose to put aside logic in favor of something clearly illogical, even with the amount of information about human civilization that is available, and not blink once.

i'm just not wired to comprehend this behavior.


side note: i don't like where this conversation is heading, and i certainly didn't come in here to pick a fight. i happened to stumble upon this post and decided to engage. I don't think i can continue the conversation without appearing to offend, so i will back out, and leave upon agreeable circumstances rather than ideological hostilities. i've re-typed and deleted my response to this 4 times now. i simply can't put into words what i want to say politely.

it seems to be the most logical conclusion at this point for me.

it was fun debating. peace :)

[rug]

12. Thats fine.

The line, I think, is whether logic is the only, final, measure. We can resume this in R/T.

[Matilda]

13. My rational mind is continually at war with my emotional responses,

so I didn't score really well.

This quiz comes from a philosophical website which I think would come
down heavily on the argument that God doesn't exist. It's deliberately
posing some ridiculous hypotheses, knowing that Christians would
inevitably be caught between a rock and a hard place.

I found it fun to do because it made me think very hard about just how
far my faith can stretch - which is sometimes not very far when my sense
of logic kicks in.

[CBHagman]

16. I found it a reflection of my present state of mind.

I'm at the point where I think life has meaning but I cannot reconcile the idea of a benevolent, omnipotent, omniscient God with the way the world unfolds. Reconciling the existence of God and the existence of evil, and of course the question of the afterlife and how God deals with the soul, have always caused me to struggle.

But it's not what I believe that matters; it is what is true. And that is the hard part.

[Joe Chi Minh]

14. "Rising from the dead is not logically possible." No. this is not a logical

impossibility, like creating square circles.

There are many aspects of human nature and indeed God that we know little or nothing about. The potential for the body to be resurrected by divine agency is an axiom of the Christian faith. Something mortal becoming immortal in a glorified form is outside of our experience, but it is not a logical impossibility, given the omnipotence of God. If God were to change a square circle, then the very meaning of both words would be rendered null, because they are in conflict with each other at the most basic level of meaning itself.

Paradoxes seem to increasingly proliferate, the more deeply the physical world is penetrated, but there we enter a mysterious world, which must at least lead to the interface between matter and spirit, man and God.

But while matter evidently assumes a different aspect, a particles/wave duality at the quantum level, from that with which we are familiar at the mechanical level, if what we perceive is a paradox involving penumbral meanings, the ultimate resolution of the apparent conflicts will emerge in the recognition of a new pristine meaning. Appearances suggesting logical impossibility are clearly deficient, incomplete, since matter does exist and behave in such a manner at the sub-atomic level. It doesn't mean that the property of being wave-like is nullified by also being particle-like, unlike the square and the circle. Our knowledge of these is complete whatever other shapes and dimensions exist, and they are simply incompatible. No mystery at all, no element of incomplete knowledge concerned.

[rug]

15. This is a type of knowledge beyond logic.

Logic has its limits.

[Joe Chi Minh]

17. Yes. Beyond the powers of the analytical intelligence.