A philosopher's look at the religious God

Okay…this test is flawed and here is why.
It dings me on this one
It’s the serial killer question…
The serial killer feels justified in killing in the name of God.
Clearly, someone who thinks God is directly talking to them and directing them to kill prostitutes has a mental disorder and cannot be held fully accountable for his/her actions.
The fact that it dings me while it doesn’t take mental illness into account made me kind roll my eyes and just flub through it after that….sorry.
It’s a cool test but it makes too many assumptions about what the person believes.
My beliefs are much more complex than this test gives a person credit for….there is no way to explain to the test, why you are justified.

 

Who ever wrote this committed the logically fallacy of equivocation when using terms like 'rational'. Belief, inductive logic, and deductive logic are all separate things. And all of them can be rational or irrational depending on how one defines rationality. Inductive logic is deductively invalid. Deductive logic is inductively invalid. And belief isn't bound by logic at all. But any of them can play into what constitutes 'rational'. Ultimately, there is no clear distinction between belief and knowledge, and so we can't say with certainty what is or isn't rational or easily identify logical inconsistencies unless we're going to make illogical assumptions like this guy did.


Or to put it more bluntly:

Belief in an empirical claim like there not being intelligent life on Mars is never rational if we take deductive certainty as our standard of rationality. I can believe that there are no aliens up there, and we can send NASA to gather evidence that there is no evidence up there, but that doesn't mean that I can ever know with deductive certainty that there are no aliens up there.

Hence why most people hate philosophy.

 

Who ever said God should be "logical"? (Not a belief of mine, but a philosofical question)

 

The 'biting bullets' part is nonsense but I guess it is to prevent future Sutcliffe's from getting justifaction from the test.

I found this difficult because I don't try to express my views in a logical fashion. I don't know what it means for the test but I do feel that contradictions can exist and that that doesn't upset the nature of reality. The biggest one I can think of is the inner life vs the outer life. They can be synthesised but perhaps not reconciled with hard logic because the inner life responds to other things like emotionality which may not lead you to the traditionally spiritual path before death comes a-knockin'.

 

I majored in philosophy, and I have a rule where I don't talk about philosophy with someone unless they have a demonstrated interest in it because most people really do hate it. My guess is that they don't like to think for themselves. Or they don't want their worldviews challenged. Or they just hate intellectual stuff. I'm not sure.


As for the guy's test- he really just wanted to say that you can't logically believe in God, or that is what it seemed like anyway. The very last question on that did sting me. Its a difficult issue, but basically, logic is not so set in stone like he wants to present it. It sort of reminds me of The God Delusion by Dawkins. I personally don't believe in a supernatural creator, but I don't think doing so is necessarily illogical even if the only evidence one has is one's own inner conviction. I don't think that belief in a god conflicts with science either.

 

That's the problem! The Nessie question!

I got 3 bullets and 0 hits when I did it again and took my time.

The Nessie question equates God to an external phenomena whereas I would be inclined to say that God exists everywhere as dichotomy and nowhere in unity. The former being the basis for the external life and the latter the internal life. When these two are synthesised, we 'know' God exists and can have faith that does not depend on belief.

 

That's what I was thinking. Why couldn't God be internal or partially internal, or why wouldn't some internal state be sufficient for belief in God? And how do we draw the distinction between internal and external in precise terms anyway? That whole distinction in our thought process is something we sort of owe to the mind/body distinction that we make, which is itself a concept rooted in the idea that we have immortal souls that causally interact with our physical bodies (like Descartes thought).

 

The test doesn't like that I believe that logically that absence of evidence doesn't mean that you can logically believe that something does or does not exist, out side of that I got away unscathed.

 

Battleground God - Analysis


You navigated the battlefield suffering 0 hits and biting 0 bullets, which represents an overall performance at the 100th percentile (i.e., 100% of scores are worse than yours). The tables on the right show how your performance compares to the other 15563 people who have completed Battleground God.

Edit:
As for the Nessie question... nessie is alleged to live in a lake so in that context one could reasonably be justified in believing it doesn't exist (the lake is practically searchable) That's almost a trick question.

 

I counter and say that ANYONE who feels as if a god is talking to them has a mental disorder. What difference does it make if the person believes they are being directed to kill as opposed to say, dance in the street?

 

They aren’t killing anyone.

 

Yes but what does that have to do with whether a god is talking to them or not? Or are you trying to say that a god would only say what you think it would say? Awful presumptuous if so...

 

No, I’m saying there is a difference in someone who is say…dancing in the street…they can still be crazy…and someone who is a serial killer.
But, one does not hurt anyone else, while the other is a destructive force.

 

Fun test! I got worried about the shots at the end.

What's so wrong about having complex, opposing views in faith? Is there really such a thing as being "wrong" in religious opinions and beliefs? If it's what you believe, it's what you believe. After all, it's better to believe something that doesn't logically make sense with passion than to believe nothing and have no purpose, right?

 

Enjoyed that one. I got hit on one question

Direct Hit 1

You answered "True" to questions 4 and 6 and "False" to Question 17, which generated the following response:

You say that God does not have the freedom and power to do impossible things such as create square circles, but in earlier answers you indicated that any entity that it is right to call God must be free and have the power to do anything. So, on your view, God is not free and does not have the power to do what is impossible. This requires that you accept - in common with most, but not all, philosophers and theologians, and contrary to your earlier answer - that God's freedom and power are not unbounded. He does not have the freedom and power to do literally anything.

 

You navigated the battlefield suffering 0 hits and biting 0 bullets, which represents an overall performance at the 100th percentile (i.e., 100% of scores are worse than yours). The tables on the right show how your performance compares to the other 15622 people who have completed Battleground God

Interesting, but I dislike being forced between binary answers to such complex questions.