Battleground God

[andrewducker]

I've taken this before, but not for a while - the Battleground God. Check to see how internally consistent your beliefs are (i.e. how often you contradict yourself).
I bit one bullet and took no direct hits. the bullet I bit was:

You say that if there are no compelling arguments or evidence that show that God does not exist, then atheism is a matter of faith, not rationality. Therefore, it seems that you do not think that the mere absence of evidence for the existence of God is enough to justify believing that she does not exist. This view is also suggested by your earlier claim that it is not rational to believe that the Loch Ness monster does not exist even if, despite years of trying, no evidence has been presented to suggest that it does exist.

There is no logical inconsistency in your answers. But by denying that the absence of evidence, even where it has been sought, is enough to justify belief in the non-existence of things, you are required to countenance possibilities that most people would find bizarre. For example, do you really want to claim that it is not rationally justified to believe that intelligent aliens do not live on Mars?

I'd be happy to claim that it is rationally justified to believe there is no evidence for intelligent aliens on Mars. But I wouldn't go so far as to say that I'm absolutely 100% sure. People have lacked evidence for things before and then found the evidence when the technology improves. Of course, if someone claimed there _were_ Martians I'd be extremely sceptical, but I'm not discounting the possibility.

Comments

[redshira.livejournal.com]

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!

I found that I couldn't always give the answers I wanted because the questions were based on a certain concept of "God" - I believe in gods, plural, and my belief system is much more elastic than most people's...so I found the quiz a little rigid. Still, I suppose that was the point.

[andrewducker]

I decided that my definition of God(s) was "incredibly powerful beings with powers beyond our ken, but not infinite or capable of creating logical contradictions"

[wolflady26.livejournal.com]

I found the questions rather flawed.

My biggest beef was that there were several questions that said things like:

"Any being that it is right to call God must know everything that there is to know."

I would have rather they said something like "I believe that if God exists, s/he must know everything there is to know." Because as it stands, the question implies that I make value judgements on other peoples' conceptions of God because they are different from my own. I believe that God is omniscient, but I don't think that people who believe in a God that is not omniscient are automatically wrong.

I failed two, the serial rapist question and the Nessie question, but I don't think that means my opinions on those issues are contradictary, but rather that the questions were obvious traps. Can you justify your belief in something based on your inner convictions? Sure you can. Should those inner convictions enable you to act in a completely irrational and distructive manner? No, they shouldn't. Should they enable you to be exempt from punishment if you do behave in this matter? No, they shouldn't. And I also disagree with religious-inspired violence such as jihad or the Crusades (which were carried out at least as much for political as religious reasons).

Also, the Nessie question. I think that you can say that you believe that God and Nessie don't exist based on a lack of evidence. A lack of evidence is not proof, however, so it remains your faith. That doesn't mean your faith is irrational, however. The use of rational in those two questions was flawed. Rational only implies that you have logical reasons for your belief (either way), not that it's a question of belief vs. fact.

[andrewducker]

If you believe that X is true then sure you should follow that belief? Some people demand external evidence before they believe something is true, others are happy to go on internal convictions without external evidence.

If Peter Sutcliffe _knew_ that God was telling him to kill prostitutes then morally speaking he would be correct in doing so (assuming, that is, that God is the source of all morality). If he'd needed external evidence for the belief that God was telling him this then obviously he'd not have been certain it was God, but then that would leave most Christians stuck.

And I don't believe you can say they don't exist based on a lack of evidence. The most you can say is that you have no evidence for their existence. Believing they don't exist just because a search hasn't found them isn't, to me, rational.

[wolflady26.livejournal.com]

What I said in regards to God and Nessie is that I can say that I BELIEVE one or the other doesn't exist, though I can't, based on a lack of evidence, say that they don't exist. The first is an opinion, the second is a statement of fact.

I can have logical reasons for a belief in God, or for a belief that God doesn't exist. Either way, my belief would be rational, whereas on this site they seem to confuse 'rational' with 'right'. If it weren't possible to be rational in your opinion on the matter, one side or the other would have won long ago.

I believe that Nessie doesn't exist, but I admit the possibility that she does. In the same way, I believe that God exists, but I admit the possibility that He doesn't. I've weighed what I know about both subjects and come to a conclusion which is my belief. My opinon is different on Nessie than on God because I believe that I can see the effects of God's work (and I've never been affected by Nessie at all), and because I believe that it's a lot easier to plumb the secrets of one lake than the whole universe.

But I'm surprised to hear that argument from you, considering that you seem to be quite firm in your belief that God doesn't exist, despite an enormous lack of evidence one way or the other.

[gomichan.livejournal.com]

>Earlier you said that it is not justifiable to base one's beliefs about the external world on a firm, inner conviction, paying no regard to the external evidence, or lack of it, for the truth or falsity of this conviction, but now you say it's justifiable to believe in God on just these grounds. That's a flagrant contradiction!<

The great big hole in this statement caused its terminal exclamation mark to offend me. Now I must go and smite the makers of the test.

Note the word 'external'. Note how it's a key component of the first part of the argument, and entirely lacking in the second. They never asked whether my God was *external*. Silly gits.

[andrewducker]

Please explain to this humble supplicant how your God can be internal to you.

[luxcanon.livejournal.com]

"God" can be what we call a part of our own consciousness.

It is also possible to infer from modern quantum physics
that humanity is a single nDimensional organism, and that each apparent individual is merely a 3 (or 4) dimensional slice, or snapshot, that is connected in some as yet undetermined fashion.

The Hebrew term "Adonai" has been interpreted by some mystics as being that entity which is formed as an aggregate by the "Holy Guardian Angels" of all humanity.

If what I'm saying makes absolutely no sense at all,
I recommend perusing Abbot's Flatland
which might partially illuminate my ravings.

[andrewducker]

I've read Flatland 3 or 4 times. It's a nice allegory.

And all of that still leaves you with sensory input which at the least _seems_ to come from outside, or input which appears to be a product of one's own mind.

[gomichan.livejournal.com]

When I hit the reply button, I thought this was going to be easy. After all, it seems so simple in my head. But it's not simple. I'll give it a try, tho.

Okay, so people concieved of gods as Big Powerful People, who were somewhere, but not here, and did stuff, but you couldn't do stuff to them. Just like us, but, you know, big.

And then as we got a bit more sophisticated, we began to imagine a God that was a Big Powerful *Infinitely Good* Person. We took the 'Big' idea to extremes, and played with the concept of perfection.

Right. But all that is just a game we were playing. A logic game, sometimes, or an imagination game, or an evil headfuck. Something that we -- mortals, individuals, finite beings -- thought up on our own.

The God that I believe in -- and here I mean 'believe' in the faith sense, not the accepted-theory sense, between which the test appeared not to distinguish -- is the Creative Force. That's all. I don't mean the big bang or anything concrete like that. I mean the thing which connects and drives us, which moves us to wonder and learn, the ever-shifting pattern. The opposite of entropy.

Now, this may or may not be personified. I have kind of a feeling that it is. Something shared by (and causative to) all sentient beings would sort of have to be sentient itself, on an order of sentience far more complex than our own. It may even want our love and worship, though in a sense that would be actually loving each other rather than the Creation.

But it is most certainly not a beard in the sky. It's not Some Guy Up There. It's something within us. It's also as real and as abstract as mathematics.

Therefore, there's no contradiction in my beliefs. I think it's necessary to have external evidence for beliefs (in the accepted-theory sense) about the external world. But both faith and its object are internal, and cannot be compared to the external; that's comparing apples and the square root of negative one.

Er... did I make any sense whatsoever?

[moniqueleigh]

Makes sense to me, as this was the one & only hit I took as well. For pretty much the same reason. I believe that the gods are as much internal as external. If I have an experience with Deity, that will prove to my internal convictions that Deity does, in fact, exist. But my experience will have no effect on anyone else - external.

*sigh* I don't think I made much sense with that. I should probably go eat something so my brain can make better connections with the fingers....

[gomichan.livejournal.com]

You're sensical, don't worry. I know just what you mean. I'm guessing from your icon that you're one of those magicky type folks, in which case you're probably familiar with the 'good enough' theorem of magick: If it works, Good Enough. Not necessary to do a lot of exhaustive tests with flashcards and dowsing rods; if your spell got a result, then it got a result. I think there may as well also be a 'good enough' theorem of the divine. If you experience divinity, then you've become a person who experienced divinity, whether *other* people are satisfied about it or not.

Faith *has* to be internal, because it's an experience. All experience is individual and subjective. I can't prove to you that I've felt the green sap of godhood surging in my veins when I paint; neither can I prove that I taste chocolate as chocolate rather than bananas or gasoline. You accept that we have a common basis for experience, but there's never any proof of it.

At some point, you just have to throw up your hands and say, 'Oh well, good enough.'

[moniqueleigh]

Yes, I am pagan, but I don't generally bother with the extra "k" - I separate magic from stage illusion just by the actual words themselves & don't worry over much about others' misconceptions. *snicker*

But, yeah, I know "good enough" all right. :D And yes, no matter how much I may say this is like that, the other person can never know what I'm experiencing, only what s/he experiences in similar circumstances.

[andrewducker]

What it seems to me that you are doing is defining "God" to mean something very different to something that is meant in either dictionary or common usage and then complaining that a fixed, systematic analysis doesn't use it in the same way.

I don't, to be honest, see much similarity between the way you use the word God and the more general usage, which makes me wonder why you use the word at all...

[gomichan.livejournal.com]

Does common usage assume that God must be human-shaped, and must exist in physical space?

I'm too brain-dead lately to enjoy the debate, forgive please.

[andrewducker]

Nothing to forgive.

Common usage does assume a certain amount of anthropomorphism tho.

[luxcanon.livejournal.com]

rant

and besides,
if one is actively seeking to understand God
then it behooves one to not get attached to
prematurely made exclusionary definitions.

I think one can find evidence of God
that does not necessarily indicate
evidence of externally independant awareness.

To assert that a phenomenon
IS or IS NOT evidence of God
requires that some operating definition already be in use
before encountering said phenomenon.

I think this illustrates what may be a dangerous flaw
in the reasoning of any individual who asserts that they
'know' what God is...

It helps to gather, over time, apparently unrelated evidence,
and ask what together it implies about the nature of the Divine, as opposed to, deciding that God is an Old Man with a Beard on a Cloud who tells us what is Right and Wrong, and turning the attention towards finding evidence of, or against, that.

What you're looking for will determine what makes it into your consideration.

/rant

[thadrin.livejournal.com]

2 bullets. No hits.
I think I got caught on the exact definition of the word "Justified" there somewhere.

Too late at night for this stuff, and I'm not clever enough for it anyway.

[darkoshi]

well i got no hits and 2 bitten bullets...

You've just bitten a bullet! You are consistent in applying the principle that it is justifiable to base one's beliefs about the external world on a firm, inner conviction, regardless of the external evidence, or lack of it, for the truth or falsity this conviction. The problem is that it seems you have to accept that people might be justified in their belief that terrible things are right. You have agreed that the rapist is justified in believing that he carries out the will of God, and in an earlier answer you indicated that you think that God defines what is good and what is evil. Therefore, to be consistent, you must think the rapist is justified in believing that he acts morally when he acts on his inner conviction. Hence, you bite the bullet and justify the rapist.

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 first one really depends on the definition of "justifiable". I think it would be "justifiable" to the person holding those beliefs, and in a way I could also understand a person acting upon their firmly held beliefs, even when those are morally repugnant to me. But that doesn't mean that such actions are "right" to my point of view, nor that I think that they should be legal and not punishable.

In a way, it comes down to different people's opinions of what is right and wrong. I accept that people have different opinions, but still naturally prefer it when the actual laws are more in line with my own ideas of right and wrong than anyone else's.

And I certainly don't recall choosing an answer saying that God defines what is good or evil. I'm sure the question was worded differently. Maybe it was the "sinful" one? My definition of the word "sin" is based on however a particular religion defines it, and if a God created a religion, that God could define what was "sinful" or not. But that wouldn't necessarily affect my own definition of what was good and evil.

For the 2nd bullet, well... yeah. I don't think belief in God is rational or debatable. If you believe, you believe, and if you don't, you don't, and there isn't anything anyone can say that will necessarily sway your opinion. And if there was a God, I think there would be the possibility that said God was all-powerful and capable of changing the nature of reality, including changing the definition of squares and circles, or even the nature of physics itself.

I don't really understand the deal with the bullets. Why does it hurt your "score" to have consistent beliefs, just because the general population would consider those beliefs bizarre?

As for the Loch Ness monster, and God, etc., I think it is rational to believe they don't exist, when there has been no proof that they do. But that doesn't mean that it would still be rational to believe that there were absolutely no possibility of them existing. (Yet it might be "justifiable" to not believe in them, if one felt a firm inner conviction...)

[thadrin.livejournal.com]

"The first one really depends on the definition of "justifiable". I think it would be "justifiable" to the person holding those beliefs, and in a way I could also understand a person acting upon their firmly held beliefs, even when those are morally repugnant to me. But that doesn't mean that such actions are "right" to my point of view, nor that I think that they should be legal and not punishable."

Glad to see it wasn't just me who got bitten on that one. The person themselves is morally justified, even if they are what we would call "wrong" in that justification through the norms of society - in this case that rape cannot be justified by any rationale.

Its fine for him to think he's right. He's just wrong.

Does that make sense without making me something morally horrid?

[gomichan.livejournal.com]

I would've been bitten on that one too if I hadn't guessed what they meant. In fact, looking back, I *should've* been bitten, if I were honest and took their question at face value instead of reading between the lines.

The writers of the test have made a mistake that I've seen enshrined in the American justice system, and which turns my stomach. They've confused religion, morality, ethics, and legality. It seems people are just too sentimental to recognize that what is and is not legal has nothing to do with what is right or wrong. It's decided solely by what makes a society function. Granted, for the most part, standard moral and ethical systems hold as 'right' the things that are beneficial to society. But like the song says, correlation is not causation.

[andrewducker]

They've confused religion, morality, ethics, and legality.

I don't think they have. They specifically ask whether you believe ethics come from God, whiuch indicates their understanding that it doesn't do so in all belief systems, for a start.

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

It's not logically possible to prove that something doesn't exist. Any further discussion is therefore (IMO) a waste of time. But hey, it's your time :-)