are your religious views consistent

[Soylent Brice]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=275&topic_id=6839&mesg_id=6839

i was trolling and saw this. decided to take it. only took one direct hit. it was stupid though.

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.

i took a direct hit because i said that i required proof in order to believe in a god, but when it came to evolutionary "theory" that apparently i contradicted myself because according to these twats there is only evidence but no proof about evolution.

dumb. my choices were to bite a bullet or to take the hit and admit i "contradicted" myself. i chose to "contradict". fuck it.

the quiz is amusing, to say the least.

[Kolesar]

1. Yeah, that's where I am stuck

There is no unrefutable proof that drinking and driving is going to kill me, but I know how I am going to play that one, too!

And evolution does happen, I recall the story of the white moth who developed black color to hide on the soot stained trees downwind of England's dark, satanic mills.

--*--
You may have just taken a direct hit!

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:

Bite a bullet and claim that a higher standard of proof is required for belief in God than for belief in evolution.

Take a hit, conceding that there is a contradiction in your responses.

--*--
As for foolishness, eminent philosopher Jerry Seinfeld said: "there's a fine line between fishing and standing there looking like an idiot". I had to think about that one for a few years then it clicked.

[Soylent Brice]

2. that was the one!

i hate quizzes like this, but this one was amusing.

love the Seinfeld quote, BTW.

[laconicsax]

3. This quiz does have some problems.

It even defines biting a bullet as meaning that your answers are logically consistent but not commonly accepted. Accepted by whom? Why does that matter? If my views are logically consistent then what does it matter if an undefined group of 'other people' don't share them?

I bit the bullet you took because extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Evidence of a natural process should be mundane compared to evidence of a supernatural one. This other bullet I 'bit' is pretty silly:

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.

False. My logically consistent views hold that an omnipotent being "has the freedom and power to do that which is logically impossible." This has no bearing on rational discussion of whether such an entity exists. Acknowledging that an omnipotent being is a logical contradiction and therefore likely false is a great place to begin a rational discussion.

[Soylent Brice]

4. you said it all right here:

"Evidence of a natural process should be mundane compared to evidence of a supernatural one."

that sums it all up.

[PVnRT]

5. One could say

God, having created an extraordinarily complex and large universe, must have created some fundamental, unchanging things about it - pi, the speed of light, Planck's constant, etc. In order to maintain the viability of such a universe, said God must adhere to some basic principles, thereby constraining himself. If God were to suddenly, say, double the speed of light, he would, in fact, reduce every star's lifetime by approximately one-quarter, amongst other things, damaging a universe that, since he created it, must by definition be right.

At least, that's what I told myself to try to get a perfect score.

[laconicsax]

6. You assume that maintaining a universe necessarily matters.

Why should an entity capable of creating a universe such as ours care about such things? Shouldn't that entity be able to change something, let it all go to shit, and then start over or even hit some cosmic version of ctrl-z?

Omnipotent beings are inherent logical contradictions--the old 'create a rock so heavy he can't lift it' hypothetical demonstrates this exceedingly well. Assuming that hypothetical creator of the universe exists, any constraints must be either self-imposed for no knowable reason or the result of impotence. If it's the former, it's useless to speculate since no one reason carries more weight than any other. If it's the latter, why call such an entity 'God?'

[PVnRT]

7. It's not without holes

At any rate, it was just philosophical masturbation. There is no God. It's just turtles.