Explore your "God Beliefs"

[Born Free]

I discovered some time back a great website where one can explore ones consistency of beliefs about 'God'.

The site is an English philosophy site, adddress: http://www.philosophersnet.com/

Go down the page to the Games and Activities section and select Battleground God.

I's be interested to see how people experience their report findings!

Daryl

[Born Free]

Battleground Analysis
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!

[wescape]

Hi Daryl,

Here's my results:

"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."

Apparently I wasn't awarded the highest honor for the following reason:

"You don't think that it is 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 in the previous question you rejected evolutionary theory when the vast majority of scientists think both that the evidence points to its truth and that there is no evidence which falsifies it. Of course, many creationists claim that the evidential case for evolution is by no means conclusive. But in doing so, they go against scientific orthodoxy."

I'll just point out that Galileo also went against prevailing ideas in his time and turned out to be right.

Interesting test though, thanks for making us aware of it.

Wes

[dogzilla]

What the hell is up with that phrasing? Is this a British web site?

I can't understand the langauge... "Any being which it is right to call god must..."

What does that MEAN? Why throw a weighted, value judgment word in there, "right"? That skews the entire meaning of the sentence!

I'm not playing this game any more. The writing is too poor.

[dogzilla]

I took a couple hits because I could not argue back with an automated web site about semantics.

In one question, I said to myself "anybody can justify anything, if they want to believe their own choice is okay," so I clicked, "yes" to some question that wasn't about justifications at all. Then three questions later, I took the hit, "HA! You said that was okay." No, I said anybody can justify anything and so some people might think that one thing is okay. I think this is a B.S "quiz". The language is weighted to push you in certain directions.

So I stopped taking this quiz before I got to hacked off on a Monday morning to do my work. :o

[lsands]

Thanks, Daryl, for the link. My son-in-law is a philosophy major; I'll pass the link on to him. The only part I didn't like about it was the competitive aspect. I want to spend more time at the site, however.

Laraine

[Born Free]

What the hell is up with that phrasing? Is this a British web site?

I can't understand the langauge... "Any being which it is right to call god must..."

What does that MEAN? Why throw a weighted, value judgment word in there, "right"? That skews the entire meaning of the sentence!

I'm not playing this game any more. The writing is too poor.

dogzilla,

You are correct. It is a major english philosophy site.

I can't see the problem you are seeing, so please spell it out for Daryl the Slower? :) I will have to go back through the test to see the full statement, and my responses may not even generate that response at the end, if that is where you got it.

I redid this test myself to refamiliarize myself with it. I found an interesting that Bob McCue's new essay touches on Mormon (JS's) concept of God, in a way that connected with how I responded.

Bob pointed out that JS taught God was God because he had learnt "the Laws" and was in harmony with them, which he identifies as a more Eastern notion. Now I am no JS fan, but that is a notion of God that sits comfortably with me (I would describe myself as agnostic, with a tendence towards a God-energy notion (non-theistic God) rather than a personal God), and if you take one track through this test, you can remain consistent with that take.

I had an interesting conversation with my Catholic-raised son-in-law, who holds the belief that God can do as he/she will, that they are above the law. See, for me, just that realisation alone is a very interesting starting point for a valuable discussion between us. That leads into how I perceive the nature of power, as just one starting point.

I have never detected any anti-God bias in this test, BUT, it does provide feedback where a responent takes either an inconsistent or openly conflicting stance.

Daryl

[Born Free]

Thanks, Daryl, for the link. My son-in-law is a philosophy major; I'll pass the link on to him. The only part I didn't like about it was the competitive aspect. I want to spend more time at the site, however.

Laraine
Laraine,

I love discovering (my) blind spots, so I find a reasonably well designed test a great way to do that. That is very critical for me in the area of beliefs about the Big Guy in the Sky, around which , as I have said elsewhere, I discovered I had a bucket of unscrutinised notions, so was glad of any methodology to flush some up for review.

In what way did you perceive it as competitve? Do you mean the ranking at the end?

Daryl

[dogzilla]

dogzilla,

You are correct. It is a major english philosophy site.

I can't see the problem you are seeing, so please spell it out for Daryl the Slower? :) I will have to go back through the test to see the full statement, and my responses may not even generate that response at the end, if that is where you got it.

Daryl


I think between the two threads, we'll soon understand each other better. :)

First, be aware that I am a writer and editor for a living and words are my thing. Meanings of words are fascinating to me. I ALWAYS get hung up on semantics, because -- having worked so closely with the English language for so long -- I am keenly aware of how a simple choice of words can completely change the meaning of a sentence. I'm all about precision, even in daily conversation, I ask people what they mean by words for which the meaning is obvious to most people. I do not want to assume the obvious, and I want to clarify, so I ask. Yes, I get a lot of sideways glances in meetings at work. People think I'm an idiot because I'll ask what they mean by "is." [/Bill Clinton joke]

So, I was talking about how the questions were worded, and my issue was with, "... which it is right to call God..." Who's to say what is right and what isn't? That survey should have spent about 30 questions determining what the survey taker thought was "right" and what the survey taker's definition of "god" is. The word "right" in itself carries a value judgment that was never addressed within the survey. The syntax was confusing and so the questions weren't clear or concise at all. They may be, if you are raised and trained in British English, rather than American English (why I asked). I'm interested in how Miss Taken reads the questions, since she's from the UK. She might actually be able to sort of "translate" for me! (like lift = elevator)

Example: Perhaps I believe it is right to call my dog "god", mostly because I'm a little dyslexic. Or maybe you believe that hairy purple unicorns in the sky are the only entities for whom it is "right" to call "god." The values that we, as individuals, attach to the word "right" changes how we'll answer the question.

Do you see how each individual's definitions of the words in the question will change how that individual may answer the question, and therefore, the questions themselves are leading or misleading depending on the interpretation of the reader?

So I never even got to the report at the end because I was having so much trouble trying to decide what some web site author thinks is "right to call god." And my crystal ball was broken, so I just got frustrated and quit the site.

Another issue I had is asking two questions within a question, which goes back to "which it is right to call..." Do you want to know what I think is right, or the second part of the question, which I've completely forgotten already? Having learned how to properly write a survey, I've learned how to spot those dual questions-within-questions which skew the results of your survey because you can't possibly know which part of the question the survey taker is answering. Once again, I got stuck on the mechanics of the language, because of what I do for a living... tinker with language.