Battleground God (logic test)

[Dooey Jo]

I think they forgot that one does not believe in evolution theory the way one might believe in a god, therefore the two questions aren't related at all. "God" is also pretty much undefined so of course one should require pretty certain proof before accepting its existence. Of course, one wonders how certain something have to be before they would consider it as such...


And I got the Phantom Menace award (no hits or bites), or whatever. I figured it was probably written by one of those "science and faith are all the same, I'm going to act superior and stay in the middle" guys

[GuppyShark]

They don't actually let you answer "Don't Know" or "Almost Certainly" to the evolution question - it's just there to hit us, and since it doesn't let you amend it, you take a hit.

[brianeyci]

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!

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

How did you do compared to other people?

* 308913 people have completed this activity to date.
* You suffered zero direct hits and bit 1 bullet.
* This compares with the average player of this activity to date who takes 1.39 hits and bites 1.11 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.
* 7.64% of the people who have completed this activity emerged unscathed with the TPM Medal of Honour.

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: (a) Bite a bullet and claim that a higher standard of proof is required for belief in God than for belief in evolution. (b) Take a hit, conceding that there is a contradiction in your responses.

You chose to bite the bullet.

You do need a higher standard of proof to believe in God because the standard of believing in a supernatural deity isn't the same as the standard of believing in scientists. What's wrong with that? If you see someone turn to a man from dust, the first thing that comes to my mind would not be God but some kind of trick because of everything else I know about the world.

Brian

[Old Peculier]

I think they forgot that one does not believe in evolution theory the way one might believe in a god

Of course not, one's a theory and the other's an unnecessary hypothetical entity for starters.

"God" is also pretty much undefined so of course one should require pretty certain proof before accepting its existence.

I would define god as the 'Creator of The Universe' and/or 'The Fiddler of The Universe' and/or 'Some Level of Purpose Somehow Inherently Present In The Universe'. So if I saw evidence of any of these things, I might call it god.

I wouldn't need an excessive evidence to see the possibility of any of these things; only as much evidence as evolutionary theory would need. (In fact, I think that evolutionary theory has more than enough evidence to believe that it is true).

They don't actually let you answer "Don't Know" or "Almost Certainly" to the evolution question - it's just there to hit us, and since it doesn't let you amend it, you take a hit.

I always take "Almost Certainly" to mean 'Beyond all reasonable doubt' and in turn to be shorthand for 'certainly' anyway

[Old Peculier]

You do need a higher standard of proof to believe in God because the standard of believing in a supernatural deity isn't the same as the standard of believing in scientists. What's wrong with that? If you see someone turn to a man from dust, the first thing that comes to my mind would not be God but some kind of trick because of everything else I know about the world.

Sure, I'd assume it was some kind of illusion or tech, so I wouldn't count it as evidence of a god at all. All it would be is evidence of something which turned someone into dust, or something which made it look like someone turned into dust, or that you were delusional.

If I saw something which logically must have been caused by a god (going by my previous definition, it would probably be some underlying pattern in the universe, such as a code in Pi as in Contact) then I would be forced to accept the god conclusion, and start to build a theory around how in the hell it did shit like that. (Or, more likely, let someone else build a theory )

[Steel]

If I saw something which logically must have been caused by a god (going by my previous definition, it would probably be some underlying pattern in the universe, such as a code in Pi as in Contact) then I would be forced to accept the god conclusion, and start to build a theory around how in the hell it did shit like that. (Or, more likely, let someone else build a theory )

There is absolutely nothing that a code in Pi could represent. As Pi is a wonderful transcendental number, it has an infinite decimal expansion that will go on totally unpredictably.

This means that eventually any series of digits of arbitrary length will appear. That is to say, that if you look far enough you will come accross your own date of birth, credit card number and pin, and the ASCII code for your name and the brand of your underwear.

You could make any code you wanted to say god exists and you would find your required result. Such a thing would prove nothing.

[Zero]

The evolution/god bit got me, but only because my definition of certainty doesn't mean 100% absolute certainty, simply because I don't believe THAT level of certainty can possibly exist, ever. I think that's cheap wording at best.

[Old Peculier]

There is absolutely nothing that a code in Pi could represent. As Pi is a wonderful transcendental number, it has an infinite decimal expansion that will go on totally unpredictably

Is there no way to put a statistically very unlikely pattern into Pi? (I'm not talking about possible in the 'fiddle with the universe' sense, but the 'could any pattern actually be unlikely' sense.) I suppose even if a recognizable pattern was very unlikely, there would still be a <very large number here> other very unlikely patterns which could crop up as well.

In that case, replace "some underlying pattern in the universe, such as a code in Pi as in Contact" with "some underlying meaningful/conscious pattern in the universe, such as fuck knows what".

[Surlethe]

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 very few 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. The bitten bullets occurred because you responded in ways that required that you held views that most people would have found strange, incredible or unpalatable. At the bottom of this page, we have reproduced the analyses of your direct hit and bitten bullets.

Because you only suffered one direct hit and bit very few bullets, you qualify for our second highest award. A good achievement!

I contradicted myself on justifiability; I should've read the question more clearly. After all, one can't justify an irrational belief; one can only hold it.

[Rye]

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!

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

I didn't quite get the relevance of the question about torturing someone who is innocent. I just put anything on that one to see what would happen, and nothing did. In any pragmatic sense of moral reasoning, one would choose it would be immoral, but even if you put false and it is ok (basing that on some contrived scenario), you get the same result.

[Captain Cyran]

Bit one bullet and took a bullet.

[Gandalf]

TPM Medal of Distinction.

Bit two bullets, no direct hits.

[Zadius]

"You suffered zero direct hits and bit zero bullets."

Yay me!

[Adrian Laguna]

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.

Direct Hit 1

You answered "True" to Question 7 and "False" to Question 15.

These answers generated the following response:

You've just taken a direct hit! Earlier you said 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 of this conviction. But now you do not accept that the rapist Peter Sutcliffe was justified in doing just that. The example of the rapist has exposed that you do not in fact agree that any belief is justified just because one is convinced of its truth. So you need to revise your opinion here. The intellectual sniper has scored a bull's-eye!

I don't think there is a contradiction in my belief system. The problem might be that I make a distinction between holding beliefs and acting on them, while the test does not. Another possibility is that I'm using the wrong definition of "justify".

In Question 7 I was saying, "You can believe whatever you want." While in Question 15 I was clarifying, "but you can't do whatever you want, reguardless of your beliefs."

[JediMaster415]

I got one direct hit and two bit bullets.

6&13 got me too. 4&12, as well.

[Zadius]

I didn't bite the god/evolution bullet, and I don't really see what the problem is. Why should a person need irrevocable proof to believe in God? Strong compelling evidence would do just fine, but no such evidence exists that I've ever become aware of.

[Drooling Iguana]

I also bit the evolution/God proof crap. Seemed like a nit-picky cheap shot to me.

Did anyone here not get hit by it ?

It was the only one to get me

I managed to avoid biting that bullet. My reasoning was that if tomorrow a being were to descend from the heavens amid a choir of angels, announce that he is God, and then set about healing the sick, throwing armies around and whatnot, it still would not be certain and irrevocable proof that God exists. It could be an illusion, or a hallucination, or aliens with advanced technology screwing with us. It would not, however, be foolish to believe that God exists after such a demonstration.

[Drooling Iguana]

Got through with 0 hits and 0 bullets, but the way. Didn't mention that in my previous message.

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!

I'm going to see if it's possible to get a perfect score if one starts from the premise that God exists now, just out of curiosity.

[Drooling Iguana]

Sorry for the triple post, but I just took the test again, this time answering that God does exist in the first question, but handling the rest the same way as I did before. It still gave me the same score. I don't think question 1 actually has any bearing on your final results.

[Steel]

Is there no way to put a statistically very unlikely pattern into Pi?

Well no, you cant put a pattern into it, it already contains all patterns.

Think about it, if you just sat down and wrote out a string of numbers forever (without repeating a small string), you would eventually put down any string of numbers anybody else could care to write down.

[Metatwaddle]

I bit only one bullet, and that was on the Proof of evolution/proof of god thing. Of course, it might be a bit more of an issue were there any directly attributable evidence for god.

Ditto. I wasn't thinking very well at that point, I guess.

[Molyneux]

Is there no way to put a statistically very unlikely pattern into Pi?

Well no, you cant put a pattern into it, it already contains all patterns.

Think about it, if you just sat down and wrote out a string of numbers forever (without repeating a small string), you would eventually put down any string of numbers anybody else could care to write down.

Relevant link:

http://www.angio.net/pi/piquery

I found my birthday, phone number and street number in it, but not my Social Security number ^_^

[Vendetta]

No hits, one bullet. Which is that I do require a higher standard of proof for the existance of God than for the existence of evolution.

And I am entirely correct to do so, because the concept of a being which is removed from extant physical laws is more controversial than the concept of a system which obeys those laws.

The greater the controversy of a claim, the more proof is required before the claim can be accepted.

[Steel]

Is there no way to put a statistically very unlikely pattern into Pi?

Well no, you cant put a pattern into it, it already contains all patterns.

Think about it, if you just sat down and wrote out a string of numbers forever (without repeating a small string), you would eventually put down any string of numbers anybody else could care to write down.

Relevant link:

http://www.angio.net/pi/piquery

I found my birthday, phone number and street number in it, but not my Social Security number ^_^

Damn thats cool!

I mean...

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Its not working... looks like ill be stuck like this