I bit a bullet, but I’m not sure I understand. They pose the question.
To which I answered True, as God (by the definition put forth most frequently) must have the power to set the laws of the universe.
I am told
That’s not what I thought I was saying. My thoughts on the subject are that God (were such to exist) has the ultimate power to define what is rational. Given this power, God can create a square circle. I don’t understand the problem with my answer. Any help?
I took one hit and won the medal of distinction, but I have a slight beef with the “contradiction” they found.
Question 10 posits no evidence for existence. Question 14 posits no evidence for lack of existence. These are not the same.
There is no evidence that the yeti exists, therefore it probably doesn’t. This is perfectly rational. However, the fact that there is no evidence that the chimpanzee does not exist does not mean that it is rational to believe that it doesn’t.
Do I get extra points for pointing out TPM’s logical flaw?
From the site (my results): "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. "
It seems that your answer was ‘wrong’ only in the sense that it differed from the most prevalent views. shrug It seems to me that only matters if your are playing Family Feud
I don’t think so, else why ask if it was a matter of faith? Defining it as a lack of belief would seem to preclude it being a matter of faith.
It is, of course, perfectly reasonable to define atheism that way, but it would mean the site is playing a semantic trick and that answering “matter of faith” to question 14 would never be correct, regardless of the user’s previous answers.
Well, ultimately I think the whole thing is a semantic trick. But I don’t have any evidence for that
Going back to my original question, it seems that question 16 is simply a more detailed version of questions 5, "Any being which it is right to call God must have the power to do anything. "
If answering True to that question is not biting a bullet, then one MUST answer True to 16 to be logically consistent. Otherwise, answering False to 16 invalidates 5.
I got nailed by the same thing Beeblebrox did and I completely agree with Beeblebrox.
If you have never seen the Loch Ness monster and despite numerous attempts to find it I believe it is rational to assume that the Loch Ness Monster does not exist. Ultimately you take its existence or lack thereof on faith since there is no definitive evidence either way.
Same goes for Atheists. It is rational for a person to believe there is no god but ultimately it is a matter of faith on their part just as it is faith for those who do believe in god’s existence.
I agree with Beezlebubba that a lot of this site was in semantic tricks. I found the evolution questions particularly annoying, because I was forced to choose either “true” or “false.” I don’t HAVE a position on evolution, because I’m not a scientist. As a Christian, I only take the position that however life came about, God was behind it. The test wouldn’t take that into consideration: it assumes that my religion and my scientific understanding either have to be consistent or diametrically opposed.
The exact “semantic trick” that they played is called amphiboly. To quote from the cite, The Atheism Web: Logic & Fallacies
The test’s hit says
But the question the so-called hit references doesn’t say anything about “literally”. It says simply
Thus, the author(s) misdirected like a street magician.
How they would have phrased the question had they been honest is as follows:
“Any being which it is right to call God must have the power to do literally anything, including things that aren’t things at all.”
That would have shown it to be the jabberwocky that it is, so it’s not surprising that they didn’t ask it that way. And besides, “power” is an amphibolous word. Talk about ambiguous.
There just weren’t enough answer options for nearly all of the questions; it is completely unreasonable and possibly even irrational to expect every issue to be boolean.
(although I somehow managed to scrape through without a hit or a bite, don’t know how; is it a trick?)
I too disagree with the direct hit I received. I stated there was no rationnal basis for moral beliefs then stated it was morally wrong to torture babies (or something similar), which was considered as a logical contridiction.
I disagree with this, since I never stated that my morals were rationnal.
Also, It seemed to me that “god” was unsuficiently defined. In several instances, I could have answered “true” as well as “false”. I guess one should begin the test with a clear idea of the kind of god one is talking about.
I bit one bullet (I’m agnostic so I answered false to almost everything save evolution) - the bullet was on the evolution question vs. the proof of God existing one.
It informed me it’s a strange opinion to demand more proof of God’s existence than evolution’s correctness. Rrrirgght. We can empirically test the first, but not the second by any means I know of, so I demand a bit more of God.
I looked at it as such: she makes a square circle. Now the “circle” is a “square” and a “square” is a “circle.” Has anything really changed? Nah, so god can do no such thing.