Has anyone tried the religious belief consistency test?

[Evangelicalhumanist]

People can believe in Nessie without evidence. I believe I've found evidence for God. No contradiction.

No, there's no contradiction. There's no contradiction in kids who believe in the Tooth Fairy, or Americans who believe Q-Anon theory implicitly. Nor is there a contradiction in those who believed that Allah wanted the World Trade Center and Pentagon destroyed by hijacked airplanes. No contradiction at all. Belief is belief.

There was no contradiction in the beliefs of Aztecs and Incas that their gods demanded the sacrifice of humans. No contradiction at all.

What there was NOT, however, was any particular evidence that all these beliefs were true. And therefore the World Trade Center is gone, along with nearly 3,000 people, the Pentagon has been repaired, though the lives of those who died there were not restored. There's no particular evidence that the Aztecs and Incas making human sacrifices to their gods had a lot of success, and since those cultures have since gone extinct, there's at least a little evidence that suggests those gods either didn't exist, couldn't help, or weren't interested.

 

[Left Coast]

I didn't find that to be my situation.

Different strokes.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Many of our moral values are built on a strong inner-conviction that they are correct with no independent evidence that the are correct. They are subjective value preferences, but ones we think should also be held by other people (thus being about the external world). These are justified because they lead to positive consequences, not because they are objectively true.

Someone being justified in believing God told him to kill people would require God actually existing.

My views did not produce an inconsistency here.
Basically, what I believe is we are pro-social animals who are genetically wired to behave in pro-social ways. But that isn't entirely in my head. I can point to many animals who benefit and fuction better as a group than as individuals. Sutcliffe couldn't do this. There is nothing outside of his own head to support his views.

Earlier you responded that it is rational to believe the Loch Ness monster does not exist if there is an absence of strong evidence or argument that it does. No strong evidence or argument was required to show that the monster does not exist - absence of evidence or argument was enough. But now you claim that the atheist needs to be able to provide strong arguments or evidence if their belief in the non-existence of God is to be rational rather than a matter of faith.

The contradiction is that on the first occasion (Loch Ness monster) you agreed that the absence of evidence or argument is enough to justify belief in the non-existence of the Loch Ness monster, but on this occasion (God), you do not.

The previous question was about people having searched for the monster without finding evidence it existed (thus was an argument for it not existing).

In the absence of arguments or evidence that God doesn't exist then it is a matter of faith. Having no evidence that something exists is an argument that it doesn't exist though given it either exists or it doesn't. This is what the monster argument showed.

I don't believe atheism is a matter of faith, I believe there are arguments (not proof) against God's existence.

You must have answered true instead of false then, because answer false (atheism is not a matter of faith) is congruent with the one about dismissing Nessie in light of the lack of evidence.

 

[blü 2]

It's interesting, and only takes a few minutes. And you might be surprised at how you fare.

Battleground God

I got into an argument with the program right at the start.

It makes no allowance for my view that the question Does a [real] god exist? is incoherent in the absence of a clear and sufficient definition appropriate to a god with objective existence.

Having therefore answered 'Don't know' to the first question, and being regularly declared to be inconsistent after that, I gave up.

 

[robocop (actually)]

No, there's no contradiction. There's no contradiction in kids who believe in the Tooth Fairy, or Americans who believe Q-Anon theory implicitly. Nor is there a contradiction in those who believed that Allah wanted the World Trade Center and Pentagon destroyed by hijacked airplanes. No contradiction at all. Belief is belief.

There was no contradiction in the beliefs of Aztecs and Incas that their gods demanded the sacrifice of humans. No contradiction at all.

What there was NOT, however, was any particular evidence that all these beliefs were true. And therefore the World Trade Center is gone, along with nearly 3,000 people, the Pentagon has been repaired, though the lives of those who died there were not restored. There's no particular evidence that the Aztecs and Incas making human sacrifices to their gods had a lot of success, and since those cultures have since gone extinct, there's at least a little evidence that suggests those gods either didn't exist, couldn't help, or weren't interested.

I am very smart; I don't need to hear things I already understand.

 

[Meow Mix]

It's interesting, and only takes a few minutes. And you might be surprised at how you fare.

Battleground God

Many of these questions are not good, unfortunately. I'm on Question 6 so far and have had to frown as I selected an answer.

Some questions that I remember:

"It's logically possible that God exists" (or something like this). Well, that depends on how God is defined. There are all kinds of paradoxes showing particular sets of properties can't coexist (like the aseity-sovereignty paradox, the Problem of Evil, etc). So I treated this question as if it were asking, "it's logically possible that some god might exist."

On Question 6 I'm frowning again: "Any entity that it is right to call God must have the power to do anything." Well, there's a big caveat here. Omnipotence is the capacity to actualize any logically possible state of affairs, and that's fine. But some like Descartes were very wrong when they suggested that omnipotence could do the logically impossible (which is totally noncognitive nonsense). So which of these is this question asking?

There are other instances I don't recall right away. But I can see how this can lead to false "hits" and false "bullets" with these questions being asked incorrectly, or without accounting for nuances that are very necessary to truly answer the questions.

Edit: Q10 says "torturing innocent people is morally wrong," with only true/false as answers. But this assumes only realist answers (I'm a moral noncognitivist).

Edit: Q17 or something finally made the distinction between omnipotence with logical possibility and some noncognitive state of affairs where God could do logical impossibilities.

Anyway I got 0 bullets and 0 hits.

 

[osgart]

71%

I bit a bullet about God and logical impossibility; all powerful within logical possibility is valid.

And I have a higher standard for God then evolution. Mainly because God would be powerful enough to let us all know beyond a doubt that God exists.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

You navigated the battlefield suffering 0 hits and biting 0 bullets, which represents an overall performance at the 100th percentile (i.e., 100% of scores are worse than yours). The tables on the right show how your performance compares to the other 114650 people who have completed Battleground God.

I would have been stunned if I didn't get rated highly for consistency, given how simple my beliefs are. Whether they're correct is of course outside the scope.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Many of these questions are not good, unfortunately. I'm on Question 6 so far and have had to frown as I selected an answer.

Some questions that I remember:

"It's logically possible that God exists" (or something like this). Well, that depends on how God is defined. There are all kinds of paradoxes showing particular sets of properties can't coexist (like the aseity-sovereignty paradox, the Problem of Evil, etc). So I treated this question as if it were asking, "it's logically possible that some god might exist."

On Question 6 I'm frowning again: "Any entity that it is right to call God must have the power to do anything." Well, there's a big caveat here. Omnipotence is the capacity to actualize any logically possible state of affairs, and that's fine. But some like Descartes were very wrong when they suggested that omnipotence could do the logically impossible (which is totally noncognitive nonsense). So which of these is this question asking?

There are other instances I don't recall right away. But I can see how this can lead to false "hits" and false "bullets" with these questions being asked incorrectly, or without accounting for nuances that are very necessary to truly answer the questions.

Edit: Q10 says "torturing innocent people is morally wrong," with only true/false as answers. But this assumes only realist answers (I'm a moral noncognitivist).

Edit: Q17 or something finally made the distinction between omnipotence with logical possibility and some noncognitive state of affairs where God could do logical impossibilities.

Anyway I got 0 bullets and 0 hits.

I went to respond to all this, and bored myself with me answers. So I've deleted them.
However, back when I was what you'd call a Freshman at Uni, one of my subjects was Reflective Learning and Teaching. A large part of that class was around challenging internal biases, taking us out of our comfort zones, etc.

We did a quiz. It had what seemed like very simple questions, and we were expected to jot down answers. We were then marked, with the vast majority of us getting ridiculously low scores.
The point of the test wasn't that we should be able to pass it. Indeed, cheating would have been the only possible way to pass it. Instead, each answer was framed from a different cultural perspective.

For example (and to be clear I'm making this up...no way I remember the actual questions...lol

There was one of those 'My wife's sisters husbands sons cousin is my ______'

People were putting all sorts of answers. Second cousin once removed, or whatever. The answer was simply 'cousin', since the answer was framed based on Yorta Yorta familial relationships, instead of Western ones.

There were broadly three reacti0ns.
1. Some people rolled their eyes and chuckled. Ahhh...it was a trick quiz, and we were all going to have a score of 0. I was in that group.
2. Some people treated it like their eyes had been opened to some higher truth, and this would be life changing. I commonly think of those folks as 'try-hards' but whatever.
3. Some folks...a surprising number I felt...figured they'd been cheated, and were being unfairly marked for their responses. Of course, this was the point that was being made in some ways. Quizes all hold cultural and other biases in how they're worded, and in what a valid answer looks like. I just figured it was weird to have an emotional, rather than intellectual response to it. Like...you get that you're making his point for him here, right?

So....if you were in my class, I'd have you in bucket 3 right now. Bahahahahaha!

To be fair, bucket 3 folks are the most fun ones to torment as a teacher.

 

[Meow Mix]

I went to respond to all this, and bored myself with me answers. So I've deleted them.
However, back when I was what you'd call a Freshman at Uni, one of my subjects was Reflective Learning and Teaching. A large part of that class was around challenging internal biases, taking us out of our comfort zones, etc.

We did a quiz. It had what seemed like very simple questions, and we were expected to jot down answers. We were then marked, with the vast majority of us getting ridiculously low scores.
The point of the test wasn't that we should be able to pass it. Indeed, cheating would have been the only possible way to pass it. Instead, each answer was framed from a different cultural perspective.

For example (and to be clear I'm making this up...no way I remember the actual questions...lol

There was one of those 'My wife's sisters husbands sons cousin is my ______'

People were putting all sorts of answers. Second cousin once removed, or whatever. The answer was simply 'cousin', since the answer was framed based on Yorta Yorta familial relationships, instead of Western ones.

There were broadly three reacti0ns.
1. Some people rolled their eyes and chuckled. Ahhh...it was a trick quiz, and we were all going to have a score of 0. I was in that group.
2. Some people treated it like their eyes had been opened to some higher truth, and this would be life changing. I commonly think of those folks as 'try-hards' but whatever.
3. Some folks...a surprising number I felt...figured they'd been cheated, and were being unfairly marked for their responses. Of course, this was the point that was being made in some ways. Quizes all hold cultural and other biases in how they're worded, and in what a valid answer looks like. I just figured it was weird to have an emotional, rather than intellectual response to it. Like...you get that you're making his point for him here, right?

So....if you were in my class, I'd have you in bucket 3 right now. Bahahahahaha!

To be fair, bucket 3 folks are the most fun ones to torment as a teacher.

I don’t think my response was bucket 3 though: this test is not designed to show cultural differences; it’s a philosophical test about consistency. Yet it frames its questions incorrectly to achieve this goal.

(I was gonna say “I’ll give you a bucket 3, mister” but that probably sounds more intriguing than frightening. Or maybe both)

 

[lewisnotmiller]

“100% no hits”, whatever that means.

I wonder if whoever created the test expected me to agree that “the torture of innocents is morally wrong” (I don’t, and who is really “innocent”?), that without God there can be no morality (morality is entirely subjective), that any being who could be called God would want a world with as little suffering as possible (why would anyone want to live in a g-rated movie?) , or that this or that is “justified” for whatever reason (“Justify” is one of my least favorite words, I do not feel any obligation to “justify” my actions to other people).

It's not measuring 'right' or 'wrong' answers. It's measuring consistency of answers.
To whit, I also for 100% no hits, but said that the torture of innocents IS morally wrong.

Of course, I see innocence and morals as subjective. But still, that statement seems obviously true to me. And to others it's not...fair enough...but the quiz didn't mark us 'right' or 'wrong' in our answer.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

People can believe in Nessie without evidence.

Of course they can. But the question wasn't whether they simple can believe.

I believe I've found evidence for God. No contradiction.

The quiz cares about internal versus external sources of belief, and how consistently you apply these to different situations. That's all.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

I don’t think my response was bucket 3 though: this test is not designed to show cultural differences; it’s a philosophical test about consistency. Yet it frames its questions incorrectly to achieve this goal.

Wait...my amusing anecdotes are supposed to logically connect to the topic at hand now? When the heck did THAT happen???

(I was gonna say “I’ll give you a bucket 3, mister” but that probably sounds more intriguing than frightening. Or maybe both)

Both. I have stories, actually...not about buckets, just back from when I did some Uni lecturing (I was a grad student, so only a few years older than most of the class, and quite a bit younger than some).
So I'm 21, lecturing 18 and 19 year olds on Language Development, all done in tutorial style settings, all female apart from literally one guy. At some point, one of the girls innocently said something in class which absolutely sounded like a euphemism. She blushed beetroot red, and the class erupted. But some of them also noticed that I kinda blushed a little as well.
After that, their favourite sport was framing correct answers to questions in the form of double entendre. I could never work out if that was my favourite ever class to teach, or if I dreaded the whole experience.

 

[Aštra’el]

It's not measuring 'right' or 'wrong' answers. It's measuring consistency of answers.
To whit, I also for 100% no hits, but said that the torture of innocents IS morally wrong.

Of course, I see innocence and morals as subjective. But still, that statement seems obviously true to me. And to others it's not...fair enough...but the quiz didn't mark us 'right' or 'wrong' in our answer.

The reason I wondered if the creators expected me to answer “true” on the questions I mentioned is because I answered “true” on the first question, “Does God exist?”. I understand what was being tested.

 

[firedragon]

I don’t think my response was bucket 3 though: this test is not designed to show cultural differences; it’s a philosophical test about consistency. Yet it frames its questions incorrectly to achieve this goal.

(I was gonna say “I’ll give you a bucket 3, mister” but that probably sounds more intriguing than frightening. Or maybe both)

MM. This flow of questioning is used in training programmes for team building and sales etc. to companies in the business of providing some kind of service. This is shown as a methodology of cornering people as a tactic. For example, you ask several questions with true dichotomies and the trainee says yes, yes, yes, yes, and then you give a false dichotomy like "Is evolution by natural random selection fact, true or false" you cognitively tend to perceive that as a valid true dichotomy and you are compelled to answer, especially since you are given two choices, true or false.

If people are truly thinking this is a test about consistency they have a bias and cant see beyond their blinkers. But, its a great learning. Anyway, there is another website that has many like that as example and if you learn the technique you can sell anything. Especially larger ones.

 

[Augustus]

My views did not produce an inconsistency here.
Basically, what I believe is we are pro-social animals who are genetically wired to behave in pro-social ways. But that isn't entirely in my head. I can point to many animals who benefit and fuction better as a group than as individuals. Sutcliffe couldn't do this. There is nothing outside of his own head to support his views.

I see your point, but this genetic hard-wiring combined with socialisation can create a large range of 'natural' behaviours.

Honour cultures, virtue ethics, utilitarianism are all consequences of our moral faculties but produce completely different behaviours.

We don't look at honour killings and find them to be acceptable manifestations of our pro-social tendencies, we are appalled by them due to inner conviction that they are wrong.

You must have answered true instead of false then, because answer false (atheism is not a matter of faith) is congruent with the one about dismissing Nessie in light of the lack of evidence.

In the quiz I answered true. That is because the question said in the absence of arguments or evidence.

The question does not reflect the real world (or the monster question) where there are arguments.

 

[stvdv]

It's interesting, and only takes a few minutes. And you might be surprised at how you fare.

Battleground God

Interesting indeed,
BUT does not make sense, as it is flawed

01) God exists
True

02) God is a logical possibility (i.e., there is nothing contradictory about the idea of God)
To understand the physical world logic will do
To understand the metaphysical and/or spiritual world logic won't cut it
Hence False

Choose: 01=True + 02=False Gives: "You've just bitten a bullet!"

How can it be claimed that God exists, yet God is a logical impossibility? Indeed, many would see this as a direct hit, because it is usually held that a logical impossibility cannot exist. But we would rather say this view requires biting a nasty bullet, for if you really believe logical impossibilities can exist, what criteria can you use to determine whether anything in this world is possible or not?

Hence the test is flawed, but interesting of course, as it seems to me that the test "has an agenda"
But interesting, because it makes you think and use brains, dharma etc

 

[Mock Turtle]

Same here.

It was a little unclear, but I think that means it is safe to assume that we are better than everyone.

Which also means we may have to fight to the death. There can only be one.

Same here, and now I will just have to stay away from spikes at head height so as to avoid bursting it.

 

[Spirit of Light]

It's interesting, and only takes a few minutes. And you might be surprised at how you fare.

Battleground God

I took the test just for fun, one bitten and one bullet was the result.
In my understanding the questions was made to make people fail, especially since it was made out of "logical" thinking and not from how a spiritual person actually do think, and that is not always in a physical worldly logical sense to others.

 

[Secret Chief]

there is so much talking past each other.

On this forum, not this thread, as I said.

Look at how many people became defensive over this test

Personally I'm not "defensive" about the test; I'm simply saying it's a crock. I could have scored 0% or 100% but it's still a crock.