August 26, 2004

• No hits, bullets or anything else. It's nice to see that my belief in God passes their rigorous philsophical tests.
• Just one Bullet bit.
• No hits, bullets or anything else. It's nice to see that my disbelief in God passes their rigorous philosophical tests.
• No hits or bullets bitten. So my atheism passes the tests, too. I could feel "it depends what you mean by" coming on once or twice, though. And I had to answer more than 15 questions.
• Two hits, one near miss or whathaveyou (biting a bullet? I don't think it means what you think it means...) - but I don't think I agree with all of its conclusions. The one I'd contest is that I said it wasn't justifiable to believe things about the external world based solely on faith, but I thought it was justifiable to believe in a deity because of that. I don't really see a contradiction there, since I don't classify "God" and "gravity" under the same category, but they jumped on it. Maybe they meant something other than what I thought they meant. And the aggressive tone of it all (haha!)kind of rubs me the wrong way. Apart from that, that was interesting.
• I died. But since there is no God I won't go to hell. Or heaven. Phiew!
• I didn't like the wording of the "justifiable" questions either. It's fine with me if other people want to believe in God, and their belief may even be justified. But I don't share that belief. That said, I've always had a soft spot for militant agnostics: "I don't know if God exists, and you don't either!"
• One bullet bit, one direct hit, though I also take issue with some of the finer points... Wurwilf, I also took my direct hit on question 17, "It is justifiable to believe in God if one has a firm, inner conviction that God exists, even if there is no external evidence that God exists." -My answer, True. To which the response was: "Earlier you said that it is not 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 now you say it's justifiable to believe in God on just these grounds. That's a flagrant contradiction!" I disagree because the quiz-makers have clearly made an huge assumption I do not share: that God is exclusively part of the "external world." I am not a theologian but if I recall correctly, most faiths do not assume God to be "external." Fun quiz anyway, thanks.
• Yeah, this is one overly simplistic view of things. An interesting diversion, but there ain't much room for nuance in that quiz.
• one hit, no bullets I agree w/mct re the simplicity, which is particularly troublesome, to me, in regards to the wording of the questions (couched in reference to deity etc.) I think that with more careful wording I would have avoided the one hit, but I can take it ;)
• Unscathed! Very cool concept, and a great post.
• No hits at all. One question though. Why would someone's belief in the supernatural necessarily have to be consistent? It seems to me that the test is geared toward Athiests, Agnostics, and certain forms of Buddhism. When I went through it answering what I thought one of my coworkers, a very intelligent Christian woman, would say, I ended up with one direct hit and four bitten bullets. Clicking randomly yielded 3 direct hits and 2 bitten bullets.
• No hits, no bites, hell I am God. Damn, who is bringing up the fact that there are 7.43% of others who may be God too.
• well I took two hits and bit two bullets... there's a lot of over-simplified answers for questions that can be answered with entire essays, cuz it's not a yes or no issue, particularly when it came to what other people do and whether their behaviour is justifiable (the guy that killed the prostitutes cuz God "told him") I don't think that's right in any level, whether I believe in God or not...but then they turned it around on me and said that since I said "no" then I didn't believe in God, however, when I clicked "yes" it said that I'd bitten the bullet because earlier I had said that good wanted good for the world... so there's no right answer for this? choo choo..
• You've just taken a direct hit! Earlier you agreed that it is rational to believe that 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 ocassion (Loch Ness monster) you agreed that the absence of evidence or argument is enough to rationally justify belief in the non-existence of the Loch Ness monster, but on this occasion (God), you do not. Well, aren't I stupid.
• spectrusery, that's the combination I was talking about, yeah. Maybe it's the idea of "justifying" belief that puts me off. I don't think anyone has to justify their belief. Being consistent is good, and I want everyone to respect that others have faith or don't have it, but the word "justify" irks me. It seems to connote a higher authority which makes the rules you are now "breaking" by having a belief they don't like. I don't like those connotations. Anyway.
• The Loch Ness monster lives in a lake! If God lived in a lake, it would be rational to believe that he does not exist after we'd been searching for so long. But he doesn't live in a lake, does he? He lives in the nebulous void of uncertitude. Which is not a lake, last time I checked. Bite that bullet, bitch!
• heh, dng, that's the exact same hit I took. I read that and said "d'oh!" and felt stupid too. How comforting to be told "your beliefs about God are well thought out and almost entirely internally consistent." almost.
• I think the test bites a credibility bullet for some of the questions, and a whole hail of theologic gunfire for the general logic entrapment of the majority of questions. I died and was resurrected twice before the massacre was over...
• It was the 'justifying' questions that tripped me up to. The machine says my answers were contradictory, but I disagree. I think that based on the wording of the questions, my answers appeared to be possibly contradictory, but perhaps not. Whatever... it was an interesting excercise anyway.
• Logic entrapment? Some questions are too simplistic and should have been worded differently. That bit about the Loch Ness monster probably should have used the 'invisible dragon in the sky' analogy. But Christian theology isn't logical. That's why Christians talk so much about faith. Maybe it's the idea of "justifying" belief that puts me off. I don't think anyone has to justify their belief. Being consistent is good, and I want everyone to respect that others have faith or don't have it, but the word "justify" irks me. It seems to connote a higher authority which makes the rules you are now "breaking" by having a belief they don't like. I don't like those connotations. That's the way logic works. When you say, "Well, I don't have to justify my beliefs," that's very close to, "There's nothing you can say that'll change my mind." People can believe whatever they want. Doesn't mean those beliefs make any sense.
• dng: I got the Loch Ness direct hit too. But I think my logic was impeccable: the two questions are not comparable. In the case of the Loch Ness monster, there are plenty of good ways to attempt to determine whether it exists (sit by loch watching, sonar...) Many such monster-finding methods have been tried, but no positive evidence has been accrued. So I don't believe in the monster. In the case of God, we have no idea how to start determining whether it's real (sitting on Mt Sinai watching and the SETI project don't cut it, in my view). So, in this case, the reason why no evidence has been accrued is that no good experiments have been done. This doesn't mean that if someone thought up, and carried out, a good God-finding experiment, it wouldn't come out positive. It might do; I don't know. So I'm agnostic about God. [Though why I would want to debate with a website that thinks that personal belief structures can be marked like a school exam, I'll never know.]
• I was more annoyed by the bullet biting i received for "having beliefs that others may find bizarre" than for having the same hit as Wurwilf and spectrusery.
• I guess I'm just not very logical -- I got kilt! dng, dogburp, I missed the Loch Ness monster question, too. I don't think the two can be logically equated, unless, of course, you don't believe in a god (or you worship Nessie?). Still, I thought the quiz was funny. I liked the little pictures of "me" getting steadily more injured.
• The Loch Ness monster lives in a lake! dogburp, I'm so there with you, dude. And you made me laugh too. I believe dark matter probably exists, but we can't detect that. Does that mean I have to believe in the Loch Ness monster, alien anal rape, and the thing that used to hide under my bed when I was three?
• my one little stumble was saying that a belief in god is less justified than a belief in evolution. i bit a bullet for that one.
• That's the way logic works. When you say, "Well, I don't have to justify my beliefs," that's very close to, "There's nothing you can say that'll change my mind." I don't think so, not necessarily. To me, "justify" connotes something more like "defend yourself," as in a court. You've done wrong merely by believing; now defend yourself to us, the arbiters of belief. What gives us this authority? I dunno, complete self-confidence? People can believe whatever they want. Doesn't mean those beliefs make any sense. If they can believe whatever they want, they don't have to justify it to anyone - i.e. they are not answerable to anyone for their beliefs.
• krebs cycle, not only do you not have to believe in any of those things, but it would be foolish to do so. There's contrary evidence, and better explanations, for all of those things. Dark matter, on the other hand, is the best explanation we can come up with to explain empirically observed phenomena. It may not exist, we may have to revise that theory, but based on what we know now, it is rational to believe that it probably exists. Nessie, alien probes, and monsters under the bed are all totally ridiculous. Wurwilf, I guess we split on what it means to justify a belief. I mean to say that one should try to support any given belief with evidence and an argument as to why it is correct. I can believe that 2+2=5, but that would be absurd. I would have to ignore reality. If they can believe whatever they want, they don't have to justify it to anyone - i.e. they are not answerable to anyone for their beliefs. I suppose this is right in the strictest sense. Except people should try to justify their beliefs, if not to others, then to themselves. Otherwise 2+2 can equal 5.
• Smo, my point exactly. The test-maker claimed I contradicted myself when I said it was rational to not believe in Nessie since we have been looking and looking and not found it, but it is also rational to believe in God even though we may look and look and not find It. IMHO, these two positions do not contradict each other because the conditions surrounding the beliefs are very different. God, as dogburp, mentioned, does not live in a lake. Likewise, belief in dark matter is rational, all circumstances considered, even though we can't dectect it (possibly like God), but believing in Nessie, alien probes, and monsters under the bed is less rational, since if they existed there would be a high likelihood there would be more concrete physical evidence for them than there is.
• why is rational to believe in god if you look for it and don't find it? is it rational to believe in OIsdjFOSIJDMOSKVMDKLGLSNGUISGN if you look for it and don't find it?
• The difference is the difference between corporeal and incorporeal, in a nutshell. Nessie is believed to be an actual physical being, just like us. Furthermore, she's believed to live in one particular lake. Repeated searches of the lake reveal nothing. If someone argued that God is a corporeal being who lives at the bottom of Loch Ness, and years of searching turned up nothing, then no, belief in him/her/it/etc. would not be justified. But, however widely theologies diverge, nobody takes that stance. It's more accurate to say that it's not irrational to believe in God even if we can't see God. Given the ineffable nature of God, we have to apply another standard of what constitutes reasonable belief. Most people would likely say that if you can find no logical contradiction in the existence of God, then that's enough to have belief in such existence declared reasonable (but notice that nobody's saying that it constitutes *proof* of God's existence).
• krebs, I misread your first post as a legitimate question rather than the rhetorical device it was meant to be. Sorry about that. Although I believe it to be unlikely, I agree that belief in God is rational, if you're talking about a non-specific deity, and even then I would attach a bunch of conditions. But the Judeo-Christian God, and the doctrine that goes with it, that's another beast. It, I would argue, is irrational. It's about faith. On preview: what middleclasstool said.
• I don't think God is in the same class as 2+2=5, either. We are, no matter what, talking about something intangible. Talking about "facts" in the exact same context makes no sense to me. Belief in God is, essentially, a belief in how the world works, and it isn't something so clear-cut or scientific as whether the Loch Ness Monster exists. You can trawl a lake, as mentioned. You can't get a DNA sample of God. They're simply not in the same class. Maybe my left brain and right brain are just too much divided; I like arguing science and religion, but the two don't meet. I don't mean that as a slam; they just cover very different spheres. "This is what, physically, IS" vs. "These are the rules that I believe I should live by." I see it as apples and oranges. If the existence/non-existence of God were a fact, we wouldn't even be having this discussion, because we would know. Attempting to apply scientific rules to matters of faith seems like trying to play football by the rules of baseball. It just doesn't work that way.
• so why is it justifiable to believe in god again?
• Because there is a moment of creation in the life of the universe which is currently unexplainable. And unless time is inifinite in both directions, there is always going to be a moment of creation which is unexplainable. Therefore, its justifiable to believe in a creator
• Obviously, adding a creator only moves the moment of creation back a little, so it becomes who created the creator, and we're stuck back with the infinite again. And thinking about infinity is fucking frightening
• They do address some of the Nessie issues in the FAQ. I was bitten by the Nessie thing, too, and I think it comes down to the questions being somewhat misleadingly worded. The Nessie question says, If, despite years of trying, no strong evidence or argument has been presented..., it is rational to believe..., and the God question says, "As long as there are no compelling arguments or evidence..., atheism is a matter of faith, not rationality." There's a difference between it being rational to believe something and being rationally compelled to belive something (that is, it being irrational to not believe that thing). I read the first question as saying that it is rational to believe Nessie doesn't exist (though we aren't rationally compelled to believe that Nessie doesn't exist), but I read the second as saying that we aren't rationally compelled to be atheists given the lack of evidence. Read that way, there isn't any contradiction between my answers, but in retrospect, that isn't literally what the questions asked.
• is it justifiable to believe that this creator still hangs out and likes humans to behave in a certain way (helping, not harming etc.)?
• why not?, said the athiest
• i'm just wondering if people think it's justifiable to believe in everything and anything that can't be proven or disproved, or if there are certain exceptions. is it justifiable to believe in magic? is it justifiable to believe in astrology? is it justifiable to believe in ghosts? i can't help but wonder if god is getting a free ride because he's such a classic!
• Wurwilf, I think, yeah, belief in God in the 'soft' sense, as in something like deism, is largely untouchable by science. Religion, however, is not. Religion makes belief in God into something tangible, something testable. I'll let it all hang out: I'm sympathetic to the work of JL Mackie and his work on the Theodicy Problem (or the Problem of Evil). He asks, if God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and wholly good (and presumably he possesses free will), given all this, why wouldn't God make us like him? That is to say, why not make us so we freely choose the morally right choice every time? That's an extreme simplification of his argument, but it's the gist. The best answers I've seen have been variations of the 'God created the best of all possible worlds' theme. This position, for me (and Voltaire), is inadequate. Just ask Candide.
• is it justifiable to believe in magic? is it justifiable to believe in astrology? is it justifiable to believe in ghosts? i can't help but wonder if god is getting a free ride because he's such a classic! I'd say it depends on your view of terms like "justifiable" or "reasonable". Personally, I'd say that it's reasonable to believe in something whose existence can't be directly disproven. Look at it from both sides: If you can't prove that God exists, then theists have not proven their case. If you can't prove that God doesn't exist, then atheists have not proven their case. Some would say that at this point you apply Occam's Razor and the atheists "win by default", but that standpoint ignores two basic facts: (1) In philosophy, negative claims have to be proven just as rigorously as positive ones. And negative claims are usually harder to prove than positive ones. (2) Occam's Razor has never been proven. It can't be proven or disproven, actually, providing a nice little piece of irony. Ergo, no serious philosopher uses it as a final standard of proof. To Smo, I'd counter that being made so that you "always freely choose" a certain option is an inherent contradiction: you've not been given a free choice if you've been programmed to always follow a certain direction.
• Religion makes belief in God into something tangible, something testable. I'm not following. You mean things like "miracles literally happened in Biblical times, as written" and so on? I need to read more, I suppose... I've never seen belief in God presented as something testable by science, except in the case of a few extreme kooks (see: Flood geology). So yeah, I'm coming at this from the deism sense. The question "is belief in God justified" still doesn't make sense to me, though. I don't have to justify my preference for green, do I? It's a personal predilection/choice. I don't see how getting the stamp of approval from others enters into it at all. If on the other hand they meant "is belief in God rational" then of course it's not. But they didn't ask that. They asked if it were justified.
• That site's evolution vs. God argument is flawed in the same way as the Nessie argument. Evolution and natural selection are part of a real process that can be observed and documented in the physical world. God is an idea. I disagree that religion is scientific. We can say that Jesus was a physical manifestation of God, for example, but all we really have by way of "proof" are stories in a book written long ago. Where is the science? And why is it that people find it harder and/or scarier to believe in infinity than to believe in God? This is merely using different words to describe something that is unknown to us. If God created the universe, what created God? And we're back to infinity again.
• No hits, no bullets. Does this mean I'm going to hell?
• (1) In philosophy, negative claims have to be proven just as rigorously as positive ones. And negative claims are usually harder to prove than positive ones. I don't think I buy that. If I say that the universe is controlled by the undefinable entity EOSOENSIODMOSDMOSDMOM who lives 500 light years away, is the burden on you to prove that it does not exist or on me to prove that it does?
• So...I guess four hits & biting the bullet means I'm screwed?
• To middleclasstool, I'd argue that it doesn't matter whether or not you believe it to be a contradiction, because if you do, then you'd have to concede that God himself doesn't possess free will (or take away at least one of: all-knowing, all-powerful, and especially, wholly good). Either way, I think you have to concede something that most Christian sects would rather not give up. spackle, I think that religious texts are a kind of evidence. Maybe not the most reliable evidence, but evidence. That said, there at least as many reasons to disbelieve in the accuracy of the Bible as there are reasons to believe. I won't dip into that, however. Anyway, this is a great conversation.
• No no, that's not my point. If someone wants to argue the existence of any metaphysical being, they have to back it up. But likewise, if you believe that there is no metaphysical being, you have to back that up as well. The atheist doesn't have to prove the Christian wrong, then the Jew, then the Scientologist, and on down the line, but he or she does have to make a compelling case that there is nothing, as they say, out there. Text book fallacy of argument: The ad ignorantiam fallacy. In short, you can't prove me wrong, therefore I'm right. Example: I believe that God doesn't exist. You can't prove to me that God does exist. Therefore, I have proven that God doesn't exist. Now, reverse the case, assume a theist is using the same argument structure here: I believe that God exists/ you can't prove to me that God doesn't exist/ therefore I have proven that God exists. Does the argument seem as iron-clad to you? In other words, EVERYBODY has to back up his or her case. Nobody gets the luxury of lying back and waiting for the others to fizzle out.
• to clarify, that last was for sutureself, not smo.
• Oh, and Wurwilf, I think they meant "is your belief in God rationally justified," so I don't think we're far apart on that, just reading it from different angles.
• well, i guess i just don't think that claims with no supporting evidence need to be disproved by those who don't believe them.
• I hear where you're coming from, and I agree with you, when it comes to a standard of absolute proof. In a weird way, that's just the point I made. You're right, for me to *prove* that God exists, I have to prove it. You don't have to prove that I'm wrong, but I have to prove that I'm right. But the same goes for you. However, the question from the quiz is whether such belief is *reasonable* (I think "justifiable" is the word they used, but no way am I going to get into a semantic debate on that point). My standard is that such belief is reasonable precisely because it hasn't been proven impossible. When I studied metaphysics and philosophy of religion, I walked away with only one firm rational conviction: God's existence can no more be proven than disproven. Hence those who believe in something and those who believe in nothing are IMO on equal footing here, and facing an equal challenge. Equal footing because after thousands of years of argument, nobody has proven their case absolutely, and nobody gets a pass or a "win by default" (read any major atheist philosopher, you'll not find one worth his or her salt who argues that he or she does -- they all make rigorous arguments). The equal challenge is then either to look at all major forms of belief surrounding the issue (atheism, theism, polytheism, pantheism, etc.) and decide which one seems *most* reasonable to you (i.e., least full of holes), or else take the skeptic's view and declare that you will take no stand without proof. However, as evidenced in this thread, to a lot of people "reasonable" really doesn't enter into it. But I personally disagree. Damn, I'm longwinded today. Sorry, all. :)
• good post. perhaps i'm actually an agnostic. i've always thought of myself as an atheist, but if that means i have to argue that there is no god... i'd rather just say "i don't see any god around these parts."
• I would encourage to you read up, if you consider the question important. Any college library will have collections of essays and articles on the question. Read the major atheists, read the challenges to their arguments. If those challenges don't seem insurmountable to you, then you've got yourself a good argument. Not that there's anything wrong with agnosticism. ;)
• I was too apathetic to finish the test.
• I think that religious texts are a kind of evidence. Well, yeah, I could say that Grimm's fairy tales are "evidence" too. But evidence of what? How exactly is [insert your preferred text here] any more true or valid than the Qur'an or the I-Ching or the Midrash or the Bhagavad Gita or the Bible or the Zend-Avesta or the Tao-te Ching or the Book of Mormon or I could just go on and on...
• Isn't that the Dawkins argument? - all religions are different, therefore they must all be wrong.
• I'm not saying they are all wrong, or all right. I'm just asking what it actually means to say that "religious texts are a kind of evidence." For what? Which ones? What hypothesis does the evidence support? That sort of thing...
• All this proves is that the study of philosophy is completely retarded and anyone with half a brain realizes this before the age of seventeen.
• AND I WILL TAKE THAT BELIEF TO THE GRAVE, MOTHERFUCKER.
• I wonder what the value is in proving God exists (or doesn't). Would it really change things? I tend to doubt it. And anyway, when we talk about scientific proof, how do we know that's valid? What if we're all just brains in vats, and the "reality" we experience is simply a stimulus response. How could we possibly know that what we were experiencing wasn't real? We'd have loads of evidence that would "prove" that there are certain laws, etc. But they would all be stimulus responses... Or to take a less extreme example--we can love, experience it, feel it, know intrinsically that love exists. But it hasn't changed the world operates. People still suck, for the most part. If there was a way to prove love, it wouldn't change things.
• Evidence for the historical veracity of religious claims. I don't think many people would take seriously the idea that any religious text is absolutely true. Most, though, and especially Biblical tales, are grounded in an understanding of history, natural laws, etc. I don't think it's controversial to say that these understandings were naive or often biased, but they are, in their own way, historical texts. History, after all, can be and often is written by naive and biased scholars. I like to think of the Bible and ancient religious texts as I do of the epic poems of antiquity. While no one really believes that, say, Gilgamesh really did all the things he is said to have done in the epic, I think we can imagine the following scenario: Say you wanted to tell the story of a war between your home town and a neighboring villiage. It doesn't make your side sound all that great if your guys were the aggressors who slaughtered a bunch of weaker villiagers for their land. So why not say they were agents of Satan. Maybe make your side outnumbered one hundred to one. Make the land sacred, etc. A lot of these stories weren't written, either. They were passed down orally. Give it a few generations and any story will change, even given the best of intentions. Still, none of this means that all those stories are totally worthless. They're probably distorted, for the most part, but they're a good reference to check against other accounts of similar incidents. And they say a lot about the people who told them. So while I wouldn't say religious texts are strong or reliable evidence of anything, they are evidence of what people thought, how they imagined themselves, and the like. What people extrapolate from these stories is another story altogether, one that never ceases to astonish me.
• The test's front page. I'm sensing a lot of defensiveness and misunderstanding in this thread. ;) All this test sets out to do is check to see if your beliefs are consistent with each other - it doesn't care WHAT you believe, just as long as your beliefs are consistent. middleclasstool is right, no matter what you say you believe, EVERYBODY has to back up his or her case. You can't just say "I don't believe in God because if there were a God, why does he let wars happen and delicate little children senselessly die?" which makes no logical sense at all. What good argument can you make out of that? On the other hand, blind faith statements such as "I should have died in that plane crash but for some reason I was late that day and couldn't make it! There is a God!" Sure, yes, believe what you want to believe. We all need something. And we all should respect each other's beliefs, live and let live. I like this test because it makes you ask yourself why you believe what you do, and whether it will stand up to would-be questioning by people who will want to understand your faith. I took this test twice: once from the point of view of a Catholic (which I was raised as), and once with my personal beliefs (decidedly non-Catholic, an amalgam of philosophies I picked up from different faiths). For what I believe in now, I got to the end only biting one bullet (yes, the Loch Ness one too), but for the Catholic one - good Lord. I died quickly. There simply isn't a lot of logic behind a religion run primarily by no-questions-asked dogma. As for oversimplified statements - it's the only way, it IS a test after all. Would you prefer wishy-washy ones? Save the nuances for internal battles. And real arguments against real people!
• If there was a way to prove love Love empirically exists. It's verified by a billion acts in a zillion places every minute of the day.
• My post was a response to spackle, if that wasn't clear. f8x, what you're talking about with the brains-in-a-vat hypothesis is a variation of Descartes' Evil Genius argument. Most (all?) philosophers dismiss that line of thinking, and there are a bunch of reasons for it. But I'm afraid I've already written way too much in this thread, so I'll leave it at that.
• The concept of proof when it comes to debating the existence of a god or gods is misleading. What I would like to see is evidence, not proof. Since no evidence has been presented to me which indicates a god or gods exist, I'll stick with being an atheist. As for the quiz, it stated I was logically consistent in my beliefs. I don't need confirmation of that mundane fact after all these years.
• Says: You have taken zero direct hits and zero bullets. /thinks a lot of zero
• Save the nuances for internal battles. And real arguments against real people! I'm a real person.
• If God exists she could make it so that everything now considered sinful becomes morally acceptable and everything that is now considered morally good becomes sinful. Did anyone else notice that? I didn't see any other reference to gender in the quiz.
• Did anyone else notice that? I think that was just a bit of cage-rattling whimsy as it was further into the quiz. The rest of the questions were very straight up. My guess is they though dogmatists (religious or athiest) would have given up long before then.
• I AM NOT DEFENSIVE! SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP! I just took wayyy too much philosophy in college. Those were the dark years for me, when everyone else pretended that the world made sense, against all evidence. Life is so beautiful and strange; why ruin the mystery by inventing an omniscient omnipresent control-freak god to make all the hard decisions and absolve our personal responsibility?
• f8xmulder = Morpheus? ;)
• Love empirically exists. It's verified by a billion acts in a zillion places every minute of the day. This same reasoning could be used to show the existence of god. Many people are inspired to perform acts of love and compassion as they allow the spirit of god to move through them. Religion and spirituality are easy to confuse. Atheist/agnostics protest specific religious texts or belief systems, but don't say much about personal spiritual experience. Got no hits on the test, but I think some of it's assumptions are flawed, in that it makes statements about the nature of reality which may not be valid. (Rationalism is a haven for people who lack imagination)
• This same reasoning could be used to show the existence of god. I don't follow. It's not reasoning.
• I noticed "she" and figured they were switching every now and then. I didn't notice that there were no other references. Hm. As for what "is" "justifiable" means, they probably DID mean "rationally justifiable," but I wish they would have said so. But I'm just being semantic and cantankerous on that point.
• Spirituality does not equal the existence of God.
• Rationality and imagination are not contradictory qualities.
• Smo: ok. genial: no.
• I don't follow. It's not reasoning. Thank you, shawnj, my point exactly.
• Spirituality does not equal the existence of God. Don't recall anyone claiming otherwise. If you can accept a definition of spirituality as a deep feeling of connection to something greater than yourself, then one person's feeling of connection to Nature may be what another would call a connection to God. I think the connection is more important than the name given to it. Rationality and imagination are not contradictory qualities. Of course. Rationality and Rationalism are two very different things. an omniscient omnipresent control-freak god This is only one very narrowly defined god. There are many others available for you not to believe in that are much more fun! Spackle, I don't mean to question everything you've said, but I was a philosophy student once as well. The old habits die hard. The only thing I learned was that adopting any kind of philosophical stance was bound to get you in trouble, sooner or later.
• True, true, it's much better to simply not think about anything. Ahhhh, so... restful...
• Heh- very funny. Thinking gets me in trouble more often than not, but I haven't been able to break the habit.