Test Your God Logic

Congratulations! You have made it to the end of this activity.

You took 1 direct hit and you bit zero bullets. The average player of this activity to date takes 1.39 hits and bites 1.11 bullets. 401196 people have so far undertaken this activity.

Click the link below for further analysis of your performance and to see if you’ve won an award.

While that quiz is interesting, it’s decidedly slanted and close to half the questions don’t have black and white answers or ‘True’ and ‘False’.

[...] Via The Friendly Atheist [...]

* You suffered 1 direct hit and bit 1 bullet.

I disagreed with the premise of one of the questions, but I think I did pretty good.

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!
————————————————————

How did you do compared to other people?

- 401230 people have completed this activity to date.
- You suffered zero direct hits and bit zero bullets.
- This compares with the average player of this activity to date who takes 1.39 hits and bites 1.11 bullets.
- 7.67% of the people who have completed this activity, like you, emerged unscathed with the TPM Medal of Honour.
- 45.68% of the people who have completed this activity took very little damage and were awarded the TPM Medal of Distinction.
————————————————————

Nice. And no, I didn’t cheat. It was all pretty much just basic logic (though I had to think question 17 over a few times).

I bit one bullet, but like Kyle O’Brien, I also disagree with the wording of a couple of questions.

I had to bite one bullet – but considering everything else I’m pleased. Like others, I had a few issues with some of the wording, but my convictions are firm!

That was fun and easy!

“You took zero direct hits and you bit zero bullets. The average player of this activity to date takes 1.39 hits and bites 1.11 bullets. 401283 people have so far undertaken this activity.

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!”

I didn’t take any hits or have to bite any bullets, and yes, I was completely honest. Though frankly I think some of the questions were very poorly done and often set up false dichotomies.

Also, I could have sworn you’ve posted this before Hemant. At least, I know I’ve taken it before, and I’m not sure where else I would have come across it.

0 hits taken, 0 bullets bitten:

Battleground Analysis
Congratulations!
You have been awarded the TPM medal of honour! This is our highest award for outstanding service on the intellectual battleground.
…

How did you do compared to other people?

401319 people have completed this activity to date.
You suffered zero direct hits and bit zero bullets.
This compares with the average player of this activity to date who takes 1.39 hits and bites 1.11 bullets.
7.67% of the people who have completed this activity, like you, emerged unscathed with the TPM Medal of Honour.
45.68% of the people who have completed this activity took very little damage and were awarded the TPM Medal of Distinction.

-Rusty

1 bullet and no hits!

Man, the first time I was only aiming for logically consistency, and I guess I have a unusual sense of logic, because I bit two bullets, and took two hits. For some reason, I was thinking that all the ones in the form of “If a being can be called God, then it can do [blank]” must logically be true if there is no such being. It’s logically consistent to have an inconsistent definition of God if you don’t think God exists! I think I also misunderstood the questions, since I apparently had said that atheists need to have faith. Oh, and later, I justified rape.

On my second try, I was honest (though I ignored nuances), and I got through fine.

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.

I took this same test almost two years ago, shortly after becoming an atheist. I think I had to bite one or two bullets at that time, so I according to this test my beliefs are more internally consistent and better thought out than they were then.

I’m curious how many sets of answers result in the TPM medal of honor.

Haha! Two bullets, two hits; I messed up on the rapist question, because I answered his belief was justified – assuming he was already a sicko so the justification was, for him, valid. Thanks!

You have reached the end!
Congratulations! You have made it to the end of this activity.
You took zero direct hits and you bit zero bullets. The average player of this activity to date takes 1.39 hits and bites 1.11 bullets. 401365 people have so far undertaken this activity.

How did you do compared to other people?
401365 people have completed this activity to date.
You suffered zero direct hits and bit zero bullets.
This compares with the average player of this activity to date who takes 1.39 hits and bites 1.11 bullets.
7.67% of the people who have completed this activity, like you, emerged unscathed with the TPM Medal of Honour.
45.68% of the people who have completed this activity took very little damage and were awarded the TPM Medal of Distinction.

Maybe it’s me, but that was incredibly easy.

What tripped me up on the Atheist/faith question?

[#14] As long as there are no compelling arguments or evidence that show that God does not exist, atheism is a matter of faith, not rationality.

I consider it a compelling argument if we’ve tested for something, and found an absence of evidence. So when they say there is no compelling argument, I take that to mean that there have not tried any tests in which we would expect to find God.

On the other hand, the Loch Ness question assumed that we have tried to find the Loch Ness monster and failed. Therefore, there is a compelling argument against the Loch Ness Monster.

I only answered the question consistently the second time because I had figured out what they mean by “compelling argument”.

Zero direct hits and ate one bullet. Nobody’s perfect.

Mildly interesting, but as has been said, several questions are a poorly worded or unclear. Also, I disagree with the comparison between Nessie and God. An impersonal God would be a lot harder to find than a gigantic creature living in a lake.

Medal of Honour (that is, no hits or bullet biting). This is probably because I heavily underpowered God, not requiring that s/he be omnipotent, omniscient, or omnibenevolent. Because really, who wouldn’t be willing to call a being God even if s/he could only do almost anything or knew almost everything?

And I actually played this a long time ago, at which time I took no hits and ate a lot of bullets. Apparently I’ve become less controversial since then.

You took zero direct hits and you bit 2 bullets.

This one tripped me up:

You claimed earlier that any being which it is right to call God must want there to be as little suffering in the world as possible. But you say that God could make it so that everything now considered sinful becomes morally acceptable and everything that is now considered morally good becomes sinful. What this means is that God could make the reduction of suffering a sin… yet you’ve said that God must want to reduce suffering. There is a way out of this, but it means biting a bullet. So you’ve got to make a choice: (a) Bite the bullet and say that it is possible that God wants what is sinful (to reiterate the argument here – she must want to reduce suffering; she could make the reduction of suffering a sin; but if she did so, what she wanted (reducing suffering) would be sinful). (b) Take a direct hit and say that this is an area where your beliefs are just in contradiction.

I earlier established that a being worthy of being called a God could do anything. So I just imagined a down is up world where pleasure caused pain and vice versa. So I had to choose one contradiction or the other. Shrug.

I got this one too:

You’ve just bitten a bullet! In saying that God has the freedom and power to do that which is logically impossible (like creating square circles), you are saying that any discussion of God and ultimate reality cannot be constrained by basic principles of rationality. This would seem to make rational discourse about God impossible. If rational discourse about God is impossible, there is nothing rational we can say about God and nothing rational we can say to support our belief or disbelief in God. To reject rational constraints on religious discourse in this fashion requires accepting that religious convictions, including your religious convictions, are beyond any debate or rational discussion. This is to bite a bullet.

As Miller said above, the fact that I hold an internally contradictory definition of God is not surprising. Internal befuddlement on the question of God is one of the reasons i don’t believe in such an entity.

This quiz was pretty easy. I think most atheists would have no problem getting at least a very good score, if not a perfect score. I got:

“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!”

And I’m sure most of the atheists in this thread got a similar score.

By the way, I bet most religious people would disagree with the conclusions of this quiz. However, I also bet that most philosophers would agree with it.

This quiz wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty good. I’m interested what score Hemant got…

I think what this quiz really proves is the absurdity of asking “true/false” or multiple choice questions on a philosophy test. If you can describe your philosophy about anything with simply a “true or false” or a “pick one of the above”, then it’s not a very good philosophy.

By the way, I bet most religious people would disagree with the conclusions of this quiz. However, I also bet that most philosophers would agree with it.

And what about religious philosophers? What would Al Plantinga or Nick Wolterstorff have to say about it for instance?

Yeah, Medal of Honour. It does seem a bit one-sided though. If it had built up to Pascal’s Wager I’d be screwed.

That is to say, I’d be complaining about how stupid the test was instead.

0 hits, but I bit 1 bullet on this question:

If God exists she could create square circles and make 1 + 1 = 72.

I answered true, and I stand by that. Here’s the crucial part of their explanation for why I got dinged:

In saying that God has the freedom and power to do that which is logically impossible (like creating square circles), you are saying that any discussion of God and ultimate reality cannot be constrained by basic principles of rationality. This would seem to make rational discourse about God impossible. [...]

But, this is incorrect. Just because God must be able to do the logically impossible does not mean the discussion itself cannot be constrained by logic. The only issue here is that rational discourse can’t completely cover God nor ultimate reality…but that’s far from saying that rational discourse about such things is impossible, only that it is limited.

They’ve presented a false dilemma.

Looked at the other way around: just because our rational discussion is constrained by logic and reason doesn’t mean that ultimate reality must be logical. This is a total non-sequiter.

I had to do the test again with a different answer to the “is there a god” question…

I tried with “Don’t Know” which would be the more correct, and then hit Question 12…

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.

IF there was an omnipotent god, said god could do anything… but there ISN’T (or we don’t know…) a god, so this question becomes a problem.

Then there’s the question about BELIEF in evolution…

This is a highly suspect quiz, and I think that the only defensible position might be that there IS a god as far as the Quizmaker is concerned…?

I took it with my atheists mind-set and got no hits or bullets.
“TPM medal of honour”. (must be an English site)

Perhaps I’ll try it again and play-act like a Christian believer and see if I can answer consistently.

1 direct hit because I didn’t read a question carefully.

I would accept the existence of god IF there was as much proof for god as there was for evolution.

Two direct hits.

[...] God Logic: how good is yours? [...]

One bitten bullet and one direct hit. I said that you can’t base your understanding of the world on your convictions without external proof and then said that it’s OK to believe in God even if you don’t have any evidence to support that believe. I bit the bullet when I said that God can do anything – including making square circles and all that jazz. Hey, if God can do anything, God can do anything, right? And if God doesn’t have the power to do anything, he’s not God, is he?

Took a hit because they claim no definitive evidence for evolution. Can’t say I agree with that, but, hey, it’s their test.

That was fun. I did fairly well:

You have reached the end!

Congratulations! You have made it to the end of this activity.

You took zero direct hits and you bit 1 bullets. The average player of this activity to date takes 1.39 hits and bites 1.11 bullet. 401532 people have so far undertaken this activity.

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!

I’m with Mike though. The questions are asked in such a way that you have to answer false and if you screw up, you have to bite the bullet because of the way the questions are asked. The criteria (on the awards page) even states that one has to bite the bullet if… In other words, if you don’t read the question carefully, you can make a mistake.

I did the “Do it yourself Deity” game. The only one I could choose was “Omnibenevolent” (all loving) deity. The other choices didn’t make sense or even seem feisable, so I didn’t choose any others.

This is what they said:

The Report

Plausibility Quotient

Plausibility Quotient = 1.0

The metaphysical engineers have determined that your conception of God has a plausibility quotient (PQ) of 1.0. A PQ of 1.0 means that as far as the metaphysical engineers can determine your conception of God is internally consistent and consistent with the universe that we live in. A PQ of 0.0 means that it is neither internally consistent nor consistent with our universe. More than likely, your PQ score will be somewhere between these two figures. But remember that this is your PQ score as determined by the metaphysical engineers. The editors of TPM have no control over their deliberations, so don’t blame us!

*******************

What kind of God is that!?

The metaphysical engineers are happy to report that, to the best of their knowledge, the God you conceive is internally consistent and could exist in our universe. But they are less sure that what you have described deserves the name of God. She is not, for example, all-powerful. A God which knows everything or is totally benign may be a wonderful ideal, but is she really a God unless she has ultimate power?

We suspect that your God is not the traditional God of the Christian, Jewish or Muslim faiths.

Why am I not surprised by the sentences I bolded? So, I created a deity that is consistant with the universe, but can’t really be consider a god nor is it the traditional god of religion. What else is new? Tell me something I don’t know already. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it’s really no god at all, but just an emotion.

I took one direct hit and one bullet and I don’t understand the explanation for either. Supernatural beliefs are harder to figure out than one would expect.

bite one bullet. other than that did fine. I was confused by the wording of the question. but that is fine by me.

i took one hit because i required more evidence for god than i did evolution. i admit it, i did contradict myself. but other than that i was in good health.

2 hits and 1 bullet!

I thought the test was an interesting exercise in boolean logic (true false statements). Of course, as many people have commented, religion is about other aspects of human experience including emotion that transcend purely rational thought. So even though I was a bit smug in getting all the questions “right”, I fully admit that the design of the test was biased against religion. It does have some merit, though, in causing some people to clean up some of their inconsistent coexistent concepts…

Woo hoo!

Battleground Analysis
Congratulations!

You have been awarded the TPM medal of honour! This is our highest award for outstanding service on the intellectual battleground.

Seriously though …

Just because God must be able to do the logically impossible does not mean the discussion itself cannot be constrained by logic.

Actually, according to the principal of explosion, if one accepts a contradiction, then one can “prove” anything, so once you’ve allowed God to be logically contradictory, all bets are off.

BTW, here is a justification of the principle of explosion, in what I hope is reasonably plain English.

I begin with the contradiction “P is true, and P is not true”.

Since P is true, I can say that P is true or Q is true. This is the Booleen “or” at work, where A or B is true if either or both A and B are true. Since P is true, the statement “P is true or Q is true” is true regardless of the truth value of Q, so Q can be an arbitrary statement.

Ok, so I’ve established that P is true or Q is true. Since it is also true that P is not true, then it follows from the statement “P is true or Q is true” that Q must be true.

To summarize, the former half of the contradiction “P is true” is used to establish the truth of the “or” statement “P is true or Q is true”, while the latter half of the contradiction is used to show that the second part of the already proven “or” statement is true. The end result is that I can “prove” an arbitrary statement.

Predictable Test*

Didn’t finish, it’s questions are superficial, applying human logic to a being which is most often defined as being much more than human, it’s possible answers to some of the questions are illogically exclusive of other possibilities and its assumptions are also illogical.

I’ve mentioned here before that if you assert that God is all-powerful, one of the more common attributes of a God, then all-powerful includes the ability to surpass all of the known aspects of reason and the physical universe. If that is true it would be logical to assume that includes the ability to do what would appear as paradoxical to mere humans. God could make a rock he could not lift and also lift it, for example. “All-powerful” alone would make this test deficient in logic, not to mention “all-knowing” and other common attributes of God.

* or Some Common Mistakes of Atheist “Logic”

To support Mike’s assertion that philosophers themselves would not agree with some of the contradictions, read the FAQ.

10. There are a set of objections that have to do with things like Plantinga’s reformed epistemology, Tillich’s thoughts about the kind of existence God has, etc. Basically, it’s the set of responses that have come from professional theologians and philosophers of religion.

To which we reply, yes, yes, you’re right! It is complicated, but this is an online game!

Yeah, I saw that too miller. Apparently the creators of the test already realize and acknowledge its shortcomings.

Interesting, I bit one bullet on the evolution/belief in god questions and just finished a long email correcting their logic.

It’s always foolish to BELIEVE anything, regardless of level of proof.

had the question said “it is foolish to THINK that god exists without ….” then I could have answered false.

And they never defined what it would mean to be a creature worthy of being called god so that made those questions terribly difficult.

There is a minor flaw in the quiz.

If you answer “Please Select …” for every question, you get the “TPM medal of honour” as well.

In other words, the highest score can be achieved by refusing to answer any questions. I don’t think that was by design in this quiz.

Perhaps I’ll try it again and play-act like a Christian believer and see if I can answer consistently.

Well, this Christian believer took the quiz and got one direct hit and no bullets.

1 hit and 1 bullet. The only reason I got a hit was I responded that evolution isn’t necessarily complete (no scientific theory is and they never will be), but when asking about evidence for god it used the word “absolute.” If there was as much evidence for a god as evolution I would accept his/her existence. I bit a bullet for the question asking about if a god could perform acts like a square circle. I said yes because, by definition, an omnipotent god can do anything. I still think I did pretty good.

I thought it was worthless. I would suggest the writers seriously need to define some terms here and fix the language. There were some implicit assumptions in the questions. Some felt like “Have you stopped beating your children”-type questions. Perhaps this is a reason people dislike philosophy. You are wrong even if you think you got it!

As a christian I took one hit and bit one bullet.

You took 1 direct hit and you have bitten 1 bullet. The average player of this activity to date takes 1.39 hits and bites 1.11 bullets. 402017 people have so far undertaken this activity.

Interesting if a bit too black/white when many of these same things ate very much in shades of grey.

TPM Medal of Honour, zero direct hits and zero bullets.

As others have mentioned, several of the questions hinged on what definition one would accept for an entity called “God”. My answers were considered”correct” because I assumed that God wouldn’t have to be omniscient, omnipotent, beneficient, etc – yet some believe those features are absolute requirements of “God”.

Problem with this test is it doesn’t distinguish the questions about what you believe and think is justifiable, and what you think it is ok for others to believe. That is why I took a “direct hit”

One of the keys, I found, was to realize that my definition of omnipotence was not the same as those of the test creators. I don’t think omnipotence includes the ability to do things logically contradictory, nor contrary to God’s own nature (including making good evil and vice versa), and yet I correctly figured that the test creator’s definition would include those things, so I answered “no” to the questions that asked whether God could do anything. I think that saved me a lot of hits later on.

Note that this test is not trying to find out if your opinions are correct or valid, only that your beliefs are logically consistent within themselves. I received zero hits and zero bullets, but I did fail to answer two of the questions because I didn’t think there was a “most correct” answer offered.

Congratulations!
You have been awarded the TPM medal of honour! This is our highest award for outstanding service on the intellectual battleground.

I think the reason I got this was that I was thinking of “god” in the way physicists often describe the concept. The workings of the universe as it is comprise the mind of god. I’m a bit surpised that doesn’t lead to biting any bullets, because I know many people find it a strange idea. It made the quiz a breeze though. Reality as god means not omnipotent (bound by laws) and not necessarily omnibenevolent or having a plan either.

This is my first post here.
Nice site.
Keep up the good work!

Note that this test is not trying to find out if your opinions are correct or valid, only that your beliefs are logically consistent within themselves.

I don’t think it was even that limited in its goals, it was clearly meant to insult religious believers. If you are correct in your assumptions, it only shows that those who designed and presented the “test” have a very shaky knowledge of logic.

For both those who like this test (and also those that don’t like it) be sure to read the introduction and the FAQ at the test website. The introduction explains that there are no single set of right answers. The test just makes sure that the answers chosen are logically consistent. The FAQ goes into some detailed explanation on some particular troublesome questions for both theists and atheists.

MikeC, taking into account that the idea “all powerful” is a human idea and that it’s something we have no direct experience of, all does mean all and that would include the ability to overcome what humans see as logical or even necessary. God’s thoughts are not the same as our thoughts, or so I’ve read.

took 1 hit bit no bullets….cool lil diversion……entertaining

OK, so olvlzl is one of those whose definition of God includes omnipotent, and he (she?) does mean omni-potent. Again, one’s answers will depend a lot on what one would accept as a definition of God. There’s no correct answer. Everything anyone can say about God is a guess, a human idea & something about which we cannot & will not ever* agree there is any direct experience.

*barring potential future incontrovertable miracle(s), which I doubt will happen

I took 2 direct hits, but I’d argue that they were poorly worded. When I said that any God would be able to do anything, I was thinking along the lines of anything logically consistent.

1 bullet
0 hits

o_Ó

Eliza, just about all of modern theism defines God as all powerful. You think I made that up, don’t you. I withhold what I believe in these areas because it is irrelevant to the points. And I have no problem with people who honesty believe differently than I do, as long as they are not bigoted or dishonest.

Everything anyone can say about God is a guess, a human idea & something about which we cannot & will not ever* agree there is any direct experience.

Well, yeah. That’s why it’s called “belief”. If you insist on a “correct answer: to everything before you believe it, you are going to find that you are left with very, very little to believe in. And almost everything that human beings depend on they do on the basis of experience and belief, not on the basis of what is known apart from those.

Right. If you define God as all powerful, then the God you believe in will be all powerful. Yet, you/we/everyone really doesn’t know if that’s the case. Could put all those theists who agree on God’s omnipotence in an awkward spot when the big guy comes calling…

And, no need to invoke epistemological nihilism. It’s not true that we know equally little about everything, including God.

1 hit and 1 bullet. The only reason I got a hit was I responded that evolution isn’t necessarily complete (no scientific theory is and they never will be), but when asking about evidence for god it used the word “absolute.” If there was as much evidence for a god as evolution I would accept his/her existence.

I got hit once for much the same reason. Other then that, I was perfect.

And I didn’t get into trouble with the questions about omnipotence because I define omnipotence is being able to anything, even things that are logically nonsensical, so I said it’s not necessary to have an omnipotent god, because such a being would be logically incoherent.

I took zero direct hits and 2 bit bullets. I contend that those two bit bullets could be argued in my favor. I said a belief in god requires more proof than evolution and I stand by that, god is a much more complex and impossible of a conclusion than evolution. And for the second one about god could making a circle a square or 1 +1 = 72 I was looking at it not from a math view but from the idea that these are just labels and words. god would not need to change them as much as either force us to believe in them differently or to change the words themselves but that’s just me being nit picky.

Ok, I got 100 hits and 100 bullets. Not really, but here’s a link to all possible hits and bullets: All hits and bullets

The authors of this quiz have made a few logical errors.
One is in regard to evolution, which it seems a few other people pointed out, but for the sake of clarity: evolutionary theory may be false in some details, but is in fact, certain to be essentially true and does not require a “lower standard of proof than god”.
others are the questions that follow the form of: “any being that could be called god could…” because some of these defining traits are how a rational person knows that there is no god, so to answer true and later say that no such thing could ever happen is consistent with the fact that god could not exist.

[...] January 12, 2008 at 1:34 am (evolving atheist) From The Friendly Atheist: [...]

This wasn’t fair. I bit two bullets. If I think the belief in a deity isn’t rational, why does it matter if I think a god could make a square circle or not? Philosophically, it’s all hypothetical.