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<\/a><\/div>\nWhile we wait for the last responses to the Ideological Turing Test to trickle in, I wanted to address a concern that was raised by a couple of Christian bloggers. Stacy of Accepting Abundance<\/a> felt she couldn\u2019t ethically vote in the survey<\/a>, and Elizabeth of Startling the Day<\/a> shared some of her worries<\/a>. Stacy wrote:<\/p>\n As I read the responses I found myself unable to make such a judgement. These are people, not computers trying to pass as people, but real people. I know this test was used to study economists and how well economists of opposing ideologies understood the other side; I get that. But this is about something much deeper than economics. It\u2019s about a person\u2019s faith, and faith is a tender thing. As I read the responses I kept wondering, \u201cWhat if this is a \u2018real\u2019 Christian, possibly new in his faith, or struggling in his faith, and I judge him to be an atheist based on his responses?\u201d That could be damaging to a person\u2019s soul.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n My most basic response is that the participants knew what they signed up for; people who decide to take their beliefs to the public sphere need know they\u2019ll catch flak and have to be ready. \u00a0That said, if anyone\u00a0(on either side)\u00a0had told me that they were planning to use the votes as a referendum on the strength of their beliefs , I would have had a chat with that participant and might have recommended they withdraw. Christians who are beaten by atheists in this contest\u00a0aren\u2019t\u00a0bad Christians<\/em> and they\u00a0aren\u2019t\u00a0even necessarily bad apologists<\/em>. A low ranking for believability doesn\u2019t necessarily indicate that you aren\u2019t supporting your arguments, it just means that your interpretation of Christianity\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0what most people expect to see.<\/p>\n Or it might be a lot less meaningful then that. I\u2019ve been looking over the responses, and there\u2019s a lot of questionable reasoning among voters. One commenter on Mark Shea\u2019s blog<\/a> declared that an entry that used the word \u2018theodicy<\/a>\u2019 must<\/em> be written by an atheist because it was such a nasty piece of \u201cderogatory jargon,\u201d which must come as a surprise to most Christian philosophers. Most criteria were better than this, and I\u2019m looking forward to profiling the different types of theology-dar as a follow-up to the list of rankings. \u00a0The voters provided data at least as interesting as the participants they were evaluating.<\/p>\n I\u2019m glad Stacy and Elizabeth shared their concern, because this wasn\u2019t an ethical problem on my radar. \u00a0The biggest snag came when I was picking the questions for my Ideological Turing Test<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0I tried to stay sensitive to the concerns of the Christian participants who had signed up. One person\u2019s participation was contingent on a guarantee from me that s\/he would not be forced to blaspheme in the answers. S\/he was also concerned that, if the Christians had to write strong attacks on Christianity while they were trying to pass as atheists, they might do harm to someone\u2019s faith. After all, they wouldn\u2019t get the chance to rebut their arguments-as-atheists or explain why these claims weren\u2019t enough to shake their personal faith.<\/p>\n To accommodate these concerns, I left the questions open for positive statements about atheism instead of compelling attacks on religion (the first question was \u201cWhat\u2019s your best reason for being an atheist?\u201d not \u201cWhat\u2019s the best argument against religion\u201d). This ended up satisfying everyone concerned that they weren\u2019t endangering the salvation of others.<\/p>\n