God is a Bullet

[Thrawn]

Originally posted by Leslie
This quiz is obviously flawed by introducing true and false choices to paradoxes...such as "Can God make a circle into a square, or 1+1=72 ?"

How does that make it flawed?

[capt. apathy]

although it was kinda stupid, the direct hit thing does show a flawed logic.

 the 'bite the bullet' really had nothing to do with logic. it was just if you have beliefs the author found unusual.

btw- no direct hits, 2 bullets.

did anybody get through that thing with no hits, no bullets, while believing in god?  it seemed to me that it was set up so that only an athiest or agnostic could make it through and be considered 'logical'

[AKIron]

I did capt. apathy, the second time through.

Thrawn, what I should have said is that human application of logic is subjective.

[BlckMgk]

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 1.36 hits and bites 1.09 bullets. 85759 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.
_____________
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!

[BlckMgk]

Thrawn the point you missed is that it said "If SHE.." god isn't a she.. its a genderless being of higher excistence.

[StSanta]

Zero hits, zero biting the bullet.

I r00l.

[Thrawn]

Originally posted by BlckMgk
Thrawn the point you missed is that it said "If SHE.." god isn't a she.. its a genderless being of higher excistence.

Says you.  

From what I understood the the point of the exercise was to check for internal logical consistancy of one's belief in God.

I don't see what difference it makes if the exercise uses the pro-noun "she" to refer to the God...okay, it does indicate a certain amount of bias on the part of the author

I wonder if the issue would be raised if the author referred to God as "he".


PS: Where's miko when you need him?

[Hangtime]

did anybody get through that thing with no hits, no bullets, while believing in god? it seemed to me that it was set up so that only an athiest or agnostic could make it through and be considered 'logical'

LOL!!

Religion is NOT logical!!

Read through this.. don't hate me, I'm not the author. But I do agree with him.

The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by H.Sapiens is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the sacharrine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not recieve this flattery. Yet this ridiculous notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history. [Robert Heinlein]

God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills. [Robert Heinlein, Notebooks of Lazarus Long]

Don't appeal to mercy to God the Father up in the sky, little man, because he's not at home and never was at home, and couldn't care less. What you do with yourself, whether you are happy or unhappy-- live or die-- is strictly your business and the universe doesn't care. In fact you may be the universe and the only cause of all your troubles. But, at best, the most you can hope for is comradeship with comrades no more divine (or just as divine) as you are. So quit sniveling and face up to it-- 'Thou art God!' [Robert A. Heinlein Oct. 21, 1960]

There is an old, old story about a theologian who was asked to reconcile the Doctrine of Divine Mercy with the doctrine of infant damnation. 'The Almighty,' he explained, 'finds it necessary to do things in His official and public capacity which in His private and personal capacity He deplores. [Robert A. Heinlein (1907 - 1988) Methuselah's Children]

Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is a monotheism can believe anything... just give him time to rationalize it. [Robert A. Heinlein, JOB: A Comedy of Justice]

Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. [Robert A. Heinlein, JOB: A Comedy of Justice]

[Leslie]

Originally posted by Thrawn
How does that make it flawed?

Hi Thrawn.  That's a very good question mate.  I typed in "paradox" for the MSN Explorer search feature.  There are many listings, but about the third page or so, there is a link to the Stanford U. philosophy library, where logic is discussed.  It is very complicated, and very advanced.  An interesting read about the paradox.

I didn't realize there are many different catagories of logic, and that they essentially depend on language, its meaning or syntax, as applied to the written and spoken language.  Culture is closely asociated with language, especially "slang."  (idiomatic expressions or colloquialisms)


Nash presented it as a test, but it is really a puzzle of logic, which I believe to be a  sorite paradox , where small mistakes lead to great contradictions later on...even though the conclusion is false, it is logically proven to be true.  Paradoxes always have pairs, and must be "reversed engineered" to make sense.  It's the surrealism of the logical world.

I'll try to post a link for those interested.  I don't know squat about logic.  Just seemed to me that the puzzle Nash presented might have been a sorite paradox.


Les


 sorites-paradox

[devious]

Quote:

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.

Quote end

Now, I can search LOCH NESS completely. I have no possibilty to ascertain god's nonexistance by looking at a small part of the universe using current technology. We're comparing finding a - for us physical - animal to finding an allegedly omnipotent entity.

This is some religious roadkill, and I hate this pseudointellectual preaching.

BTW, that was the only bullet to hit this atheist

[Greese]

The test is crap.