The main purpose of this thread is to discuss what you think the nature of God is or would be; e.g. is he omniscient, good, evil, simple, complex, etc. To foster discussion, here's a little test whose purpose is to detect certain inconsistencies in your beliefs regarding God. It was a fun test, albeit one that is flawed in some respects. Here are my results, followed by a little commentary from yours truly:

https://www.philosophyexperiments.com/god/Default.aspx


You navigated the battlefield suffering 1 hit and biting 2 bullets, which represents an overall performance at the 56th percentile (i.e., 56% of scores are worse than yours). The tables on the right show how your performance compares to the other 106290 people who have completed Battleground God.

You can find a list of questions here (page will open in a new tab).
Recap of your Direct Hit

Direct Hit 1

You answered "True" to Question 8 and "False" to Question 16, which generated the following response:

Earlier you said that even in the absence of independent evidence, it is justified to base one's beliefs about the external world on a firm, inner-conviction. But now you do not accept that the serial murderer Peter Sutcliffe was justified in doing just that. The example of the killer has exposed that you do not in fact think that a belief is justified just because one is convinced of its truth. So you need to revise your opinion here. The intellectual sniper has scored a bull's-eye!

Recap of your Bitten Bullets

Bitten Bullet 1

You answered "False" to Question 11 and "True" to Question 15, which generated the following response:

You say that if there are no compelling arguments or evidence that show that God does not exist, then atheism is a matter of faith, not rationality. Therefore, it seems you do not think that the mere absence of evidence for the existence of God is enough to justify believing that She does not exist. This view is also suggested by your earlier claim that it is not rational to believe that the Loch Ness monster does not exist even if, despite years of trying, no evidence has been presented to suggest that it does exist.

There is no logical inconsistency in your answers. But by denying that absence of evidence, even where it has been sought, is enough to justify belief in the non-existence of things, you are required to countenance possibilities that most people would find bizarre. For example, do you really want to claim that it is not rationally justified to believe that intelligent aliens do not live on Mars?

Bitten Bullet 2

You answered "True" to Question 17, which generated the following response:

In saying that God has the freedom and power to do that which is logically impossible (such as 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 own religious convictions, are beyond any debate or rational discussion. This is to bite a bullet.
My main problem with my results is that I disagree with the premise that someone could really be fully convinced that it's right to kill an innocent human being. I think that the serial killer was either dishonest or failing to remember his motivations correctly. So that "hit" isn't really a hit. I also disagree with the claim that I have to countenance bizarre possibilities just because I don't believe that absence of evidence is by itself a sound basis for disbelieving something. What I believe, to be exact, is that whether something exists or not is ultimately determined by reason, which, in many cases, precludes outlandish conclusions, and is always assisted (but not determined) by evidence. Lastly, I don't believe in logical impossibilities to begin with. If something seems logically impossible, it is only because you aren't thinking about it in a sufficiently deep fashion. Moreover, I disagree with the test maker's tacit assumption that rationality consists of dismissing some possibilities while affirming others. In reality, rationality means applying logical structure to one's thoughts and beliefs--in other words, placing them inside an orderly system--as well as seeing things in their full context. This means that, yes, I can talk about God in a rational fashion even though I don't believe anything is logically impossible for him. Also, there's a difference between saying that everything is logically possible for God and saying that everything is possible in a general sense. For example, it is logically possible for God to perform an act of evil--nothing prevents him from doing it. But for him to perform an act of evil would be an act of self-annihilation, which would amount to an annihilation, once and for all, of everything that exists. Since the universe exists, it is impossible that God has ever acted or ever will act in an evil fashion. In short, there are things we can determine about God, using a mix of reason and evidence, even though everything is logically possible for him.