Wayne Delia

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

<snip yada yada yada>

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How did you do compared to other people?

103382 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 1.37 hits and bites 1.09 bullets.
7.59% of the people who have completed this activity, like you, emerged unscathed with the TPM Medal of Honour.
46.90% of the people who have completed this activity took very little damage and were awarded the TPM Medal of Distinction.

WMD

GrandDesigner

Hi, this is my first time in these forums. These topics are definately high on my interest list.

I found this thread and went thru that 'Battleground God' test and I must say it is quite amusing. But what I liked was when I had to 'bite the bullet' it explained their rational as to why. Thats really great to see as I believe everyone, no matter if you think they're doing right or wrong, has some rational basis for their actions. And even if I dont agree with their rational, which I'm not saying I do, but even if I didn't agree...it gives insight as to where they're coming from. So I'm pleased about that.

Grand ol' Designer

Autonemesis

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.

Autonemesis

Since I don't believe in any god, I answered the questions about "can you call a being God if..." based in what I have seen and read about what other people call god. Clearly, many people have worshipped non-omnipotent, non-omniscient beings as gods. Cargo cults, for instance. So yes, a being called god can lack any or all of the omni-traits, can be evil or good, can be bent on destruction of humanity (Cthulhu) or its salvation, and still be called god.

johngalt

well, i got the second highest award. The evolution question confused me, so thats where i got off. Otherwise, i did pretty well. Sweet test.

fando

I think that this test is very sloppy. It might be testing the consistency of internal beliefs, but it sure as heck isn't accurate nor precise in the meaning of certain concepts, such as proof, truth and God.

First, which God? I went through the test imagining various Roman gods and even fictional ones that one could conjure in a session of Dungeons and Dragons, but none of them seemed to fit the bill as there were several implicit assumptions about the abilities of the God in the test. So I was forced to constrain myself to a specific but unclear definition of God. It was obvious which God they were talking about, but what were his powers again? How am I supposed to know the outcome of a hypothetical scenario involving said God? Despite that, I was able to second guess questions that relied on this implicit knowledge and answer correctly, even if the answers were honestly ambiguous from my viewpoint.

Second, I also got bit by bullet #2, the evolution one. Well, suffice to say that the term "essentially true" is meaningless in a scientific context. What is truth? Do the designers of this test have a grasp of what scientific theory is? I did a double take and took a second look at the answers being offered: True, False, I don't Know. Does God exist? Well, I have an answer that won't fit in the nice set of choices presented and this can lead to serious gaffes in the heuristics used to compute the score. That is, the test itself is incapable of what it proposes to do simply because the heuristic algorithm relies on a scope limited categorization schema. So I said forget it, there's no point in taking a test that presumes to measure the consistency of my beliefs if I can't answer in a way that would be consistent with my beliefs in the first place.

Edit: Just realized that the whole thing is basically a testament to our ability to solve puzzles more than any actual measure of anything. Want a perfect score? Then second guess the intended answers for a given set of beliefs. I was doing that the whole time, pinning for the perfect score for my prefered belief, and without realizing it.

Melissa

Medal of Honour!