Saturday, May 15, 2004
"He reigns from heaven above / With wisdom, power and love, / my God is a logically inconsistent and philosophically confused notion"
I've been reading some Nietzsche lately, so what better to play than some philosophy games, found via Memepool?
These kind are not fun--at least not in the sense of some other internet games, but they are terribly interesting. They are based off philosophy, and you can make a "game" out of philosophy because it is so tied to rules and logic. So visit the site and try some of them out. The couple tied to religion are interesting, but are likely to feel a bit insulting to some believers, especially Battleground God. If you've not spent serious time on your conception of God, this will riddle it with holes (not necessarily a bad thing). If you have, and the program does find problems with your belief system, you'll likely find it's because the rationale behind your answers is more complex than the game, with its format of multiple-choice questions, can actually allow. But each game goes a long way to reminding you about how to be logically consistent.
For example, in the Do-It-Yourself-Deity game you have a choice of the characteristics we usually attribute to God, including omnipotence, omnibenevolence, omniscience, creator, sustainor, perfectly free, eternally existing, and involved in humans. The only way to get a wholly logically consistent image of God is to select only one of these attributes; any more than that, and your image of God introduces logical inconsistencies into itself, which the program is happy enough to spell out. My God (which the limited language of the program doesn't allow me to explain, is omnibenevolent, omniscient, the Creator, eternally existing, and involved with humans) has a 0.8 plausibility quotient--which means it is relatively free of contradictions. Here "he" is:
More useful than the God games, perhaps (as those can be talked around), are the games which test our own individual thinking. My favorite was the logic game, which is a sort of thing used in psychology tests. Chances are you'll do bad on the test, but that's the whole point. So why would you want to take a test you're likely to be bad at? Well, the reasons behind the study (as explained after you take the test), and its real-time results, are frankly astounding, and cut to the quick of how we as a species process logical data.
"Know thyself," says the Delphic oracle, "even when what you know is that sometimes you just suck at some things."
At least if you sucked, you're not alone. The statistics, actually, are in your favor. And mine, too.
These kind are not fun--at least not in the sense of some other internet games, but they are terribly interesting. They are based off philosophy, and you can make a "game" out of philosophy because it is so tied to rules and logic. So visit the site and try some of them out. The couple tied to religion are interesting, but are likely to feel a bit insulting to some believers, especially Battleground God. If you've not spent serious time on your conception of God, this will riddle it with holes (not necessarily a bad thing). If you have, and the program does find problems with your belief system, you'll likely find it's because the rationale behind your answers is more complex than the game, with its format of multiple-choice questions, can actually allow. But each game goes a long way to reminding you about how to be logically consistent.
For example, in the Do-It-Yourself-Deity game you have a choice of the characteristics we usually attribute to God, including omnipotence, omnibenevolence, omniscience, creator, sustainor, perfectly free, eternally existing, and involved in humans. The only way to get a wholly logically consistent image of God is to select only one of these attributes; any more than that, and your image of God introduces logical inconsistencies into itself, which the program is happy enough to spell out. My God (which the limited language of the program doesn't allow me to explain, is omnibenevolent, omniscient, the Creator, eternally existing, and involved with humans) has a 0.8 plausibility quotient--which means it is relatively free of contradictions. Here "he" is:
More useful than the God games, perhaps (as those can be talked around), are the games which test our own individual thinking. My favorite was the logic game, which is a sort of thing used in psychology tests. Chances are you'll do bad on the test, but that's the whole point. So why would you want to take a test you're likely to be bad at? Well, the reasons behind the study (as explained after you take the test), and its real-time results, are frankly astounding, and cut to the quick of how we as a species process logical data.
"Know thyself," says the Delphic oracle, "even when what you know is that sometimes you just suck at some things."
At least if you sucked, you're not alone. The statistics, actually, are in your favor. And mine, too.
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