Philosopher's game,"Battleground God"

While investigating what seems to be an anti-religion site hosted at a .edu Web site, I followed one of the links to TPM Online and played the "Battleground God" game.

I expected the game to be ruled by certain presuppositions, but it wasn't as bad as I thought.

I made it to the final question without raising any flags. Here was the question:

It is justifiable to believe in God if one has a firm, inner conviction that God exists, regardless of the external evidence, or lack of it, for the truth or falsity of the conviction that God exists.

I reasoned that a revelation of God serves as a justifiable basis for belief in spite of a lack of external evidence ("or the lack of it"), thus I answered in the affirmative.

Apparently the test designers didn't like my way of thinking.

You've just taken a direct hit!

Earlier you said that it is not justifiable to base one's beliefs about the external world on a firm, inner conviction, paying no regard to the external evidence, or lack of it, for the truth or falsity of this conviction, but now you say it's justifiable to believe in God on just these grounds. That's a flagrant contradiction!

I wrote up my own response to the claim.

Despite the claim of a “flagrant contradiction,” the problem here is arguably with the question. In one case we’re talking about “the external world”—but is God part of the “external world”? Is it proper to call an omnipresent God part of the “external world”?

The question, like many others on the test, was ambiguously worded. “External world” has the connotation of referring to the material world, and one would reasonably expect sense-data as a guide to an external material world but not as a guide to a “external” spiritual world that is not “external” in the same sense.

There were a number of other spots where the test forced an answer based on a false dilemma.

It just goes to show that in philosophy and logic, it's all in the presuppositions.


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