Don Tingle Would Be So Proud of Me

Not so long ago, I had a professor of religion and philosophy named Don Tingle. Don always saw a lot of potential in me, albeit most of that potential, so he said, was for deviant, malcontent activity that would lead me to jail or an early grave. Sorry, Don, I've yet to land in jail or a grave, but I did score well on an internet quiz about the rationality of my religion!!.

I made it through the quiz without any logical inconsistencies, which might surprise most who know me; however, I had to 'bite one bullet'.

A direct hit would have occurred had you answered in a way that implied a logical contradiction. The bitten bullet occurred because you responded in a way that required that you held a view that most people would have found strange, incredible or unpalatable. However, because you bit only one bullet and avoided direct hits completely you still qualify for our second highest award. A good achievement!

For what it's worth, I think I'm in good company when it comes to the bullet I had to bite. Sniper fire got me (and, so it seems, Scott Martens over at Pedantry [Permalinks on Blog*Spot are, typically, not working]) when it came to the consequences of questions 7 and 15:

7. It is justifiable to base one's beliefs about the external world on a firm, inner conviction, even in the absence of any external evidence for the truth of these convictions.* It is justifiable to base one's beliefs about the external world on a firm, inner conviction, even in the absence of any external evidence for the truth of these convictions.

15. The serial rapist Peter Sutcliffe had a firm, inner conviction that God wanted him to rape and murder prostitutes. He was, therefore, justified in believing that he was carrying out God's will in undertaking these actions.

Apparently, like Kierkegaard (appropriate, given the title of this blog), I believe that people might be justified in their belief that God could demand something terrible of them (eg., the sacrifice of one's own son in the Akedah story), and this places me outside the bounds of traditional, 'rational' religious discourse. Obviously, there's a good deal of nuance and explanation left undiscussed here -- namely, the play between, and implications of, subjectivity and ethics in that word I've italicized above, 'justified'. Suffice it to say for now, due to the face I'm on my way out the door to see a movie, the possible consequences of such a belief are quite dangerous socially; moreover, I think that contemporary western culture, being as oppressively homogenous as it is, is likely to see more manifestations of this belief than we might ordinarily expect. This explains in part, I suppose, why I keep studying religion, even though I am not in fact all that religious. I'll think about this a bit more, and maybe write something more coherent about in the morning.