Ideological Turing test: Can you spot the fake atheists?

Wonderist
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Ideological Turing test: Can you spot the fake atheists?

This looks cool. 15 people responded to 4 questions. Some were atheists being honest, some were theists instructed to answer as if they were atheists.

Now it's up to you to see if you can spot the Christians in non-believer's clothing.

Vote as soon as you can, because polling might end tonight [Edit: It's apparently been extended until midnight on Tuesday]. They are planning on doing another one soon with the situation reversed.

http://friendlyatheist.com/2011/07/08/an-ideological-turing-test-for-atheists-and-christians/

[Please DO NOT make any comments here or there about your opinions on the answers or respondents. Any such comments WILL BE deleted. Keep this as unbiased as possible.]

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Cpt_pineapple
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But what if they're atheists

But what if they're atheists pretending to be Christians pretending to be atheists?

Or Christians pretending to be atheists pretending to be Christians?

 

O.O

 

 

 


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Wow, this sounds awesome.

Wow, this sounds awesome. I'm gonna do it right now.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare


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 Done.  When  do we get

 Done.  When  do we get the answers?

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Never ever did I say enything about free, I said "free."

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Honestly I don't know many

Honestly I don't know many details about the poll. Just what I read at Friendly Atheist and when taking the poll. I'm sure if you follow a couple links you should be able to dig that kind of detail up.

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Holy.........I'm going to

Holy.........I'm going to post a ginormous amount on this when voting is finished.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare


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 That was fun.

 That was fun.


Wonderist
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I saw that Leah, the

I saw that Leah, the organizer of it, is extending the poll until Tues at midnight, so you've still got a chance. She's already received over 1000 responses, which is awesome.

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butterbattle
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Christian Answers have been

Christian Answers have been posted! Some are Christians, and some are atheists pretending to be Christians.

Voting opens on Friday.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare


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You can now vote for the

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare


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Results.

Results.

Answer Key

Atheist Round Winners

Christian Round Winners

Wow...... 

My original response to the atheist answers.

Quote:
1 – Atheist
2 – Christian
3 – Atheist
4 – Atheist
5 – Lean Christian
6 – Atheist
7 – Atheist
8 – Atheist
9 – Lean Atheist
10 – Lean Christian
11 – Lean Christian
12 – Atheist
13 – Atheist
14 – Atheist
15 – Lean Christian

From the beginning, the first thing that I was looking for was misrepresentations of scientific theories and, in general, an oversimplification or misunderstanding related to some complex issue. In other words, do they have their facts right. Of course, atheists can be wrong about things, but they're usually not the same things. Christians that are ignorant will tend to display certain patterns of ignorance.

One of those things is the theory of evolution. I pointed out Answer 2 as the only person I'm certain is a Christian partly due to the strange statements concerning evolution. This person wrote, "But Darwin's theory explains how order emerges, leaving nothing for a creator God to do," Evolution does not "explain how order emerges." This the Creationist strawman of evolution, as some grand, all-encompassing explanation of reality. Additionally, they see Darwin as some sort of atheist Messiah, so when they talk about evolution, it's always 'Darwin this' and 'Darwin that.' I also tagged Answer 11 partly for the statement, "I find Darwin's discovery of the FACT of biological evolution of species from a common ancestor provides a very compelling and intellectually complete atheism." I'm at a loss as to why there is such an emphasis on evolution for an intellectually complete atheism. Couldn't this person also have talked about the Big Bang instead?

I find that I had a hard time distinguishing between the Christians and atheists that gave what I considered less than ideal answers. Well....sometimes, it was okay, like when someone mentions that they support deontological ethics, I didn't see that as evidence for them being a Christian, even though I don't go much for Kant. Or, if they were rather compromising or really moderate, that could actually convince me they were atheists too. Like, Answer 7 went out on a limb to defend religion in a sense, but the way it was done only served to convince me that he was atheist. It's hard to explain it all without writing a book I guess. I had to go on a case by case basis for the most part.

For the first question, I preferred that people initially responded with "lack of evidence for god" or "atheism is the default position" rather than the implication of "evidence FOR atheism." Several of the respondents, 3 and 4 for example, had me nearly convinced just from the first couple of sentences, from the way they reacted to the question.

For the second question, I loved it if they invented some funny specific experiences that a god should be able to do. I also loved it if they gave other possible explanations upon witnessing something they couldn't explain. However, I didn't like if they summed it up with, "I can't think of anything that would convince me." or something that effect. Answer 8's response was great.

Question 3 honestly helped me the least out of the four questions. Although, Answer 2 still managed to screw it up with irrelevant comments about sex and the emphasis on Jesus.

Question 4 was a big help in identifying knowledgeable atheists. Many produced nicely worded explanations on the origin and dominance of religion, using evolution, psychology, sociology, history, geography etc., answers 1, 4, 6, 8, 13, and 14, at least, all seem too detailed and accurate on this topic to be Christians.

I could be wrong. ^_^

Unfortunately, I went on a trip somewhere and was unable to finish my response to the Christian answers. I got about halfway through and didn't comment. My responses in that case were.

Quote:
1 - Christian
2 - Christian
3 - Christian
4 - Likely Christian
5 - Christian
6 - Atheist
7 - Christian
8 - Christian
9 - Christian

Well, what can I say? I did about as good as chance, maybe worse.  

Edit: The same 15 people wrote the answers for both categories; overall, it seems that those who scored well writing honestly also did well when they were pretending. Similarly, those that were spotted when they were faking, were also accused of faking even when they wrote honestly. All of the participants were very intelligent, and the whole thing was really difficult. 

Looking at my own results, I seem to be quite willing to give people the benefit of the doubt. I did not assume that the same people wrote the answers for both rounds, so I ended up judging most people in the atheist round to be atheist and almost everyone in the Christian round to be Christian. There were actually 8 Christians and 6 atheists. 

People in both rounds screwed me over. The only difference between the two rounds was that in the atheist round, I was much more confident in my responses, even when I was confidently wrong. In the Christian round, I wasn't really sure about any of it. 

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare


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I didn't take the test, and

I didn't take the test, and only looked at two or three entries, but I knew it'd be extremely difficult because of the misconceptions atheists have of Christians and Christians have of atheists. I wonder if a Hindu or Muslim would have done better than a Christian or atheist.


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It's not really a "Turing

It's not really a "Turing Test," in that all of the respondents had ample time to research and study to write the best answers to each question. I feel like if I could have live conversations with people, it would be easier to tell them apart, but I don't have much evidence to support this.

I had a much clearer idea of what I was looking for in the atheist answers. In a way, that made it easier for the intelligent Christians, that understood the subject well, to fool me. As long as they satisfied certain criteria and hit some general points on each answer, I really had no way to suspect them at all. The top 3 "atheists" were all Christians, and they all fooled me. Additionally, half of the real atheists confused me with their answers, throwing me off when they made statements that I thought were not-quite-right.

Overall, I think the Christians did slightly better; still, two of the top four "Christians" were atheists. It seems to me that Christians identified atheists that gave a very generic answer, using a lot of unnecessarily flowery language to praise Christianity and express faith while going into little detail about specific beliefs. The two atheists that scored lowest here both confused me in the atheist round.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare