Ethical / legal / theological question

[MyUserName]

If you are going into an exam and you pray to your God to help you (assuming you were lucky enough to be born into an area and time where the correct God is the one you are indoctrinated) - are you guilty of cheating?

Other's have as much faith and evidence as you but were born in the wrong region/to the wrong parents etc and are therefore worshipping a non existant god.

Belief is not a choice - wanting to believe something is not believe. Hence no one has 'chosen' not to believe in your God they are just have not been convinced of the difference between your God and the many that neither of you belief in.

[mudskipper]

No. I'd suggest that any advantage comes from the belief that god is helping you, and not because he is. That belief is available to the believers of the wrong flavour of god too. The atheists can get their advantage by not having to put their wellbeing in the hands of (what they believe is) an imaginary friend.

Even if your god exists and is the right one, the advantage to you is available to everyone else taking the exam. It's no different to you having found a revision guide that other people didn't, or having a parent who has encouraged you to work hard from an early age where someone else hasn't.

[mudskipper]

Anyway - asking God to help you is not cheating.

If God does help you, then it can't be cheating because God is perfect.

[vetran]

Anyway - asking God to help you is not cheating.

If God does help you, then it can't be cheating because God is perfect.

God wouldn't be cheating, you are the one doing the exam. God works in mysterious ways, he doesn't cheat.

[MyUserName]

Even if your god exists and is the right one, the advantage to you is available to everyone else taking the exam.

Is it? If I were born here and raised as a good Christian by the real god is Allah then I would not have access to it as I am worshipping the wrong one.

It's no different to you having found a revision guide that other people didn't,

It is slightly different to that as the revision guide can be shown to exist and does not rely on belief in the same way.

or having a parent who has encouraged you to work hard from an early age where someone else hasn't.

If I had the ability to telepathically communicate with someone outside the exam and used this ability, would that be cheating?

[vetran]

Is it? If I were born here and raised as a good Christian by the real god is Allah then I would not have access to it as I am worshipping the wrong one.

Mostly the moderates agree Allah (Islamic 'the God'), and God (Christianity) are basically the same. (always amuses me that, we have spent centuries kicking hell out of each other when they profess to have the same boss). Of course the running order of the Prophets are different. Now if You had thrown Bhudda in then it would be more difficult. So if you are an English Christian and Allah really exists you are just worshipping him in the wrong language.

Unless you are likely to become a saint then I doubt either manifestation of God is likely to be much help. They only seem to intercede if there is a chance of being written up.

It is slightly different to that as the revision guide can be shown to exist and does not rely on belief in the same way.

True

If I had the ability to telepathically communicate with someone outside the exam and used this ability, would that be cheating?

Yes because its supposed to be your own work.

[d000hg]

What a load of crock. God's existence or lack thereof is not based on what deity you believe in. Neither is God's ability to hear your prayer even if you pray to the wrong god. Neither is God's ability to help you even if you pray to the wrong god or don't pray at all.

What if I pray for MUN not to fail all his exams, would that be cheating? Could I get his whole class expelled by praying for all of them to do well?

Ignore re-instated... amazed you suckers still fall for long debates with such an obvious troll.

[OwlHoot]

If you are going into an exam and you pray to your God to help you (assuming you were lucky enough to be born into an area and time where the correct God is the one you are indoctrinated) - are you guilty of cheating?

Other's have as much faith and evidence as you but were born in the wrong region/to the wrong parents etc and are therefore worshipping a non existant god.

Belief is not a choice - wanting to believe something is not believe. Hence no one has 'chosen' not to believe in your God they are just have not been convinced of the difference between your God and the many that neither of you belief in.

Interesting question, or should be from the standpoint of a religious person, but marred and confused by a lot of extraneous atheist ravings you couldn't resist adding about the correct this and wrong that.

[mudskipper]

What a load of crock. God's existence or lack thereof is not based on what deity you believe in. Neither is God's ability to hear your prayer even if you pray to the wrong god. Neither is God's ability to help you even if you pray to the wrong god or don't pray at all.

What if I pray for MUN not to fail all his exams, would that be cheating? Could I get his whole class expelled by praying for all of them to do well?

Ignore re-instated... amazed you suckers still fall for long debates with such an obvious troll.

But your answer assumes that the correct god is a fair and just god like the Christian/Muslim one. What if he/she is a capricious god like Zeus or somesuch?

[Dominic Connor]

A lot depends upon your god

The Abrahamic religions believe in a single perfect God
That's Islam, Judaism and Christianity, who add up to a good chunk of believers.

By their definition God can do no wrong, so it follows that if he acts upon your prayer it must be the morally right thing to do.

This begs a question, one that has caused Christians in the US and UK to try and get maths, especially set theory and theoretical computer science banned from schools.

If God will always do the right thing, does it not follow that he cannot have free will ?

There is a gorgeous irony that George Boole (as in the variable type) who invented mathematical logic, used his newfangled Algebra (strictly speaking zero order predicate calculus as it was later renamed) to prove the existence of a God.

Eventually Goedel (via Russell) took this work further to demonstrate that any system at least as complex as arithmetic must contain propositions that cannot be proved or disproved within it. If we assume that God is more complex than arithmetic, then he not only cannot have free will, he cannot know the full extent of what his full extent is.

The Abrahamic ignorance cults still have enough clout that the Open Universities standard text on Logic and Computability used by a many UK universities, has explicit disclaimers that assure the various paedophiles, morons, suicide bombers, wife beaters and generally sexually inadequate that constitute the "faithful" in the UK that logic doesn't apply to their beliefs.

It is left as an exercise to imagine what the conversations between my kids and their RE teacher go like, hint: Reports read A*,A*,A,A*,B+,A*,D

Yeah we were disappointed by the B+ equivalent in English, but another kid broke down during the exam and threw up over DC 2.0 and he allowed himself to be distracted.