I mean, I really do NOT defend religion, because over all, it really is a crock of BS twisted history and Baby’s First Philosophy rolled in to garbage cults.
… Though there ARE multiple reasons an “all-knowing” god would test their creations, even if they “knew the results”. This happens all the time in the real world. Some engineers just enjoy seeing their creations do something, even if it’s doomed to be a prototype. Software engineers test their stuff all the time when they “know” what it will do.
Hell, 99.9% of science itself is getting a solid idea before you run the experiment. Remember: scientists test hypotheses, not hair-brained ADHD shower thoughts.
So while religion is overall total BS for dummies, individual components DO make sense, in their own way. It wouldn’t be so popular if the pieces didn’t make more sense than the whole.
There is a big difference between getting a solid idea for what will happen before testing and literally being able to see the future as clearly as the present. If a software developer literally can see the future and already knows what error will occur if he tries to run the code then he would not run it. Or to use the engineer example, let’s say someone is creating a humanoid robot which is still in the early phases of development but the creator believes that it has just reached a point where it is able to sort of balance for a second. First of all, he can’t KNOW that it’s at that point without testing. And even if he has a very good idea that it is probably at that point he certainly won’t know exactly how it is going to fail eventually during the test. If the designer is all-knowing then he would literally know every force that is applied to the robot as it attempts to stand, the exact way that it will stumble down to the minutiae, etc. There is no reason, not for fun, not for learning, literally no logical reason to run that test in that case.
I also agree that religion is a bunch of BS but if I were to try to come up with a justification to the question of why an all-knowing creator would test their creation, I would say that it isn’t for the sake of the creator but rather to teach the person they are testing about themselves or some BS like that. That being said, I think there are many many ways that you can poke holes in the logic of a creator being all-knowing, just, and all-powerful; all three of which are claimed by believers. Alternatively, you can also focus on the all-knowing aspect specifically by illustrating that it is impossible for free will to exist if god is all-knowing. At least not the version of free will that most people refer to. If you want to claim that free will can exist even if there is only one possible time line then that’s another argument.
No. No that is literally not how software engineers operate. At all. Ever. Most engineers think the tests will pass with flying colors. The tests are ran anyways.
So much BS is just people making assumptions about a being much, much smarter than themselves… Maybe God just wants to turn the wheel on the grinder, even though it would take an Act of God to ruin the result…
There is quite literally NO valid reason for God to NOT turn the wheel on the grinder… Saying so does not back up any specific religion, just pokes holes in any fallacious assertion that God has no reason to turn the wheel. He doesn’t need one that makes sense to you. Period.
All God needs to do for free will and “all knowing” to be true is for God to decide NOT to intervene in personal decisions. Yes, that blows Christians and other morons who pray to God out of the water, but it does not invalidate the concept of God at face value to not line up with idiots’ cliff notes of who God is.
Do you not write unit tests? Do you only test in production? I’m not referencing the obvious manual tests, but the fact that things are tested constantly even when they are working. Unless you’re doing something very wrong.
If things always worked, we wouldn’t need tests. When something inevitably breaks because of some totally off the wall reason, we have tests to figure out why the code didn’t work (or fail) in the way we wanted it to. I mostly work in game dev and HCI, and it feels like half the code I write for that owes its stability to hopes and dreams.
Exactly, and religion says we have free will, which supposedly removes us by choice from the control of “God”. How can you fail to see how that’s pretty damn close to a software engineer going, “fuck it, let’s see what these little shits can actually do.”? You could look at the variables going in to every separate character and know what they’d do 100% of the time. You’d almost certainly have an idea what the whole thing would lead to.
… and here’s the kicker: you’re not God! Any religious person readily dismisses problems with technically disproving allegory with what ultimately comes down to, “God is smarter than you”. Since allegory is the only way to compare things that don’t actually exist, you have to observe how each separate piece has a nugget of truth in it, and believers latch on to it, even if it’s the mere appearance of truth.
“God works in mysterious ways” is very, very much an actual thought-terminating cliche for the religious. You and me see how the allegory doesn’t hold up. They choose not to or sometimes literally cannot suss through all of the fluff.
I like how you claim that a software engineer “thinking” their code will work is comparable to a literal “all knowing god” as if they are remotely similar.
Are they the same, as in they are similarly fallible, or is an “all knowing god” more than the average software engineer? Pick one. You can’t have both.
God doesn’t make sense as described in the Bible either, so no it is not wrong to describe him in a way that “isn’t how he works”
You don’t know either. He doesn’t work. At all. The Christian God is not real, and the fact you think you know better how “He” works instead of engaging with the idea I’m attempting to present is frankly pathetic. You’re defending your own emotions, not making any logical defense of a God that LITERALLY CANNOT exist.
Yes, and I am pointing out how you’re not debating anything, because God’s not real, dumbass. There are dozens of reasons God as described in the bible doesn’t ACTUALLY make sense.
That’s the main point I was working from, yet your dumb ass comes in here thinking, “but that still doesn’t make sense tho” is making ANY point.
I STARTED by saying God doesn’t mzke sense but the PIECES can in SPECIFIC ways.
You pointing out that God is nonsensical still is literally a non-point.
The best lies are always made up of pieces of truth. It’s true for fiction books too (and I don’t mean the Bible here), the best ones are those that make characters and situations believable
Internal Logic is something many, many people utterly fail to understand. I fail to understand how those morons think, probably because they quite literally are not thinking.
The Bible is absolutely RIFE with contradictions and broken logic. If I were inclined to conspiracy, I would say religion is EXACTLY the test a species should pass before they are respected. Fall for religious tripe? Sorry, not developed enough to join the adults at the table!!
Thing is, human brains were never optimized for critical thinking and seeking logic. Instead, were optimized for social behaviour and seeking validation. Logic is something that has to be brought intentionally. By default, you just end up with whatever you described
Yes that’s part of the point. Just like any good lie, one that works well has to have a grain of truth. Even grains of truth that do not actually defend a point can be used to construct very convincing lies, like religion.
I am pointing at some of those tiny, itty bitty and not justifying in any way grains of truth that religion relies on. It does not make sense on the whole, but individual pieces that people readily latch on to have some truth, or semblance of truth.
An all-knowing being allowing the world to continue on its own despite knowing what will happen does NOT disprove religion on its own. At all. It also does not prove religion in any way. The entire premise is flawed, but that’s the point: people latch on to the grains of truth, not the whole premise. At least until after they’ve drank the koolaid.
I don’t consider myself an atheist because that whole position and subculture seems awfully confident about something that can’t actually be diagnosed.
But that said, if there IS a god that is “all powerful” and “all knowing” then he sure as shit isn’t watching my sorry ass all day and judging how many times I think about boobs.
My God, if he exists, oversees quasars annihilating entire galaxies with cosmic blowtorches of the focused fire of a billion stars. He is interwoven in the nebular that birth new planets and civilizations. He exists at all points in time simultaneously. He knows everything I will ever do, or all possible alternatives that I may ever choose, and my reasons for my decisions. He doesn’t need to test anyone. He doesn’t need me to prove shit. He doesn’t “need” anything, he is absolutely unknowable and inhuman and incapable of being harnessed into human motivations and emotions.
My God is scary and far more powerful than everyone else’s God. My God can beat up your God.
edit: I don’t care. I am not interesting in being in your club, I don’t want to belong, you can call me what you want, that’s my whole point, nothing you say matters, none of your stupid labels and need to belong matters. It’s all utterly pointless, so your “GOTCHA” comments about the definitions of words are utterly lost on me in this context. Just save your energy and go do something good for someone else.
So your God is just the universe. Which we already know exists. So we don’t have to believe in it, because it is real already. Therefore, you are an atheist too
Ah yes, the Mother Theresa approach. You know, she accepted modern medicine near the end, despite denying it to others. This is more often than not the truth of this subject amongst the “devout”.
I don’t think all-knowing exist outside of fiction, and neither do God.
But just for fun, I think there is an interesting way religious people would answer, and a more satisfying one than just saying God’s works in mysterious way.
See we can see free will as a God given power to make choice in a otherwise deterministic world.
The testing would just see what we do with his power.
And since it comes from him, it could be outside of something knowledgeable, outside of the “all”.
Or, at least to make him or his powers outside of the “all” would be the best solution to paradoxes like can ‘God create a rock he can lift?’ etc…
P.S. Obviously another way to answer the paradox and my personal belief is to discard the reality of words like all-knowing or omnipotent. But i think this view has some merits, it can’t probably be better put philosophically… (I’m not a philosopher thought ^^)
I think about this a lot, about free will to make a choice in an otherwise-deterministic universe, and the thing that gets me is… yeah, it sort of makes sense if you consider the person making the decision like a black box. A decision comes out, and it seems free.
But what goes on in the box? How can it possibly be free will? If I were making a choice to benefit myself, and I had perfect information about the options and the consequences, then wouldn’t everybody in my position make the same (objectively best) choice? If I make a non-optimal decision because I lack some information, then that’s not free will, that’s due to an external circumstance. If I make a non-optimal decision because I’m not of rational mind, then that’s not free will, that’s either an intrinsic quality of my mind, or due to external influences. If I chose to be intentionally non-rational to prove that I have free will, the idea of free will itself and the need to prove it would be the external influence driving me.
If the choice was just one of just one of preference, then the preference is either one I was born with, or the product of outside influences. Maybe there’s somebody who can logic themselves into liking cauliflower au gratin without reference to subjective sensory experience, or cultural significance, and I just can’t imagine how?
First of all, i don’t think we can reduce choices to something to optimize. You can’t know everything and your benefit is a pretty unknown variable too. Being rational is great but also not suitable for every choice, it’s not that that i would call free will.
Now the idea that what we are born as and every experience from then on shape you and your choice is a good hypothesis. It means we humans are just as deterministic as everything else.
Then free will is just the term we use for the unknown and unknowable in us. Like when we call rolling a dice random. But it’s not a real physical thing.
But here is where my proposal can still be a good hypothesis too…
There is one thing that is a black box to our knowledge, not our biology or our brain, but our conscience.
We don’t really know what it is yet. We know a lot of biology and we’re getting better and better at understanding our brain. But our subjective experiences are not explained by science. And thus in it could lie something not deterministic.
(As a parallel, just like we don’t know how to interpret quantum mechanics, wich could have true randomness, or not…)
P.S. i do this parallel with physics because i’m more knowledgeable on it, but also because i think there is a good amount of understanding and questioning we can have on determinism through it ^^
I do tend to think of choices that way. The way I understand the human mind is as a rational optimizer of utility. The brain has to balance all manner of competing sensory and cognitive input, and the mind constantly seeks to maximize pleasure and/or relief from distress. (That’s what I mean by utility.) They say that all models are wrong, but some are useful, and this one proves very useful. Instead of dismissing people as disturbed or crazy, look for the pleasure or relief that their mind is optimizing for. Drug users destroying their lives by seeking the next fix do so because the pleasure and relief of the drug is greater than distress from alienating family and friends. This is why people have to hit rock bottom before they’ll kick the addition; it’s when the distress of ruining their lives overwhelms the lure of the drug. This model even helped me understand a friend with schizophrenia. Her decisions were quite rational, actually, but were based on distorted and false perceptions.
Now this is funny, writing it out like this brought a mini-epiphany to me, a different model of what “free will” might mean. Our minds do have the freedom to change and react differently to different sensory and cognitive inputs. We’re not automatons fixed to a preset course of action. And it makes sense that way that even protozoans have some degree of free will. Intriguing!
Ho, I see what you meant now by this optimizing idea. And yes i would agree, it’s not exempt from exceptions, but this is a good way to describe most brain functions, definitely useful. Reward circuit being a prime example, one you summed up very well.
I don’t know for protozoan but to anything complex enough to have subjective experiences yes, it could have it. Definitely an interesting idea, wich i guess would fit with God, but possible regardless.
Not defending religion, but part of religion is philosophy. It seems to be a pretty fundamental part of psychology that people need to experience hardships and overcome them. This is the path to reach a peaceful feeling that you have some control in this world and the ability to carve out a life worth living.
Why the fuck would an “”“all-knowing god”“” need to test people?
Only the most benevolent of beings test people.
For fun
Touché… It just get pretty boring being omnipotent and all-powerful
I mean, I really do NOT defend religion, because over all, it really is a crock of BS twisted history and Baby’s First Philosophy rolled in to garbage cults.
… Though there ARE multiple reasons an “all-knowing” god would test their creations, even if they “knew the results”. This happens all the time in the real world. Some engineers just enjoy seeing their creations do something, even if it’s doomed to be a prototype. Software engineers test their stuff all the time when they “know” what it will do.
Hell, 99.9% of science itself is getting a solid idea before you run the experiment. Remember: scientists test hypotheses, not hair-brained ADHD shower thoughts.
So while religion is overall total BS for dummies, individual components DO make sense, in their own way. It wouldn’t be so popular if the pieces didn’t make more sense than the whole.
There is a big difference between getting a solid idea for what will happen before testing and literally being able to see the future as clearly as the present. If a software developer literally can see the future and already knows what error will occur if he tries to run the code then he would not run it. Or to use the engineer example, let’s say someone is creating a humanoid robot which is still in the early phases of development but the creator believes that it has just reached a point where it is able to sort of balance for a second. First of all, he can’t KNOW that it’s at that point without testing. And even if he has a very good idea that it is probably at that point he certainly won’t know exactly how it is going to fail eventually during the test. If the designer is all-knowing then he would literally know every force that is applied to the robot as it attempts to stand, the exact way that it will stumble down to the minutiae, etc. There is no reason, not for fun, not for learning, literally no logical reason to run that test in that case.
I also agree that religion is a bunch of BS but if I were to try to come up with a justification to the question of why an all-knowing creator would test their creation, I would say that it isn’t for the sake of the creator but rather to teach the person they are testing about themselves or some BS like that. That being said, I think there are many many ways that you can poke holes in the logic of a creator being all-knowing, just, and all-powerful; all three of which are claimed by believers. Alternatively, you can also focus on the all-knowing aspect specifically by illustrating that it is impossible for free will to exist if god is all-knowing. At least not the version of free will that most people refer to. If you want to claim that free will can exist even if there is only one possible time line then that’s another argument.
No. No that is literally not how software engineers operate. At all. Ever. Most engineers think the tests will pass with flying colors. The tests are ran anyways.
So much BS is just people making assumptions about a being much, much smarter than themselves… Maybe God just wants to turn the wheel on the grinder, even though it would take an Act of God to ruin the result…
There is quite literally NO valid reason for God to NOT turn the wheel on the grinder… Saying so does not back up any specific religion, just pokes holes in any fallacious assertion that God has no reason to turn the wheel. He doesn’t need one that makes sense to you. Period.
All God needs to do for free will and “all knowing” to be true is for God to decide NOT to intervene in personal decisions. Yes, that blows Christians and other morons who pray to God out of the water, but it does not invalidate the concept of God at face value to not line up with idiots’ cliff notes of who God is.
Software engineer here. I run tests to work out where my code fails and to deduce why that is.
Do you not write unit tests? Do you only test in production? I’m not referencing the obvious manual tests, but the fact that things are tested constantly even when they are working. Unless you’re doing something very wrong.
If things always worked, we wouldn’t need tests. When something inevitably breaks because of some totally off the wall reason, we have tests to figure out why the code didn’t work (or fail) in the way we wanted it to. I mostly work in game dev and HCI, and it feels like half the code I write for that owes its stability to hopes and dreams.
Exactly, and religion says we have free will, which supposedly removes us by choice from the control of “God”. How can you fail to see how that’s pretty damn close to a software engineer going, “fuck it, let’s see what these little shits can actually do.”? You could look at the variables going in to every separate character and know what they’d do 100% of the time. You’d almost certainly have an idea what the whole thing would lead to.
… and here’s the kicker: you’re not God! Any religious person readily dismisses problems with technically disproving allegory with what ultimately comes down to, “God is smarter than you”. Since allegory is the only way to compare things that don’t actually exist, you have to observe how each separate piece has a nugget of truth in it, and believers latch on to it, even if it’s the mere appearance of truth.
“God works in mysterious ways” is very, very much an actual thought-terminating cliche for the religious. You and me see how the allegory doesn’t hold up. They choose not to or sometimes literally cannot suss through all of the fluff.
I like how you claim that a software engineer “thinking” their code will work is comparable to a literal “all knowing god” as if they are remotely similar.
Are they the same, as in they are similarly fallible, or is an “all knowing god” more than the average software engineer? Pick one. You can’t have both.
God doesn’t make sense as described in the Bible either, so no it is not wrong to describe him in a way that “isn’t how he works”
You don’t know either. He doesn’t work. At all. The Christian God is not real, and the fact you think you know better how “He” works instead of engaging with the idea I’m attempting to present is frankly pathetic. You’re defending your own emotions, not making any logical defense of a God that LITERALLY CANNOT exist.
I’m attacking your argument, not you, you child.
Yes, and I am pointing out how you’re not debating anything, because God’s not real, dumbass. There are dozens of reasons God as described in the bible doesn’t ACTUALLY make sense.
That’s the main point I was working from, yet your dumb ass comes in here thinking, “but that still doesn’t make sense tho” is making ANY point.
I STARTED by saying God doesn’t mzke sense but the PIECES can in SPECIFIC ways.
You pointing out that God is nonsensical still is literally a non-point.
It’s so obvious that you’re way too emotionally involved for you to type correctly, let alone think or communicate clearly.
You’re being an asshole for no reason, on top of being wrong in so many ways.
Go outside and get some real human interaction.
The best lies are always made up of pieces of truth. It’s true for fiction books too (and I don’t mean the Bible here), the best ones are those that make characters and situations believable
Internal Logic is something many, many people utterly fail to understand. I fail to understand how those morons think, probably because they quite literally are not thinking.
The Bible is absolutely RIFE with contradictions and broken logic. If I were inclined to conspiracy, I would say religion is EXACTLY the test a species should pass before they are respected. Fall for religious tripe? Sorry, not developed enough to join the adults at the table!!
Thing is, human brains were never optimized for critical thinking and seeking logic. Instead, were optimized for social behaviour and seeking validation. Logic is something that has to be brought intentionally. By default, you just end up with whatever you described
I have some terrible news for you regarding how things absolutely do not need to make sense to be popular.
Yes that’s part of the point. Just like any good lie, one that works well has to have a grain of truth. Even grains of truth that do not actually defend a point can be used to construct very convincing lies, like religion.
I am pointing at some of those tiny, itty bitty and not justifying in any way grains of truth that religion relies on. It does not make sense on the whole, but individual pieces that people readily latch on to have some truth, or semblance of truth.
An all-knowing being allowing the world to continue on its own despite knowing what will happen does NOT disprove religion on its own. At all. It also does not prove religion in any way. The entire premise is flawed, but that’s the point: people latch on to the grains of truth, not the whole premise. At least until after they’ve drank the koolaid.
Okay, but what you’re describing isn’t even remotely moral for an omnipotent, all-powerful being.
The example here is literally Jesus, whomst is always depicted as such.
God as described in the Bible is ALSO not remotely moral…
Because humans experience a lot of growth during trials and tribulations.
Fuck that; he’s all powerful, if he wants me to improve he should use his divine magic and do it himself.
I don’t consider myself an atheist because that whole position and subculture seems awfully confident about something that can’t actually be diagnosed.
But that said, if there IS a god that is “all powerful” and “all knowing” then he sure as shit isn’t watching my sorry ass all day and judging how many times I think about boobs.
My God, if he exists, oversees quasars annihilating entire galaxies with cosmic blowtorches of the focused fire of a billion stars. He is interwoven in the nebular that birth new planets and civilizations. He exists at all points in time simultaneously. He knows everything I will ever do, or all possible alternatives that I may ever choose, and my reasons for my decisions. He doesn’t need to test anyone. He doesn’t need me to prove shit. He doesn’t “need” anything, he is absolutely unknowable and inhuman and incapable of being harnessed into human motivations and emotions.
My God is scary and far more powerful than everyone else’s God. My God can beat up your God.
edit: I don’t care. I am not interesting in being in your club, I don’t want to belong, you can call me what you want, that’s my whole point, nothing you say matters, none of your stupid labels and need to belong matters. It’s all utterly pointless, so your “GOTCHA” comments about the definitions of words are utterly lost on me in this context. Just save your energy and go do something good for someone else.
Maybe not, but ceiling cat is watching you masturbate.
Ah yes, I’ve been here before… Atheism actually does not mean you believe god’s don’t exist. It literally means, and I quote…
I bet that’s you, isn’t it? Don’t reply… Just think on it.
I literally do not care.
So your God is just the universe. Which we already know exists. So we don’t have to believe in it, because it is real already. Therefore, you are an atheist too
I cannot possibly find a way to make myself care.
Doesn’t change what you are, still
My God doesn’t exist so your God would have to invent one just to beat up. And that’s what a sad, pathetic, loser god does. 😌
Ah yes, the Mother Theresa approach. You know, she accepted modern medicine near the end, despite denying it to others. This is more often than not the truth of this subject amongst the “devout”.
Because He feels like it? Why does God have to behave according to your standards?
I don’t think all-knowing exist outside of fiction, and neither do God.
But just for fun, I think there is an interesting way religious people would answer, and a more satisfying one than just saying God’s works in mysterious way.
See we can see free will as a God given power to make choice in a otherwise deterministic world.
The testing would just see what we do with his power.
And since it comes from him, it could be outside of something knowledgeable, outside of the “all”.
Or, at least to make him or his powers outside of the “all” would be the best solution to paradoxes like can ‘God create a rock he can lift?’ etc…
P.S. Obviously another way to answer the paradox and my personal belief is to discard the reality of words like all-knowing or omnipotent. But i think this view has some merits, it can’t probably be better put philosophically… (I’m not a philosopher thought ^^)
I think about this a lot, about free will to make a choice in an otherwise-deterministic universe, and the thing that gets me is… yeah, it sort of makes sense if you consider the person making the decision like a black box. A decision comes out, and it seems free.
But what goes on in the box? How can it possibly be free will? If I were making a choice to benefit myself, and I had perfect information about the options and the consequences, then wouldn’t everybody in my position make the same (objectively best) choice? If I make a non-optimal decision because I lack some information, then that’s not free will, that’s due to an external circumstance. If I make a non-optimal decision because I’m not of rational mind, then that’s not free will, that’s either an intrinsic quality of my mind, or due to external influences. If I chose to be intentionally non-rational to prove that I have free will, the idea of free will itself and the need to prove it would be the external influence driving me.
If the choice was just one of just one of preference, then the preference is either one I was born with, or the product of outside influences. Maybe there’s somebody who can logic themselves into liking cauliflower au gratin without reference to subjective sensory experience, or cultural significance, and I just can’t imagine how?
First of all, i don’t think we can reduce choices to something to optimize. You can’t know everything and your benefit is a pretty unknown variable too. Being rational is great but also not suitable for every choice, it’s not that that i would call free will.
Now the idea that what we are born as and every experience from then on shape you and your choice is a good hypothesis. It means we humans are just as deterministic as everything else.
Then free will is just the term we use for the unknown and unknowable in us. Like when we call rolling a dice random. But it’s not a real physical thing.
But here is where my proposal can still be a good hypothesis too…
There is one thing that is a black box to our knowledge, not our biology or our brain, but our conscience.
We don’t really know what it is yet. We know a lot of biology and we’re getting better and better at understanding our brain. But our subjective experiences are not explained by science. And thus in it could lie something not deterministic.
(As a parallel, just like we don’t know how to interpret quantum mechanics, wich could have true randomness, or not…)
P.S. i do this parallel with physics because i’m more knowledgeable on it, but also because i think there is a good amount of understanding and questioning we can have on determinism through it ^^
I do tend to think of choices that way. The way I understand the human mind is as a rational optimizer of utility. The brain has to balance all manner of competing sensory and cognitive input, and the mind constantly seeks to maximize pleasure and/or relief from distress. (That’s what I mean by utility.) They say that all models are wrong, but some are useful, and this one proves very useful. Instead of dismissing people as disturbed or crazy, look for the pleasure or relief that their mind is optimizing for. Drug users destroying their lives by seeking the next fix do so because the pleasure and relief of the drug is greater than distress from alienating family and friends. This is why people have to hit rock bottom before they’ll kick the addition; it’s when the distress of ruining their lives overwhelms the lure of the drug. This model even helped me understand a friend with schizophrenia. Her decisions were quite rational, actually, but were based on distorted and false perceptions.
Now this is funny, writing it out like this brought a mini-epiphany to me, a different model of what “free will” might mean. Our minds do have the freedom to change and react differently to different sensory and cognitive inputs. We’re not automatons fixed to a preset course of action. And it makes sense that way that even protozoans have some degree of free will. Intriguing!
Ho, I see what you meant now by this optimizing idea. And yes i would agree, it’s not exempt from exceptions, but this is a good way to describe most brain functions, definitely useful. Reward circuit being a prime example, one you summed up very well.
I don’t know for protozoan but to anything complex enough to have subjective experiences yes, it could have it. Definitely an interesting idea, wich i guess would fit with God, but possible regardless.
Not defending religion, but part of religion is philosophy. It seems to be a pretty fundamental part of psychology that people need to experience hardships and overcome them. This is the path to reach a peaceful feeling that you have some control in this world and the ability to carve out a life worth living.
Maybe the test says less about the tester, and more about the testee.