the complete idiot's guide to understanding ethics

You scored as Hedonism. Your life is guided by the principles of Hedonism: You believe that pleasure is a great, or the greatest, good; and you try to enjoy life's pleasures as much as you can. 'Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!' More info at Arocoun's Wikipedia User Page... Hedonism 90% Existentialism 85% Strong Egoism 80% Utilitarianism 65% Justice (Fairness) 60% Kantianism 60% Nihilism 25% Apathy 25% Divine Command 0% What philosophy do you follow? (v1.03) created with QuizFarm.com

This quiz made a very vague distinction between Hedonism and Utilitarianism. Not that I'm an expert, but from what I've been studying in the past few months, I think my Hedonism and Utilitarianism results should've been the other way around. If Anthony reads this, I'm sure he'll be delighted to see that the links go to http://www.wikipedia.org.

Lately I've been in a mood... I feel like I don't hate academics as much. I might even start reading extra philosophy and info about Roman religion. Which reminds me...

Today I had a discussion with gram about removing "under god" from the Pledge of Allegiance. She was saying that "even the Muslims believe in a god. We're not just going to remove it for the atheists." Slyly, I pointed out that atheists might not be the only people who have a problem with it. What about people of any religion who truly believe that church and state must be separated? What about the polytheists? Skirting the pagan issue, I used Hindus as an example, albeit one I poorly illustrated by mentioning, "Ganesha and, uh, all of those." Gram said that I don't believe in that anyways, all those little sprites wandering around, and I said that maybe I do. At this, Jeff said something uncharacteristically unintelligble about "no such thing... idols."

Mind you, I'm not one of those militant "we must see no vestige of your religion in a public place" folks. Separation of church and state is important to me, but at the same time I don't get angry at President Bush mentioning god in his speeches. Like President Bush I do not, but I'm not going to get angry at him for having beliefs and expressing them. It's the political/ religious agendas that are no good. To me, being vague and half-assed for the sake of popularity really isn't preferrable.