| Part Two: Refuting and reversing Pascal's Wager |
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posted by: therealspartacus007 (reply) post date: 06.14.04 (8:45 pm) Wow, you ARE drunk! ;) posted by: therealspartacus007 (reply) post date: 06.15.04 (10:25 am) Reply to: therealspartacus007 Nah, I'm only kidding. Go ahead and delete that first comment if you want ;) This makes a lot of sense. Since we can't calculate the odds of God's existence (its not 50/50 like Pascal said) and there is no reason to believe in Him in the first place, then why should we? :) posted by: mblog (reply) post date: 06.15.04 (11:38 am) Sorry, but this argument does not work either. For the advantages of not believing in God, you make a lot of assertions. These are not premises based on anything proven but conclusions based on nothing. You cannot simply assert those things but must argue your case. A belief in God is not incompatible with the idea of individual responsibility and accountability for one's actions. So it makes no sense to say that belief in God affects this one way or another. You can certainly make that case for certain religious dogma, but not for the belief in God in general. In some religions, the notion of personal responsibility is paramount, and God cannot forgive you for sins against man. In other religions, God can and will forgive anything if you confess your sins on your deathbed and accept that religion's concept of God. So it's nothing inherent in God, but in dogma. If you think that life would be more meaningful without a belief in God, then answer a simple question. What is the meaning of life? If you can't answer that as your starting point, then any discussions about whether one life is more meaningful than another is moot. A belief need not be true to be beneficial. It has been shown scientifically that prayer has had beneficial effects on people in terms of recovery from illness or surgery, and in some other aspects. While it's possible that other forms of meditation would be equally beneficial, it's still moot because that does not negate the benefits of prayer where they exist. If a child believes in the tooth fairy and her life seems more meaningful because she looks forward to losing that tooth and getting a quarter, the fact that the tooth fairy does not exist is irrelevant when it comes to that child's enjoyment. It's still positive. An alternative would be to tell the child that there is no tooth fairy, losing a tooth is painful and uncomfortable, and there is no reward, but that would not make things more meaningful. Another alternative would be to acknowledge that the tooth fairy does exist, and was created by the child's parents. The parents are the tooth fairy, the child does get the reward, and in time, the child learns the true nature of the tooth fairy. posted by: therealspartacus007 (reply) post date: 06.16.04 (6:23 am) Reply to: mblog Living a lie is not beneficial. Pascal was referring to the Christian God, and so was DragonBait. Life is an end in itself. posted by: mblog (reply) post date: 06.16.04 (8:38 am) Reply to: therealspartacus007 Pascal was not referring to the Christian God, but the Christian religion. It's a matter of following Christianity that would be relevant, and a belief in God per se is not. What do you mean by "Christian God?" In theory, Christians believe in one God and it's the same God as in other monotheistic religions. Of course, they have a healthy blend of Greek mythology mixed in, there's the concept of the trinity, and the notion that there's a divine mystery that cannot be explained in words. The notion is that only God understands, and it somehow is true that there is a single God, but explains away Jesus as not being something separate. But having a rational argument that the concept of the Christian God does not make sense is impossible. It is inherently irrational to use reason to dispute something with a premise that it is a divine mystery. If the starting point is that it cannot be explained by reason, disputing it with reason gets you nowhere. Indeed it makes even less sense for Christians to try to explain it because that goes against the grain of the notion that it cannot be explained. posted by: therealspartacus007 (reply) post date: 06.16.04 (9:30 am) Reply to: mblog The details relevant of Pascal's conception of God to his wager are shared by many people- that you must follow the supernatural being and subvert your will to its will in order to have a great reward. posted by: mblog (reply) post date: 06.16.04 (11:03 am) Reply to: therealspartacus007 But he still had Christianity in mind and there are still major religions that don't have that concept. posted by: dahar (reply) post date: 06.16.04 (6:29 pm) OOooh theological/philosophical thought exercises... do the "God and the presence of evil on earth" one. posted by: GreenEyedGrrl (reply) post date: 06.17.04 (9:57 am) Reply to: mblog I think you're right about one thing. Having a rational conversation about the existence of the Christian God is impossible, because Christians base their belief on "faith" not reason or evidence. That's what faith is, right?--the belief in something for which one has no evidence or proof. And, Christianity is based on the Bible, which if full of contradictions and at times just doesn't make sense. posted by: mblog (reply) post date: 06.17.04 (10:40 am) Reply to: GreenEyedGrrl Faith means different things to different people. To many Christians, faith means that you accept things without questioning them, because if you do, you don't have faith. Faith is not always something irrational. If you have faith that your husband will come home and will not have an affair with his secretary, that may not be based on absolute knowledge. Faith and trust are part of everybody's lives. It's a question of the basis for your faith in something. Some religions are a combination of faith and knowledge. For some, the idea of praying for a win before a football game would be sacrilegious, while many Christians think that God will favor them at war or sports or other things not because they are right or better or train harder or practice more or study more, but because they claim that they love Jesus or because they pray. Faith can be taken to an extreme, or it can be a balanced part of your life. But make no mistake, faith has to be part of everybody's life. If you cannot assume that the people around you whom you trust can still be trusted tomorrow, or that the teacher at your local school will not murder all the children with an axe tomorrow, or that the laws of physics will still hold when you wake up, there is no point in living. You may argue that many of these are rational notions and not notions of faith. That's partly true. There is a rational basis for the faith in those instances, but in an absolute sense, you don't know if your boyfriend will become a child molester or murderer. These things happen every day. But if you are willing to sleep in the same room with him, it's because you have faith and there is a rational basis for it. You are right that arguing with the Christian notion of faith has the exact problems you idenitified. But not all religions have the same notion of faith. posted by: therealspartacus007 (reply) post date: 06.18.04 (7:02 am) Reply to: mblog The difference between the sort of faith you refer to and the sort of faith that is generally associated with believing in deity, is the matter of whether there is a rational reason to think something is true or not. You stated that because you can't know anything for 100% sure, that everything is based on faith. This is not true. No, you cannot be 100% sure that you are going to win a football game, but you can have reasonable certainty. You can't know for a fact that a smoke alarm will work, but you can say that with a high degree of certainty that it will. When people say they 'believe' or 'have faith' in a smoke alarm, they mean something very different than when they say the same things about God. There is no real reason to think that your smoke alarm will disobey the laws of nature and not go off, there is (hopefully!) no real reason to think your boyfriend is a child molestor or a murderer, and there is no real reason to believe in God. To think something is true without real reason is the irrational faith referred to in religious discussions. Yes, there is virtually no one that has completely given up their thought process. But when it comes to religion qua religion, its 100% faith. That is, all the things that make a religious belief religious that do not appear in a secular way of life, are faith-based. posted by: mblog (reply) post date: 06.18.04 (1:17 pm) Reply to: therealspartacus007 In real life, smoke alarms fail quite a bit. It's virtually impossible to predict what team will win in a fair match up. But people have faith in these things all the time. As for religion, it makes no sense to strip out the things that appear in a secular life. Those things may be a majority of what a religion is all about. If those things are part of the religion, then most of the religion is not based on faith as you see it, but in the sense that I was discussing. If I choose to lead a moral life, teach values to my children, and expect them to be better people because of it, that's faith. It's also religion. You may come to the same conclusions about what constitutes morality as I do, and your determination may not be a religious one at all. I might come to the same conclusion irrespective of my religion. But that would not change the fact that my religion holds those views, and it's not the blind type of faith if a rational person can come to the same conclusions independently. If I choose to value education for my children and expect that their lives will be better for it, that's also faith and it's also a religious belief. Again, it has nothing to do with an irrational belief. To strip the essence of a religion and then make general statements about it makes no sense. You cannot generalize about something if you ignore its fundamental principals. posted by: therealspartacus007 (reply) post date: 06.18.04 (2:42 pm) Reply to: mblog But the very thing that seperates religion from non-religion is the unreasonable belief in something. Yes, religions usually contain other elements as well, but those aren't the essential aspects of "religion." Belief in God, whether part of a religion or not, is entirely without evidence. And keep in mind that no one here is trying to use DragonBait's arguments to prove God does not exist- but merely to deflect arguments that say he does. posted by: mblog (reply) post date: 06.18.04 (5:23 pm) Reply to: therealspartacus007 The problem with your argument is that it's self serving. You decide for yourself what are the essential aspects of religion and then you argue based on your own assumptions. If I do the same thing, then the results are different. The essential aspects of some religions are not unreasonable belief in something. Therefore, your argument fails. Now in order to win your argument, you would have to show that your premise is true and mine is false. But that boils down to the absurd notion that my religion is not what I believe it to be, and I instead believe the ideas and notions that you claim I believe. In other words, you have a better knowledge of what I believe that I do. Barring that, I'm in a better position to make a judgement as to what are the essential parts of my religious beliefs and what are the main focus. posted by: therealspartacus007 (reply) post date: 06.18.04 (7:07 pm) Reply to: mblog So then, what seperates religion from non-religion, essentially, other than faith? And if I remember correctly, this blog is about the existence of God, which is a matter of irrational faith. posted by: mblog (reply) post date: 06.19.04 (4:06 pm) Reply to: therealspartacus007 Religion is not necessarily defined the way you define it. Some would argue that religions such as Buddhism are not really religions, but they are generally accepted as religions. If most people agree, therefore, that a religion need not be based on "an irrational belief in God," or even be theistic, then your argument does not hold. There are also religions at the other extreme that are based solely on a belief in God and nothing else. For example, Deism holds that there is a God, but there is no dogma or belief that God has any active role in world affairs. But an individual Deist's concept of God could by definition differ from that of another Deist since there is no doctrine to conform to. Arguing against certain Deist views of God is as meaningless as arguing against the existence of nature. It's a matter of what you define God to be. And you are presupposing that certain attributes are part of any definition of God and that's not the case. posted by: therealspartacus007 (reply) post date: 06.19.04 (4:46 pm) Reply to: mblog We seem to be getting quite off topic, lol. Using the definition of religion that this blog has been operating on, it is improper to call some groups of Buddhists "religious," such as atheistic Therevadas, while Tibetan Buddhists most certainly are. But none of this has to do with the fact that Pascal's wager is a silly argument. If you want a more structured debate, where there will be people around watching to make sure we don't fudge on definitions, I suggest a trip to http://IronBlogRLGN.tblog.com posted by: mblog (reply) post date: 06.21.04 (7:14 am) Reply to: therealspartacus007 But I've been saying from the beginning that Pascal's wager is not a valid argument. I just didn't find your arguments convincing either. It's possible for more than one person to be unconvincing, so I can disagree with both you and Pascal on this one. As for religion, Pascal's wager is purportedly about God, and not religion. But the reality is that it's about Christianity and not God. There was no operative definition of religion given in the blog. Even if we discount Buddhism, you still didn't address Deism and a lot of things in between. posted by: GreenEyedGrrl (reply) post date: 06.21.04 (7:35 pm) Reply to: mblog Oh, yes, I can tell you absolutely that I will never have a boyfriend who becomes a "child molester or murderer"......I'm a lesbian. :) And I do have to agree with therealspartacus007 that living a lie is not beneficial. My mother lives in a continual state of denial regarding certain aspects of reality because it makes her feel better in some way, but her being there isn't really healthy or beneficial to her, especially in terms of close relationships (it's just sad). I think you are right in that there are different notions of what faith means. These don't necessarily have anything to do with God. I guess faith in God and faith in anything else comes from the same place in us. I just tend to put my faith in what has proven to be faithful or trustworthy to me, like my partner. I have more faith in myself and in her than I do in God. Back to the topic, I really like what DragonBait said about taking individual responsibility for our own actions and the idea that living a life based on our own moral code, rather than on a book of someone else's rules, gives life more meaning for us as individuals. posted by: mblog (reply) post date: 06.22.04 (10:10 am) Reply to: GreenEyedGrrl It may not be likely that you will have a boyfriend, but it's probably at least as likely that at some point you will find a guy attractive as it is that anybody will end up married to a murderer. I didn't say it will happen, or even that it's likely. It's just within the realm of possibility. You still have to have faith that your girlfriend won't have an operation and then become a child molester, and your faith is probably very well founded. As for personal responsibility, that's part of many religions. Christianity may have a notion of God being responsible for everything and God being able to forgive all sins, but that's not a universal concept in other religions. In Judaism, God cannot forgive a person for a sin against another person. If you steal your neighbor's lawn gnome, you can't pray for forgiveness. You have to get it from your neighbor. It's also not clear to what extent people follow rules of morality blindly just because they are in a religious book as opposed to following them blindly because they are laws (or for both reasons) or following them selectively because some don't seem so bad. There are plenty of people who call themselves Christians who lie about a lot of things on a regular basis. I find it hard to believe that they seriously think they are going to hell for it. Either they think that following a strict moral code because it's in a book is not relevant, or they think that God can forgive anything if they have faith, in which case the notion of morality becomes pointless. But there are other takes on this too. For a Deist, morality is part of an inherent right, just as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but not because of any book or statement from God. Buddhists hold moral concepts as ideals to live up to, and don't necessarily associate them with God at all. Reform Jews don't believe that the Bible is the literal word of God and generally observe the moral precepts based on ethical considerations, and would typically agree that things like lying, cheating, stealing, and killing are wrong, but typically find it perfectly acceptable to light a candle after sundown on Friday. So there are a variety of religions and religious people whose moral code dies not exist solely because it's in a religious text. Some people think that something is inherently moral or immoral because God says so. That's not a very compelling argument for reasons I won't go into. Read Bertrand Russell for that. Others believe that there are more pragmatic reasons for a moral code, and some of these people believe that God's word on those issues is there because those things are inherently moral or immoral rather than the other way around. |
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