That wonderful Pascal's Wager......

I really must thank the theists who send me stuff to discuss in my blog page. I've been scratching my head as to where to start , having so much I want to say, and I realise that I'm being given the opportunity to make my points on a daily basis, being prompted by some silly argument that comes in the email or on a comment box.

Thanks for the inspiration , and the excuse, to write this blog guys!

This one is from a chap in the USA called "Walter", posing a perfectly classic "Pascal's wager".

Yeah, I know, done to death.....But I love it. I always know I'm winning an argument when pascal comes out , especially with that threat of Hellfire and eternal damnation.......

Oh....I'm "Thomas" on this , by the way:-


THEIST:-
"I can understand why Thomas is angry. He has a life without hope. But, that's how atheists exist. Christians, on the other hand, live with hope of eternal life. The best that Thomas can hope for, as an atheist, when he dies is NOTHING. The best that I hope for is eternal life in heaven. Now, if Thomas is right, then I get the same "reward" that he does. If I'm right, however, then I get heaven and Thomas gets eternal damnation. Thomas, tell me again why I should be an atheist?"


ATHEIST:-

Ha ha! What makes you think I’m angry that I’m an atheist? - Or that you’re a theist, for that matter?

We get the same “reward”, after we die, either way, Walter, regardless of what we believe.

The chances are, some poor animal, which was being humanely put down, has every reason to believe he’s going to live forever, even after the needle goes in.

He still has got the instinct to fear however, as you do.
I’ll be willing to bet that your fear of death is at least as powerful as mine Walter.

What does that tell you about your absolute confidence of an eternal reward? …eh?? LOL!

Seriously consider, if there is the Omni benevolent, omniscient, ultra sentient “cause of all existence” that we might call “God”, do you really think he would be of the mindset and motivations of the incompetent, malevolent, prick that your religion defines, and that you feel the need to bow down to???

You people who get your ideas from the ignorance within ancient and primitive cultures make me laugh!

Consider the super reasoning that theists attribute to god:
He can work out what is going to happen in every contingency, even the ones he doesn’t sanction, because he allows free will - Yet he sulks and condemns people to eternal torture because, through increasingly better evidence and reasoning, they don’t believe “He” exists???

Ha ha!! Get real Walter!! – This is the 21st century, not the Dark ages!!

The other point I would deal with immediately, is your apparent suggestion that I could choose to be a theist or atheist.....
I believe what I believe, because of the overwhelming evidence, that the god you pray to is a bronze age fantasy figure

He's not real. ......He doesn't exist.......What the hell do you expect me to do about that??!!

How about if I believe in him anyway?...... Perhaps there's a rationality blocking drug?....... Maybe I could see a hypnotist??....
How do you suppose you can plant and grow a delusion in the mind of a man who has all the evidence and rationality to know that a fantasy is not real?

Pascal's wager is a truly stupid idea - I'm surprised at ol' Blaise!

However, to answer your ultimate question - I don’t necessarily think you should be an atheist!

By your own suggestion, you seem to need this delusion. Possibly you need it to feel more secure about your existence, and to be a more complete person generally?
It’s possible that your morality is so informed by the whims of this superstition that, without the confines of its commandment, you might feel free to be a rapist or mass murderer or any other kind of miscreant. - Is that the case?

If you need your “faith”, in order to remain as normal, moral and self secure, as any other secular, rationally motivated human being, please hold on to it!!

However, I do care when you try to impose your superstitions on other harmless members of society - but that’s a different debate!

That said, if you’re asking me how I can face up to the finiteness of my biological life, and my own inevitable mortality, without fantasizing up the emotional placebo that you religious and superstitious seem to need, I would say that my “reward” was TRUE SENTIENCE.

An eternity of oblivion is a tiny price to pay for the privilege of a single second of human experience and knowledge.

I’ve already had decades of it! It’s very important to me that what I’m experiencing is as real as I can possibly percieve it.

For example, the most basic Christian (of the many versions) accepts that Christ died to pay for the sins of man, at, and to redeem mankind from the consequences, of the ‘fall”
Leaving aside the ridiculous notion of this all powerful god becoming himself incarnate, so he can pray to himself, and sacrifice himself to himself, in order to pay for his own mistakes, that he blames mankind for, the whole idea of redemption is contingent on the “fall” being a fact of human history.
This would require the creation tale as laid down in Genesis to also be historical fact. - There is no way round that.

The writers of the gospels believed it.

According to them, Jesus believed it...

The founders of Christian canon and dogma at Nicaea believed it.

It’s the base decree of Christianity, yet, in the light of modern secular knowledge, the more established, institutionalised religions, are forced to relegate it to allegory.
The Catholic Church, for one, has been forced to do some embarrassing backpedalling, and make some humiliating apologies, to correct earlier decrees of divine knowledge, and persecutions of dissenters.
The “infallible Pope”, at this point in time, has been reduced to saying “believe what you want” with regard to origins, purely because there are so many of his flock in both camps that he daren’t risk alienating either side.

As someone, who relies on this kind of confused institution, to tell him what to think, you have to share this absolute confusion as to what is real.


An atheist, on the other hand, is free to believe the universe as it is presenting itself
in reality, without having to make it conform to priestly decrees that are based on ancient superstitions.

For example, science tells us that all matter, and currently observed laws of physics, can be traced to a singularity that occurred circa 13.7 billion years ago
.
( Many people are even suggesting it as being the absolute beginning of the universe. Though no intellectually honest empiricist would offer that as a conclusion.)

The evidence for big bang cosmology is very compelling so I accept it.
Neither my physical nor spiritual survival depends on my believing that however.
Therefore, when new evidence for matter that appear to be say, older (there are some glimmers of this) presents hitherto unknown possibilities, I am free to pursue that hypothesis, without a sense of disloyalty to the presenters of any previous hypothesis.
I don’t have to deny new knowledge, in order to believe, for example, that the universe is a few thousand years old - because the people who invented the god I pray to commanded that belief, as some Christians do

This one ability, that I possess - and you don’t - makes life infinitely more precious to me than to some one who feels he needs to wait around to die, in order to derive the true wonder of sentience, or indeed any reward, from his existence

I have the daily privilege of discovering something new about the universe, without asking permission of someone who was far more ignorant than I am in the first place.

That’s exactly what you have to, with the barbaric, ignorant authors of your world view.