Wayne Delia

Exactly. Thus, when Pascal says "If you lose [the Wager], you lose nothing," he is wrong. What is lost are the finite costs. You have just conceded the point.

Not so. Not in any way anyone has demonstrated; in fact, there are verses in the Bible which would seem to imply that a "hedged bet" belief in God entirely to avoid eternal punishment for a selfish, greedy, "self-interest" could just as easily get you headed for hell in a rocket sled.

You're wrong again: in the event that there is no God and no afterlife, there would be nothing "known" at the time of death at all, since death involves the cessation of all biological processes which support cognition, much less support life itself.

That doesn't follow the logic at all. We can observe people retiring from their jobs, calculate the cost of living as a retiree, and investigate the change in the sources of income as the retiree no longer makes money from employment, but starts collecting income from a pension or Social Security. All these things are very real, tangible, reliable, and repeatable - and the outcomes are quite easily calculated. No such evidence is available for your God, or the associated empty death threats. That's why you're so baaaaad at paraphrasing other people's arguments.

WMD

Wayne Delia

"You belittle me because I have faith; I have pretended that you, too, have faith. Since we both have faith, why not drop your faith and accept my faith?"

That argument doesn't work, because you're equivocating like mad on the term "faith". It means different things when applied to science and religion, for example, as I have clearly explained in a previous post.

WMD

Mageth

I'll point out that "it is too late to do anything once you die" is just one more knot in the rope of rhutchin's superstitions.

To put it another way, rhutchin's selected toolbox of superstitions includes the presupposed notion that "it's too late once you die."

Since it's possible that "it's not too late once you die" (one has to presuppose rhutchin's superstitions to state affirmatively that it is), the problem he speaks of is...well...uncertain.

Wayne Delia

Because faith in a religious concept is a good thing to have, yet "faith" in the observations of the known universe based on confidence, reliability, and repeatability is a tool of Satan? You are a man of much less understanding than I had supposed earlier, and even then, I didn't give you much credit for understanding things terribly well. Thus, you, too, must be a very religious man.

WMD

Wayne Delia

You've contradicted yourself in the 2nd and 3rd sentences, since you are denying that eternal torment exists. It's a punch line to a very poor joke:

Psychiatrist: "You're in denial!"
Patient: "No, I'm not!"

See, the patient is denying that he's in denial.

Denial of the validity of that which cannot be established as valid is perfectly acceptable; in fact, in some situations, is a moral imperative.

Fear? None in the least. Denial? Yes indeed; I deny that eternal torment is an established fact. Denial of an established fact? Not at all.

WMD

wyzaard

I'm guessing rhutchin hasn't figured out that his position has been shown to be untenable a thousand times over?

Ubercat

So you are absolutely convinced that eternal damnation is a fact. If by some chance it's not YOUR god doing it, then it must be some other god. But by golly! Someone is gonna burn us when we die. Period.

More and more, I find myself wondering what kind of life you must have led up to this point, what your childhood was like, how you interact with the people who know you, your family and church etc. You are hands down, the most peculiar person I have encountered on the board so far. No offense intended.

-Ubercat

Barefoot Bree

Arrrrrgh! Ya got me, ya dirty rotten scoundrel!

I blame the whiplash....

"Denial" is one of those hotbutton words, just like "faith". For believers, a good part of the time it carries the implicit assumption of "you know it's true, you're just denying it out of perversity" or whatever reason. It's that assumption I was reacting to.

Mageth

Pretty much.

Soon, I reckon, he'll be back to repeat the Wager again. It seems Argumentum ad Infinitum is about all he has left. That and accusing us of being "very religious" and of "having great faith." In other words, nothing.

rhutchin

Unfortunately, it is only the very religious who maintain that the Wager has been shown to be untenable a thousand times over. It is only by faith that one can believe this.