Barefoot Bree

How in the world do you get from

"All these depend on your intellect and reasoning ability for their validity."

to

"You are a man of great faith."

in the space of two sentences?

Those two statements, one right after the other, are polar opposites! Stop, please, you're giving me whiplash!

Mageth

That's a very key point, one which has been made before. rhutchin is attempting to use the hammer of "uncertainty" to persuade us to heed the superstition of "eternal torment" (a superstition invented or employed by his pet religion) to accept the tenets (superstitions) of his pet religion - that believing in the God of his superstition (and performing the proper genuflections, such as tithing) will allow one to escape the threat implied by the superstition that is simply a part of the overall superstitious belief system.

How one could possibly append "rational" to the argument is way beyond me. It's as irrational an argument as I've seen.

Sauron

No god is chosen. There is no obligation to make such a choice.

Incorrect - as the last 39 pages have shown.

Yes ladies and gentlemen, another sweeping binary pronouncement from rhutchin, which is predictably wrong.

Wayne Delia

We even know, with logical certainty (assuming the three verses in the Bible are true) which one of us is wrong.

WMD

enemigo

rhutchin,

please address the issues I raise here:
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...74#post3110974

Sauron

It's really the crux of rhutchin's problem - and he can't see it. Pascal's Wager only convinces those who accept his laundry list of superstitious pre-suppositions, and are willing to ignore other scenarios.

If someone isn't prepared to assassinate their intellect in such a fashion, then Pascal's Wager has no persuasive value.

That is why rhutchin can be seen repeatedly to accidentally(?) interject comments that reveal his own religious conclusions about christianity. He is unable to frame his arguments for the Wager, if he cannot use his existing religious framework to do so.

Edited to add -- right on time. When I bring up the contradictions posed by rhutchin's rejection of the Islamic view of hell and other superstitions, he logs off again without responding. Perhaps his conscience is bothering him and he needs to consider the words of Allah and His Messenger more seriously.

Mageth

Indeed.

And Mageth's Hellish Wager has yet to be addressed. It addresses the first premise (first superstition) in rhutchin's argument - the threat of eternal torment and a God that would subject people to such torment for the "sin" of non-belief.

As I have shown, accepting that superstition - the threat of eternal torment and a God that would subject people to such torment for the "sin" of non-belief - carries risk, more risk than rejecting the superstition.

Before one even considers Pascal's Wager, MHW allows one to address its first premise. And MHW indicates that one should not accept the first premise of Pascal's Wager. It's safer to not believe that God would subject people to eternal torment.

rhutchin has danced around MHW, dodged and weaved (by simply reiterating the superstitions from his superstitious belief system and reiterating his "Pascal's Wager" arguments), but has yet to address it.

Wayne Delia

The problem you're avoiding now is that when it comes to religious beliefs, faith is supposedly a good thing - in fact, based on the lack of evidence, faith is a necessary thing. But when it comes to the refutation of skeptics, who cannot prove their assertions with 100% certainty, then their "faith" becomes a bad thing. If they were truly equivalent faith, your faith in your God would be just as legitimate as the skeptic's "faith" in the reasonableness of the refutation or rejection of your claims.

I put "faith" in quotes when referring to skeptical faith because it is materially different from religious faith. "Faith" in scientific results is more of a confidence based on the reliability and repeatability of prior experimental results based on actual, tangible evidence. For example, if a scientist is said to have "faith" that the sun will appear to rise in the east tomorrow morning from an Earth-based observation point, it's based on a tremendous amount of observed, reliable, tangible, corroborated evidence. On the other hand, if a religious zealot claimed to have faith in the proposition that eternal damnation is a real threat, that claim is based not on a tremendous amount of observable, reliable, tangible, corroborated evidence, but rather on nothing more than wishful thinking.

WMD

Wayne Delia

Absolutely. I agree 102%. I think I leave it out of my list on the assumption, probably wrong, that it is self-evident to everyone - or maybe I have never found the words to express it so... elegantly.

WMD

Wayne Delia

Actually, it's a result of choosing to serve a god based on a superstition.

You missed the point once again. Once that choice has been made, THEN the happiness decreases (and in some radical cases, disappears completely).

It seems obvious that those who have MADE the choice did so out of fear of exactly the consequences you're parading. As for denial, there's nothing at all wrong with a denial of a claim of eternal torment, based on the complete lack of evidence of any kind of eternal torment at all.

WMD