Johnny Skeptic

Sure, lack of verification does not negate truth, but neither does it reasonably prove the truth. Yes, I accept many things that people tell me without first verifying that they are true, but most certainly not if they claimed that a specific being created the universe. Even if the God of the Bible can predict the future, and heal people, that does not necessarily mean that he created the universe. Other beings might have creative abilities too, and even the Bible admits that bad people can predict the future too, reference Deuteronomy 13. If bad people can predict the future, why can't they also have creative abilities? If a person who you trust told you that he saw a mouse pick up a battleship, and that he saw a pig sprout wings and fly, would you believe him? Well of course you wouldn't, and yet for some reason you accept equally preposterous claims in the Bible such as the global flood and a talking donkey.

If Jesus returned to earth, how would you know that it was him? In Jesus' time, how could anyone have reliably known that he was the Son of the creator of the universe and not an advanced alien who wanted to be worshiped, simulated his death, and lied about who he was? The claim that the God of the Bible created the universe is no more plausible than many other plausibilities. The universe is vast, old, complex, and full of possibilities. Who knows how many advanced alien races there might be and what their abilities might be?

There is no such thing as a supernatural event. Every event is natural to whoever causes it. It is natural for people to build jet planes today, but during the time of Jesus it was not natural for people to build jet planes. If a jet plane had flown over Jerusalem in 75 A.D., almost everyone would have believed that the jet plane had supernatural origins, and they would have been wrong. The people who would have been least likely to assume that the jet plane had supernatural origins would have been skeptics, and they would have been right. Religious minded people of each generation, no matter what the religion, describe what they believe to be supernatural events based upon existing human technology, but history has proven the fallacy of that approach many times.

If Elvis Presley rose from the dead and claimed that he died for the sins of mankind, would you believe him? I doubt it, and yet for some reason you believe that Jesus died for the sins of mankind, healed people, fed 5,000 people with a few loaves of bread and a few fish, was conceived by the Holy Spirit, was born of a virgin, never sinned, and a host of other completely non-verifiable claims.

Chaupoline

I do not know if I would have been a diffrent person, if I were raised diffrently. I know that some people without a religious background were drawn to religion though.

Christianity is dependent on the concept of one creator God. I disagree with you on the concept of God's enforcement of rules though. I feel that "God's rules" are user manuals for interacting with the natural world and each other. By breaking the rules, you will not be spanked by an angry God, but you will get jacked up because of the consequences of your actions.

One creator God states that there is one natural order in the universe and everything reflects that one order. In Greek mythology, Zeus would control the weather, Poseidon would control the seas, and Apollo the Sun. Therefore they would the Sun would have no impact on the weather, and the moon would have no impact on the tides. One creator makes everything in the universe interconnected. We are able to learn about the universe through making base assumptions and then using those assumptions to come up with new assumptions. If there wasn't one order, then we are wasting our time because we would never understand every diffrent system in place.

Johnny Skeptic

And vice versa.

Actually, one "particular" creator God.

There is not any credible evidence that such is the case, but even if you are right, by what credible means have you concluded that the one creator is the being who is depicted as God in the Bible?

How could you recognize God if he appeared to you in physical form? How could you recognize Jesus if he returned to earth? It seems to me that it would be impossible to distinguish God or Jesus from an advanced alien.

As I told rhutchin:

rhutchin

When Pilate was confronted with Jesus, he asked, "What is truth?" He didn't really expect an answer, and I suspect that he could have written something pretty much like you did above. He was confronted by God in fleshly form and his reaction was, "How do I know?" You are confronted by mere historical accounts alleging many things about this man who was called Jesus and is described as doing many unusual things. How are you to know that any of this is true? The answer is that you won't know with absolute certainty, yet it is sufficient to allow you to believe in God. Pascal, in his Wager, said that, in the face of this, one should logically believe in God because it would entail no cost to him yet that belief holds the promise of great reward.

Doug Shaver

Considering the venue in which you present that request, isn't that like going into a bar to solicit the opinions of teetotalers?

Johnny Skeptic

If all religions are false, the costs in this life have been great and definitely not worth it. Religious beliefs cause hatred and wars.

Pascal’s Wager is valid only if the Bible is true or we become dust in the ground and no other possibilities exist, but other possibilities cannot logically be ruled out. The following is from a web site at http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...nge/wager.html

Theodore Drange: I have been teaching philosophy at West Virginia University since 1966 (at the rank of full professor since 1974). Prior to that I taught philosophy at Brooklyn College (1960-62),
the University of Oregon (1962-65), and Idaho State University (1965-66).

My teaching specialties are Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Language, and Theory of Knowledge. I have also taught many other subjects, including Logic, Philosophy of Mind, and Philosophy of Science. Two courses which I invented and which I teach on occasion at WVU are Philosophy of Games and Philosophy of Fundamentalism. The latter course is a critical study of the doctrines of Christian fundamentalism and their philosophical implications.

I received my B.A. degree in 1955 from Brooklyn College (which is now part of CUNY) and my Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1963.

Among my publications are two books. One is in the philosophy of language entitled Type Crossings (The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1966). The other is in the philosophy of religion entitled Nonbelief and Evil: Two Arguments for the Nonexistence of God (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998).

There are also several articles published in print journals, the most recent ones being the following:

"Liar Syllogisms", Analysis 50 (1990), pp. 1-7.

"The Argument from Non-belief", Religious Studies 29 (1993), pp. 417-432.

"Slater on Self-referential Arguments", Analysis 54 (1994), pp. 61-64.

"Biblical Contradictions Regarding Salvation", Free Inquiry 14 (Summer 1994), pp. 56-57.

"Nonbelief vs. Lack of Evidence: Two Atheological Arguments," Philo 1, no. 1 (Spring-Summer 1998), pp. 105-114.

"Incompatible-Properties Arguments: A Survey," Philo 1, no. 2 (Fall-Winter 1998), pp. 49-60.

Pascal’s Wager refuted

The argument (call it "PW") may be formulated as follows:

(a) If God exists, then whoever doesn't believe in him will end up being eternally tormented or at least annihilated.

(b) If God exists, then whoever believes in him will gain eternal life.

(c) If God doesn't exist, then whether or not people believe in him can't matter very much.

(d) Hence [from (a)-(c)], nontheists are running a grave risk. At the very least, the expected utility of their belief situation is infinitely worse than that of theists.

(e) But such people are able to self-induce theistic belief.

(f) Therefore [from (d) & (e)], all nontheists ought to change their beliefs and become theists.

Here are some objections to PW:

1. It is possible to prove that God does not exist. [See the atheism section of the Secular Web.] Hence, premises (a) & (b) of PW are moot or irrelevant.

2. There is no good reason to believe PW's premise (a), and there are many theists who would deny it. Furthermore, if that premise were true, then that would provide a basis for the Argument from Nonbelief, which is a strong argument for God's nonexistence. Thus, the given premise is weak and conceptually problematic.

3. According to the Bible, more is required for salvation than mere belief in God. One also needs to believe in God's son (Mark 16:16; John 3:18,36, 8:21-25, 14:6; Acts 4:10-12; I John 5:12), repent (Luke 13:3,5), be born again (John 3:3), be born of the water and of the Spirit (John 3:5), believe everything in the gospel (Mark 16:16), eat the flesh of Jesus and drink his blood (John 6:53), be like a child (Mark 10:15), and do good deeds, esp. for needy people (Matt. 25:41-46; Rom. 2:5-10; John 5:28-29; James 2:14-26). Therefore, premise (b) of PW is not generally true, so far as the Bible is concerned. And, furthermore, apart from the Bible, there is no reason whatever to believe that premise. Thus, PW's premise (b) can reasonably be doubted.

4. Most people who believe in God devote significant time to prayer and church activities. Such people presumably also contribute money, perhaps a tithe (10% of their income). Without that belief, most of them would not do such things. In addition, many such people go through life with inhibitions on both thought and behavior. (Consider, for example, inhibitions regarding sexual practices, marriage & divorce, birth control, abortion, reading material, and association with other people.) In many cases, those inhibitions are quite extreme and may have great effects on one's life and the lives of others. In some communities, women are oppressed on the basis of theistic belief. Also, some theists have persecuted and even killed others (as in inquisitions, religious wars, attacks on homosexuals, abortionists, etc.) because of their belief that that is what God wants them to do. Furthermore, some people (e.g., clergymen) devote their entire lives to God. For these various reasons, even if God does not exist, it would indeed matter a great deal whether or not one believes in God, at least for most such believers. It follows that premise (c) of PW is false.

5. It may be that God does not exist and, instead, some other being rules the universe. That being may dislike intensely and may inflict infinite punishment on anyone who believes in God or who believes anything out of self-interest (as recommended in PW). But a person who comes to believe in God on the basis of PW would in that case be in "a heap of trouble," even though God does not exist. The expected utility of the theist's belief situation would be infinitely worse than that of the nontheist. It follows that premise (c) of PW is false.

6. To believe in God, one must believe propositions that are, from the standpoint of most nontheists, impossible (or at least very hard) to believe. For that reason, PW's premise (e) can be rejected.

7. Belief is not directly subject to the will. So, it is impossible (or at least very difficult) for nontheists to self-induce theistic belief. This also renders PW's premise (e) false.

For all of these reasons, PW ought to be rejected.

rhutchin

I think it is hard to argue that the religious beliefs of Christianty that include Love thy neighbor as thyself and Love thine enemy cause hatred and wars. It sounds like some people attach themselves to Christianity to promote their hatred and engage in war.

As to the objections to Pascal's Wager:

1. It is debatable whether it can be proved that God does not exist without first assuming that conclusion.
2. One can object to the premises in any argument, but so what? The argument is built on its premises. That one objects to the premises of any argument does not void the conclusion reached by the argument. The further issue is whether the argument is true which is the crux of Pascal's Wager.
3. This objection evidences an ignorance of what is meant by belief in God. Belief in God encompasses all the nuances cited in the objection.
4. Here the objection argues that misconseptions about God mean something. If God does not exist, it is likely (as when God does exist) that people will use belief in God as a cover for their own agenda. It is true that religious people have been a vital part of movements objecting to slavery, abortion, and other perceived wrongs. However, many people who are not religious can also hold equal convictions.
5. If premises A/B fail, then the argument fails. Premise C is basically a corollary to Premises A/B and cannot be divorced from those premises. If one objects to Premise C, one must also object to Premises A/B.
6. The difficulty of belief is subjective. It may be difficult for non-theists and easy for theists. That position implies nothing. Perhaps the nontheist has not read the Bible or read it but did not understand what it was saying. Perhaps the nontheist does not, as a rule, believe any historical accounts of events that he has not personally witnessed. Many factors come into play here.
7. Self-induce belief? That's a strange way to look at it. The one who believes merely expresses that belief consistent with the tenets of the religion. If one believes in God, he will accept the idea that murder, theft, adultery, etc, are wrong and seek forgiveness where he does such things and then stop doing them. Belief is not some mystical quality that people have to conjure up. It's the practical acceptance of what God says (for Christianity, this is expressed in the Bible).

The author list seven personal objections but they are not reasons to reject the conclusion reached in Pascal's Wager. They argue that oen should reject the premises upon which the Wager is built, but then there is no basis for the Wager, and the Wager becomes a non-isue. If one presumes the truth of the premises of the Wager, then the conclusion follows logically. One can always deny premises A and B and call it quits at that point. One merely runs the risk of being wrong which potentially entails great loss. There is less loss to the individual of accepting premises A and B as true when they are not true than in rejecting premises A and B when they are true.

Johnny Skeptic

Let me put it another way: As far as I know it is impossible for any human to distinguish the difference between a God and a sufficiently advanced alien. If Jesus actually returned to earth, how could you be reasonably certain that it was him? Am I correct that Pascal assumed that either his God (I assume that Pascal was a Christian) exists or that the universe is naturalistic? If so, Pascal was presuming to know beyond a reasonable doubt that there are not any beings anywhere in the entire universe who can convert energy into matter except the God of the Bible. If that is what Pascal believed, then his presumptions are merely uncorroborated guesses, and they are completely non-verifiable by any tangible means.

As I said in one of my previous posts:

Ruthchin, you have committed the same logical fallacy that religious minded people of other generations have committed. You judge what is or is not supernatural based upon current human technology, and incredibly to the exclusion of all other possible technologies that might exist elsewhere in the universe.
There might very well be thousands of planets whose inhabitants have dreamed up all sorts of religions, and where religious people are debating skeptics just like what happens here on earth.

Theodore Drange is an atheist. I am an agnostic, so I believe that intelligent design is plausible. Some insurmountable problems for theists are that 1) a designer of a given planet or a given life form need not necessarily be the original designer, 2) it is impossible to logically rule out a reasonable possibility that some advanced aliens can convert energy into matter, and 3) if intelligent design is a reasonable possibility, it is impossible for any human to reasonably prove that the God who is depicted in the Bible is the origin creator of the universe.

rhutchin

I agree. That uncertainty is the basis for Pascal’s Wager.

Pascal took that information that he found in the Bible. He then took the position that we don’t know whether it is true (we could extend this to say that we do not know if there are advanced aliens in the universe). We also do not know that this Jesus was who He claimed to be. Pascal then asked the question, What should the rational person do? Pascal reasoned that the rational person could decide to believe in God (Jesus) and be wrong or the rational person could decide not to believe in God and be wrong. The former position imposes no penalty on the person. The latter position involves a significant penalty. You are correct to bring up the uncertainty and Pascal’s Wager addresses the situation where there is uncertainty and one cannot collaborate the claims made in the Bible through any tangible means.

Johnny Skeptic

Pascal's Wager involves risk, but in order to adequately evaluate risk, the odds have to be reasonably quantifiable. In other words, one cannot make an adequately informed decision unless one knows at least a sizeable percentage of the available options. The God of the Bible is only one out of millions of possible beings who might have the ability to covert energy into matter, and angering even one of them might cause humans who endorse various questionable actions by the God of the Bible to be sent to hell for endorsing those actions. For example, Exodus 4:11 says "And the Lord said unto him, Who hath made man's mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the Lord?" Any human who caused people to become blind and deaf would be sent to prison, and with your approval I might add. In my opinion, the best option is to live a good life and trust that if there is a day of judgment, whoever the judge is will judge actions, not beliefs. Actions best indicate what is in the human heart, not beliefs.

Pascal's Wager is utterly absurd because it asks skeptics to become Christians just because there is one chance out of millions that the God of the Bible created the universe. It is also utterly absurd because it asks skeptics to love and worship a being who they do not believe created the universe, and a being who they believe is evil even if he did create the universe. Incredibly, Pascal used uncertainty and doubt as a basis for encourging non-Christians to become Christians, but no Bible writer ever did that.

If a powerful being showed up on earth and declared that he was God, and not the God of the Bible, and had the same powers that are attributed to the God of the Bible, and stated that he would only send liars, thieves, and murderers to heaven, and that he would send everyone would refused to lie, steal, and murder to hell, what would you do?