Darth Dane

Copernicus: Well spoken, I like the logic applied here, I really like it

long winded fool: That was an amazing post! Yes I believe that that is exactly what Jesus was saying to the people who listens to Him.

Think on your own, do your best, and all is forgiven.

Love, Love through rational thinking, I like it.

Love, Love through irrational feeling, I like it.


Ah This Love is sweet isn't it :notworthy




DD - Love Spliff

PopeInTheWoods

What a wonderfully concise definition of "Religion"....

njhartsh

Contrary to the impression many people on this thread appear to have, the atheist-friendly (and theist-unfriendly) god is not a new idea.

Lots of atheist writers have weighed in on this topic, usually in the context (as some here have noticed) of Pascal's Wager. On the Secular Web alone you can find the idea described by Graham Oppy:
And again:
Then there's Theodore Drange:I have a personal plug on this score (skeptics have even given that atheist-loving god a name), though obviously I didn't invent the idea either.

And surely we haven't forgotten Thomas Jefferson, of all people:Learn your heretics' history, people!

- Nathan

Kvalhion

Get into heaven? Nah, the very concept of eternal bliss is hardly rational.

Think of it as more like a "Defending Your Life" scenario. Those that adopt the rational idea that there is no god "move on" after they die. Move on to what? Who knows.

Those who clutch at the irrational beliefs of a god are "sent back" after they die, to be born again and get another chance at getting it right.

In the early history of humans, it was pretty tough to figure out there are no gods and that things have a naturalistic cause. I am sure a vast majority got sent back many times. Yet as time progresses, and technology continues to advance, those who still irrationally believe in gods are running out of time. Eventually technology will advance to the point where it is blatantly obvious there are no gods, and the only people left on the earth will be those brainwashed with their religious beliefs. Their hatred and irrationality will lead them to annihilate each other and the game will be over. End of chances, end of existence.

copernicus

Thanks for those links, njartsh! Nothing new under the sun, eh? All great minds think alike! And that is why they use so many cliches. Thanks to you, I now know that I come from a long line of prophets.

The implications for Pascal's Wager are obvious. I was toying around with the idea when I was getting ready to attend the Oxford Infidels meeting in May, so it is quite possible that your earlier post had a supernatural influence on my thought processes. I actually considered calling it Perversitarianism rather than Rationalitarianism, but what inspired me most was the thought that theists have to explain God's lack of modern intervention, even though the Bible itself records lots of divine interventions in the past. That is one of the hardest things to account for, and theists usually turn to the Free Will argument, the idea being that God wants to test people's free will. It is still a conundrum, because it isn't clear how knowing about God's existence would rob anyone of their free decision to be bad. Children often disobey their parents, even though they know that they're going to get punished.

So I thought of Rationalitarianism (or Fredism, if it pleases you) as a way of removing the conundrum. Since God wants you to make rational (and ipso facto moral) decisions, it would spoil the test if he were to reveal himself. The whole idea is to situate people in an environment where rational thought worked better than irrational thought. If we knew that supernatural intervention were possible, that would impede us from discovering natural causes. So God's strange behavior suddenly makes better sense than it does in conventional religions.

njhartsh

My pleasure.

Well, you've got a good username for a prophet.

Naw--my Freddist beliefs (er--nonbeliefs, nonbeliefs!) are very ecumenical. You can call Fred anything you'd like. In other words, "all roads" may or may not "lead to God," but on penalty of hellfire no road had better lead you to Fred.

- Nathan