TooBad

In that case, Tercel, perhaps I can recommend TooBad's Wager:

If there is an afterlife, then this life is insignificant by comparison.
If there is no afterlife, then this life is insignificant since everything will ultimately be lost and forgotten.
Therefore, by continuing to live, I am gaining nothing of any significance, and I might be pointlessly delaying my first taste of eternity.
So why not just kill myself now?

MortalWombat

Taken to the extreme by this reasoning, there is no harm in spending every waking moment of your life in prayer and worship.

Perchance

"won't even remember..." "similarly fleeting..." "pointless dust..." "soon-gone period of personal pleasure..."

Can someone (anyone, theist/atheist/agnostic/pantheist/Pagan/IPU worshipper) tell me why some people have this fixation with immortality?

Even if I knew that the moment I died people would forget I had ever lived, that I wouldn't continue to exist even in photographs or as words I've written down, it would not stop me from enjoying life. Why should it? As Tercel points out, I'm not going to know anything about how the people or things I've left behind are treating or preserving the memory of me. Therefore, even if I was going to be famous throughout history and remembered fondly by everyone who knew me, I wouldn't know it. But it's silly to assume that I should despair because of that.

If you truly believe (as I do) that death is the end, the very concept of immortality is absurd.

1) We can't be immortal, no matter what happens. Why long for it?

2) If something did happen to make our name carry on, we wouldn't know it. Similarly, if something happened to destroy every memory of us, we wouldn't know it. So why assume that our lives are going to be pointless? We can't know.

I've never understand how these two things together add up to despair, rather than making joy all the sweeter.

-Perchance.

Animesh

How about this one:

I've read enough of the Bible to know that the God described their is a schmuck. I'd choose an eternity in Hell over an eternity praising him any time.

Whattya think?

(BTW, at my job, it would be called "Delphi's Wager", since that is the version of Pascal that we use. )

[ August 21, 2002: Message edited by: Animesh ]</p>

oneofshibumi

Pascal’s Wager was disproved less than 5 years after he printed it in France. The wager goes something like this.

It makes more sense to believe in God than to not believe. If you believe, and God exists, you will be rewarded in the afterlife. If you do not believe, and He exists, you will be punished for your disbelief. If He does not exist, you have lost nothing either way.

It amounts to hedging your bets. The consequences upon your death are:

The worst case for the theist is no after-life, the worst case for the atheist is an eternity in Hell. You can see why this appears to be a potentially convincing argument - it is sensible to choose the least-worst case.

FLAWS

The most obvious flaws with Pascal's Wager are:

1. How do you know which God to believe in? There are plenty to choose from, and if you pick the wrong one, you could be in big trouble (ex. what if you choose Jesus, but get to heaven only to find Chango, the thunder God?). This is known as the "Avoiding the wrong Hell problem". If a dozen people of different religions came to you with Pascal's Wager, how could you possibly choose between them? After all, many religions are quite specific that they are the One True Religion, and not any others. Jesus Christ said "I am the way, the truth and the light. None shall come to the Father except through me." [emphasis added] and no doubt most other religions make similar claims. If a Christian considers the Wager as strong support for his faith, surely he must accept that it is equally valid for all other religions when presented to himself?

2. God is not stupid (at least not the God I believe in during my youth). Won't He know that you're just trying to get a free ride into Heaven? How can you sincerely believe in a God simply out of convenience?

3.If there is no God, you have still lost something. You have wasted a good portion of your life performing the various devotional rituals, attending Churches, praying, reading scripture and discussing your deity with His/Her/Its other followers. Not to mention giving your hard-earned money to the church, wasting your intelligence on theological endeavours and boring the hell out of people who really don't want to hear your Good News.

4. Can you get away with just sort of generally believing in a Supreme Being, without specifically believing in one particular Deity? Probably not - God will still know what you're up to. Also, many Gods are quite particular about how they should be worshipped.

Many born-again Christians will tell you that the only way to Heaven is through accepting Jesus Christ as your personal saviour - nothing more and nothing less. General-Deity-Belief and being nice simply won't do. Many people believe that all the different religions are merely alternative routes to the same destination. Nice and tolerant (if a little warm'n'fuzzy) though this may be, there is no valid reason to accept this stance over the fire-and-brimstone fundamentalist position : if the fundies are right, then the un-Saved liberal theists are in just as much trouble as the nonbelievers.

5.Few, if any, humanists disbelieve in deities out of choice. It's not as if we know the god is really there, but somehow refuse to believe in it (for example, see if you can choose to truly believe that Australia does not exist). Most atheists disbelieve simply because they know of no compelling evidence to suggest that any sort of god exists. If you want an humanist to believe, show him/her some good evidence, don't just say it's in his/her best interests to believe even if there is no god. A person cannot choose to sincerely believe in something, just because it is pragmatic to do so. Sure, you could say all the right prayers and attend church regularly, but that is not the same thing as actually believing, and any God worth His/Her/Its salt would obviously see straight through that.

6It is often self-refuting, depending on the person's description of God. If you believe that God will forgive anyone for anything, or judge people purely on how they lived their life and not what they believed, or that everyone gets to Heaven regardless (unless maybe they were genocidal cannibal serial killers), then the Wager is meaningless. You might as well say "Believe in God, or you'll... well... go to Heaven anyway." In such a case, it doesn't make a scrap of difference whether the person believes or not.

Pascal's Wager is hopelessly flawed. It sounds good at first, but poke it with a pin(ch) of reason and it quickly deflates, letting out all the hot air.

The Humanist's Wager

This seems to be much more reasonable, both for humanists and theists :

It is better to live your life as if there are no Gods, and try to make the world a better place for your being in it. If there is no God, you have lost nothing and will be remembered fondly by those you left behind. If there is a benevolent God, He/She/It will judge you on your merits and not just on whether or not you believed in Him/Her/It.

(And if God is not benevolent, well, He/She/It is going to screw you whatever you do!)

[ August 21, 2002: Message edited by: oneofshibumi ]

[ August 21, 2002: Message edited by: oneofshibumi ]</p>