Pascal's wager

Strange when I read Churchill's war speeches rallying Christendom against the cruelty and slaughter of Hitler's War Machine....just saying a lot of the West's values came from Christianity, even as things are more secular in Europe. Not implying Winnie was doing God like Tony Blair either. Besides, he gladly took help from the Soviet Union.


This is one of many posts that answer the image problem atheists have in America...

Hate to break it to you, but this is not just my observation but tens of millions if not a 100+ million Americans are wondering why so many atheists have branded themselves as angry and combative...they project themselves this way in many other palaces than this forum.

See Major Religions Ranked by Size It estimates roughly 80% of the World's population believes in some kind of Supreme Being....YMMV, but it's almost certainly a majority of the population as well as the vast majority of Americans. When people hear endless vitrolic rants about how stupid religion is - all of religion, it's very difficult not to take that as personally offensive...if someone does something stupid, it implies THEY are stupid. I'd think the "brights" (Brights movement - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) would have the PR skill to use wrong or mistaken over loaded words such as stupid, but apparently not.

I'm just the messenger: American atheists have created their own image problem and apparently many insist on reinforcing it.

 

Way to go Doug, that is just plain sick to think that unfathomable tragedy is in anyway humorous. You would be related to Ahmadinejad would you?

 

What nonsense.

Atheists respond when religious zealots try to enforce their brand of delusion on others, and then are labeled "angry" in a display of freudian projection. You just cannot understand why someone like me would tell someone like you to take your delusions and stuff it. I am singularly uninterested in your apocalyptic visions, fantasy of a virgin mother, or assorted paranoias except as they affect me.

Pascal's argument is illogical. Get over it.

 

^ I could never make an attack on you like the one you just inflicted upon yourself....it's like I pointed out you need to stop shooting at your right foot and out of spite you shoot your left foot.

The NPR quote would be just as valid even if you never heard from me, spiderman, Treb.

Be out most of Saturday - got things to do in my life.

 

Is there a happy median between logic and belief? Or is humanity cursed to carry on these petty squabbles forever, each 'team' striving to get to the young minds first, hoping to win the most adherents to their cause?

 

Judging by Christianity's long standing love affairs of heretic trials, witch torture, inquisitions and general attraction to human suffering in hopes of coverts*, I'd have to say it will continue but it is by no means petty.

Remember Haiti ?

 

Certainly not the consequences, perhaps more so the reasons.

 

...wasn't witch trials a few centuries ago? That's relevant?

CHRISTIAN RELIEF SERVICES - Haiti Relief and Rebuild Update

 

Of course the millennia of Christianity inspired abuse and murder is relevant. Has Christianity reinterpreted its theology and condemned 99.9% of its history ? Fat chance

All I hear is "they were not true Christians, WE ARE." Of course that is what all of you say LOL

 

^ your doing a great job of confirming this...

I have not heard of any inquisitions or witch trials in 2012.

 

I am willing to bet that neither Hitler or Hussein et al. killed many people. They ALL relied on obediant people. An evil person with no one to obey them is weak. Compare the worst serial killer to Hitler.

Obedience to higher authority is the most dangerous thing we do.

 

Yup. Just like the blacks before them. Another small group of angry people complaining against the majority of happy Americans for no reason at all.

 

To which changes in the Christian doctrine do you attribute this change?

 

Pat Robertson Cites Haiti's Earthquake As What Happens When You 'Swear A Pact To The Devil' | ThinkProgress

Apparently.

 

:focus:

After doing a bunch of reading, I've come to the understanding that
Pascal's Wager is seriously flawed. Fundamentally, its rests upon
Pascal's predisposition to accept that there is a god. It appears that he
never attempted to prove, or at least did not comment upon, a proof
for the existence of his god. This flies in the face of his own
statements:

Thus every demonstration requires that one first identify ‘the evident
principles that it requires. For, if one does not guarantee the
foundations, one cannot guarantee the building’ (II, 175).

Also, FWIW:
In contrast with all knowledge that is derived from experience and
reason, Pascal identified ‘authority’ as the exclusive foundation of
religious belief. Authority depends on memory and is purely historical,
because the objective is simply to find out what someone said or wrote.
This applies ‘especially in theology’ (Preface to the Traité du vide: I,
452), a discipline which Pascal presents as if there could be no dispute
about what is revealed in the scriptures or, more fundamentally, about
whether a particular writing belongs among the canonical texts. He
could not have avoided noticing that there were many religious
traditions that claimed to report divine revelations, and that each in
turn rested its claims on its own authority as a reliable witness to
earlier historical events and their interpretation. This was apparent
even with Christianity and, within Catholicism, Pascal was familiar with
decisions of church Councils that determined which interpretations of its
doctrinal history were acceptable and which were anathemized as
heretical. Thus the history of churches was rife with disputes about how
to identify the appropriate religious authorities. Since Pascal rejected
the validity of rational arguments as a criterion for distinguishing
between what was authentic or otherwise in Christian belief, he had to
rely ultimately on a personal choice of what to believe about the
supernatural, and then to interpret that personal choice as if it were
inspired by a special grace from God.

It seems evident that the circularity of Pascal's self-justification could
be repeated, with appropriate changes, by equally committed members
of other religious traditions.

Above text extracted from this source, and is recommended reading:
Blaise Pascal (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Again, thank you Daniel for cracking the door on a topic, a man, and a
historical era that I admit to only just barely being able to comprehend.

Of a more mundane nature, the Pascaline;

Pascal's calculator - Wikipedia

 

My observation was directed at you and YOUR attempt to link one of the worst tragedies in all of mankind's history to make a point in a relative meaningless internet forum discussion. It's commonly used:

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum]Reductio ad Hitlerum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

 

I'm not ready to swing completely to the viewpoint that we have to be taught right and wrong. The understanding of what is right and wrong does emerge with kids. I have raised them. The huge difference is the development of the discipline of doing right. The concept of sharing is trivially simple for a kid to understand as being good. Practicing constructive sharing is a lifelong task.

A "philosophy" of what consist of good and evil is an endless academic debate. A working principal of treating others as you would be treated is incredibly alike in all cultures. Using that definition, a really consistent categorization is possible and universal. However, rarely has knowing this rule resulted in adhering to it.

 

I am absolutely delighted to discuss this stuff in a constructive way.

Congratulations.

Not so sure about that... the second word/action children seem to learn is "Mine". Of course every child is different, it is just a general observation.

No doubt. I say that brought on by looking in the wrong places.

Where did that principle come from?

 

Wait. I missed it, but it seems like someone fell for Godwin's law. This also means that whoever did so, lost the argument and we are all free!