Atheist Prayer

[OhioBob]

Drew98:

I think you mean Pascal’s Wager

Oops. My bad. I guess I had Pascal and Occham mixed up. Maybe if Pascal had a razor he could have made a more convincing argument. If the art depicting him is accurate, he had a pretty sorry mustache.

Like I said, I never claimed to be a philosopher. I guess that is painfully obvious now, huh?

 

[hawkeye]

There was a Jew called Rathisbone, and he heard about a person that said they had a vision of the blessed virgin Mary.
Well Rathisbone was having none of it, he simply didn’t believe in Mary, so the visonary gave him the Memorare Prayer to say.
Poor man try as he may, he couldn’t stop saying the prayer, one day he was passing a Catholic Church, and was compelled to go in.
The next time he met the seer he had tears in his eyes, I have seen her he cried.
Our lady appeared to him in the church but never spoke, later he became a Catholic, so maybe you could give your friend the Memorare Prayer, well you never know and nothing beats a try.
I have the full text of this story somewhere but I’m quoting here from memory.
Adios &

 

[AnAtheist]

Booger:

I think that reasoning, not pride leads to disbelief. If you reason out the characteristics of a god and find that god to be a walking contradicition, reason leads to the conclusion that it cannot exist. Not pride.

:yup:

Booger:

You are assuming that Pascal’s Wager leads one directly to capital God (Jesus/Yawheh) which may be have been the original intent, but it is also true that it leads to other competing god ideas such as the lower case general god concept, Allah, Vishnu, Osiris, or Athena.

Pascal’s wager makes a cost-benefit analysis. Following it means to choose the religion with the best heaven/worst hell combination. That would be Islam then, they have a far better heaven than christianity while their hell is equally undesirable.

 

[ncgolf]

AnAtheist:

No? But he throws me into hell and tortures me for all eternity, if I don’t. Isn’t that duress?

Drew98,

The classic medieval arguments for God’s existance were under tremenduous pressue. It was a time of great skepticism. Pascal’s wager was the getting back to basics argument.

Your quote is the other half of Pascal’s wager. If you already know the answer then the existance of God is not the question. It seems to me you are past the point of Pascals argument. The other question is what would you have God do? If you reject Him for all your life and at death realize you were wrong … what would you say then to an omnipotent god.

 

[Monarchy]

dolffn:

If God prevented everyone from doing evil then we wouldnt have free will and would be mere puppets. Malevolent? That doesnt seem to fit. If your child misbehaves, do you lock them in a cage for the remainder of their lives to prevent them from doing “evil” anymore? Seems like love and mercy fit in here.

~Mike

Free will is not posible if god is omnipresent. Also I don’t torture my child for eternity if he doesn’t believe something I tell him that I can’t prove.

 

[ncgolf]

Booger:

I disagree. I think that reasoning, not pride leads to disbelief. If you reason out the characteristics of a god and find that god to be a walking contradicition, reason leads to the conclusion that it cannot exist. Not pride.QUOTE]

Reasoning can lead you to either believe or not believe. It works both ways. To admit one’s reasoning may be faulty or incorrect and not make the change is pride. Many people do not believe there is God by reasoning but many of those have changed their minds. When confronted with truth, knowing it is true and not acting on it is simply … pride. Anyone can look at a situation, make their best, sincere decision and still act incorrectly.

 

[AnAtheist]

ncgolf:

If you reject Him for all your life and at death realize you were wrong … what would you say then to an omnipotent god.

Very good question!
Well, I’d say “You have made a lousy job revealing yourself to me for an omnipotent being.”

And what will you say, when you die, stand in front of X, and realise you have worshipped the wrong god? Replace X with any god you do not believe in.

 

[ncgolf]

AnAtheist:

Very good question!
Well, I’d say “You have made a lousy job revealing yourself to me for an omnipotent being.”

And what will you say, when you die, stand in front of X, and realise you have worshipped the wrong god? Replace X with any god you do not believe in.

I do not worry about the question you posed but the question I must be able to answer to is “I have revealed Myself to you and look at what you have done with your life”. I know without a single shread of doubt of God’s existance but I must answer for my actions on earth with that knowledge. I really have no excuse.

 

[AnAtheist]

ncgolf:

I do not worry about the question you posed…

Now we something in common! I do not worry either. :tiphat:

 

[OhioBob]

Monarchy:

Free will is not posible if god is omnipresent. Also I don’t torture my child for eternity if he doesn’t believe something I tell him that I can’t prove.

The fact that God might already know what my choice will be does not negate free will on my part. I still choose whether or not to believe based upon the revelation I have received (or rather my ability to understand it). The fact that God might allow my choice not to believe and might already know that I am going to make it does not seem to mean that I (in my little human brain) am not free to make that choice.

It seems that we are ascribing a great many human characteristics to God. Rather presumptuous of us, no? God’s ways are not our ways. How can we presume to understand the “mind” or God?

 

[ncgolf]

AnAtheist:

Very good question!
Well, I’d say “You have made a lousy job revealing yourself to me for an omnipotent being.”

I re-read your post and something occured to me. At death you realized, for sure, God exists yet at that point you choose to complain to God that he messed up your life by leaving something out. I do not understand how you could blame God for your actions. From what I understand at the point of death our whole life is presented to us … and we can see our decisions and their effects. Could there have been no other reaction to the news that He is real. I have read that there is an actual rejection of God, even when in His presence (like at the moment of death) that eventually leads one into hell.

 

[AnAtheist]

ncgolf:

I do not understand how you could blame God for your actions.

That is because you have a (undestandable from your point of view) misconception of the atheist worldview. Atheists do not reject God. There is no action involved in not-believing. Something has to exist before you can reject it.

Try to imagine, how you actively reject the existence of Kami (Shintoist spirits). Doesn’t really work, does it?

 

[ncgolf]

AnAtheist:

That is because you have a (undestandable from your point of view) misconception of the atheist worldview. Atheists do not reject God. There is no action involved in not-believing. Something has to exist before you can reject it.

Try to imagine, how you actively reject the existence of Kami (Shintoist spirits). Doesn’t really work, does it?

I cannot say whether those spirits exist or not (I have no knowledge of them). What I can say is my ignorance or knowledge of them cannot change whether they exist or not. A non-belief in something does not change its existance or possiblity of existance.

How do you make your choices in what you believe? You are right in my ignorance of the atheist worldview and I am curious of how some of the truths you believe were arrived at.

 

[AnAtheist]

ncgolf:

I cannot say whether those spirits exist or not (I have no knowledge of them). What I can say is my ignorance or knowledge of them cannot change whether they exist or not. A non-belief in something does not change its existance or possiblity of existance.

:yup: Exactly. And a belief in something does not change its non-existence either.

ncgolf:

How do you make your choices in what you believe? You are right in my ignorance of the atheist worldview and I am curious of how some of the truths you believe were arrived at.

I make my choices by observing and judging, like anybody else I guess.
I believe in theories that can be proven like gravity, quantum mechanics, electromagnetic waves, quarks, … The predictions of those theories are well observable.
I believe in some things which cannot be proven but are the logical basis for well proven things, like the axioms of Euklidean geometry, or “each natural number has a successor”.

I still lack the proof for gods of any kind. Gods are not observable. Therefore I do not believe in them.

An omnipotent and omniscient god that allows for free will like the christian one is logically absurd. Such a god cannot logically exist. :nope:

As for christianity: It makes absolutely no sense to me, why an omnipotent god has to sacrifice himself in order to save people he has created in such a way that they need to be saved in the first place. And why should an omniscient god let his creation spend an infinitesimal fraction of time (compared to eternity) on earth, when he knows who will end up in heaven or hell anyway? Why not beam everybody directly to their designated places?

Well, that were some of thoughts I have about god(s). There are some more of course, and I am happy to elaborate if you wish.

Hope, that gave some insights

 

[PaulAckermann]

Yes, but we are not talking about a surgery, a car, or a dinner, we are talking about the fundamental principles of this universe. I detect some degree of difference here.

To illustrate the fallcy of dichotomy again with your example: “You can either by a car or go on foot to work.” There might be a bus or a train or a taxi or …

First you say that we are not talking about a surgery, a car, or a dinner, and then you start talking about a car, walking, riding a bus, a riding a train, and a riding a taxi.

Second, even in your own analogy, there are really two catgeories of choices. One is walking, the other is riding a vehicle. Riding a vehicle can be broken down to riding a bus, train or taxi. Bus, train and taxi are merely sub-categories of riding. And there are sub-catgeories with walking as well - walking with dress shoes, walking with gym shoes, wallking with a dog, etc. The point is that a person started off with two main catgeories - to walk or to ride. Once a person makes that basic decision whether he is to walk or to ride, he then narrows his decision by choosing the sub-catgeories. Pascal is concerned about the main categories - whether one should believe in God who holds us accountable to our actions, or not. Either one of those choices would then open the door to a lot of sub-choices - Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc. Christianity then can also be broken to other sub-choices - Catholicsm, Orthodoxyy, and Protestantism. But is merely muddying up the waters to throw these sub-choices in before before the main choices are decided upon.

Or, from a protestants view: “You accept Jesus as your saviour and go to heaven. Or you go to hell.”
What has happened to the good old Limbus?

Do you mean Limbo? Assuming you mean Limbo, this is a sub-category or a sub-category or a category. It is muddying the waters to elevate a sub-catgeory to a category. The main categories that Pascal is dealing with are whether to believe in a God who holds us accountable, or not. Once these main choices are made, then these sub-choices are dealt with.

For instance, if a person chooses to believe that there is NOT a God who holds us accountable, whether to believe in Limbo or not is an irrelevant question. An atheist would not even think about whether accepting Jesus as Savoiur will get you to heaven, since to an atheist there is no heaven. These are choices that only a theist would concern himself with.

Not to mention every possible choice is falsifying the result from the beginning if you do statistics, which Pascal seemed to do.

Statistics? I am not sure what you mean by that. I am not sure how Pascal used statistics in his argument. Could you explain?

BTW, I personally do see a fallacy to Pascal’s argument. But the fallacy to his argument has not yet been touched upon.

 

[ncgolf]

:yup: Exactly. And a belief in something does not change its non-existence either.
I make my choices by observing and judging, like anybody else I guess.
I believe in theories that can be proven like gravity, quantum mechanics, electromagnetic waves, quarks, … The predictions of those theories are well observable.
I believe in some things which cannot be proven but are the logical basis for well proven things, like the axioms of Euklidean geometry, or “each natural number has a successor”.
I still lack the proof for gods of any kind. Gods are not observable. Therefore I do not believe in them.
An omnipotent and omniscient god that allows for free will like the christian one is logically absurd. Such a god cannot logically exist. :nope:

As for christianity: It makes absolutely no sense to me, why an omnipotent god has to sacrifice himself in order to save people he has created in such a way that they need to be saved in the first place. And why should an omniscient god let his creation spend an infinitesimal fraction of time (compared to eternity) on earth, when he knows who will end up in heaven or hell anyway? Why not beam everybody directly to their designated places?

Well, that were some of thoughts I have about god(s). There are some more of course, and I am happy to elaborate if you wish.

Hope, that gave some insights

 

[Booger]

Pascal’s wager makes a cost-benefit analysis. Following it means to choose the religion with the best heaven/worst hell combination. That would be Islam then, they have a far better heaven than christianity while their hell is equally undesirable.
[/quote]

That is only if you wish to play by Pascal’s rules, which is something of a false dichotomy.

 

[Booger]

Reasoning can lead you to either believe or not believe. It works both ways. To admit one’s reasoning may be faulty or incorrect and not make the change is pride. Many people do not believe there is God by reasoning but many of those have changed their minds. When confronted with truth, knowing it is true and not acting on it is simply … pride. Anyone can look at a situation, make their best, sincere decision and still act incorrectly.

I agree with what you’ve said, but do you also mean to say that atheists are prideful because they are confronted with a truth that they know to be true, only to reject it?

 

[ncgolf]

AnAtheist,

I am always surprised by the responses to free will. You are a living breathing example of it. Based on your experiences, background, schooling … whatever you have made a choice. Whenever we make a choice we know there will be a consequence of some sort.

The crux and sticking point for the both of us is … I believe your choice has no future … the consequence is an eternal seperation from the true God. I will not tell you what you should believe, it wouldnt work anyway but I can give my testimony. Like in a trial I am a witness, you are in the jury box. Based on testimony you will make a decision. I will agree that God or any god would seem to be mysterious and sometimes seem illogical. God would be eternal and we are merely human. I do not purport to understand anywhere near what is needed to communicate what God is. Human language and my intelligence is much too finite.

Anyway those are a few of my thoughts.

Thanks

 

[ncgolf]

Booger:

I agree with what you’ve said, but do you also mean to say that atheists are prideful because they are confronted with a truth that they know to be true, only to reject it?

No, I used pride to explain the difficulty in admitting we may have been in error. Any person regardless of religion or viewpoint is succeptible to prideful actions.