Pascal's Wager: The End of Nihilism

[PickyPicky]

Then you will understand that “with respect to nonbelievers” your assertions carry very little meaning. True they may possibly be, but nonetheless…

 

[Kei]

You can look it up if you don’t believe me.

 

[PickyPicky]

Thank you.

 

[IWantGod]

Pretty amazing, indeed. But then so much that exists is pretty amazing, isn’t it?

Like i said, your going to have to reject freewill. But that’s really not a reasonable response to your experiences.

 

[PickyPicky]

I don’t reject free will, but I accept that its existence is widely doubted.

 

[IWantGod]

is widely doubted.

Its widely doubted because, in principle there is no physical reason to accept its existence.

 

[Kei]

If you’re wondering why I felt the need to point it out, it is because you earlier argued for not seeing why it it’s preferable to follow what God thinks over what we think, to paraphrase.
This doesn’t make sense with what the OP is arguing for, which is an objective Goodness.

 

[Gertabelle]

Gertabelle:

Look, if it helps you sleep at night to make my words support your theory, go for it. I know who I am and what I believe, and the path I took to get here. You’re incorrect here, just saying.

But seriously it’s just not worth my time to defend my own beliefs.

And that’s why your argument doesn’t work – because you refuse to hear what people are actually saying, and instead twist everything around in your own mind to fit the system you have created.

Have a blessed Palm Sunday and Holy Week.

You refuse to correct my error? And then accuse me of twisting things? God bless you.

Yup, that about sums it up.

I’ve been a teacher long enough to recognize a student who has no intention of learning anything new, but wishes only to argue for the sake of either a) arguing, or b) getting everyone to agree with his or her brilliance.

I am not going to “correct your error” because I do not have any desire to share the personal details of my conversion (reversion) story with random strangers on the internet, and I have much better ways of spending my time than engaging in so-called “dialog” with someone who apparently already knows everything there is to know about my faith and my choices. Well done. Carry on.

 

[IWantGod]

Yup, that about sums it up.

I’ve been a teacher long enough to recognize a student who has no intention of learning anything new, but wishes only to argue for the sake of either a) arguing, or b) getting everyone to agree with his or her brilliance.

I am not going to “correct your error” because I do not have any desire to share the personal details of my conversion (reversion) story with random strangers on the internet, and I have much better ways of spending my time than engaging in so-called “dialog” with someone who apparently already knows everything there is to know about my faith and my choices. Well done. Carry on.

Then i guess we will never know if there ever was an error. God bless.

 

[gregoryphealy]

You’re coming close to suggesting that the leopard, say, or the dormouse, say, is a waste of space.

Anyway, God could start by creating a world in which it was not necessary for much of the living population to exist by killing and eating much of the rest.

So long as some being has free will within the world, I wouldn’t see it as a pointless exercise. We are that being in the case of this world. If everything had free will down to the smallest particle, I’m not quite sure what that would be like, but I would imagine it would be quite disorderly. So the line for free will must be drawn somewhere.

I’m not sure I understand what you mean by the second part. I’m assuming you’re not talking about cannibalism since that doesn’t happen, but rather us eating animals? At that point, I suppose you have to take issue with the laws of nature and evolution as a whole since those dictated, to some degree, the conditions by which we live. And of course, I would argue, those processes were initiated by God, so yes, you’d still be indirectly taking issue with God. But I think there’s a slight tinge of hubris in the argument that “I know better than the omniscient one how the world should be.” So I’d have to pull the “we don’t know” card in regards to the question of if a better universe (by our subjective moral standards) could exist. We could imagine how X or Y might be better, but coercion from the creator precludes free will, and we may be woefully unaware of the fallout of such a change.

And I don’t rule out the possibility that some argument might convince.

Not sure. The point I was trying to make is our sensory capacities are fallible. So, if the manner in which God reveals Himself appeals to those senses, it can be regarded in the same way that we view how God has “revealed” Himself to religious folk today. So if we’re seeking perfect revelation, it must be something either immaterial or something we cannot yet conceive.

Why would that mean the consciousness played no rôle?

Well what does it do in a deterministic universe? It allows us to perceive external stimuli and experience whatever goes on in the brain from a unique reference frame, but is the consciousness doing anything if choice is illusory?

 

[PickyPicky]

Thanks for your patience. I was rather unwell yesterday and I’m going to take the coward’s way out and blame that for the snarky nature of some of my posts. Statements like those in the OP tend to needle me, but that’s no excuse. My apologies to you and others.

 

[PickyPicky]

I’m not sure I understand what you mean by the second part. I’m assuming you’re not talking about cannibalism since that doesn’t happen, but rather us eating animals?

Sorry, I didn’t make myself clear. No, not cannibalism — I don’t do much of that, which must seem absurd to the OP — but yes, in part, us eating animals. But only in part. The whole of animate nature is a chain of creatures preying on, hunting, terrifying, killing, eating each other. I cannot see that as the work of God.

Yes, from your point of view, of course, to say as it were that “God could have done better” is an act of hubris, and we are not in a position to know why God set in motion a world like this. That’s a “God moves in a mysterious way” argument of the kind that is so frustrating for non-believers because it just cuts off discussion.

You asked me what would convince me, and I said Point 1 would be a world that looked like it had been created by an all-loving God. The world of fear and pain in which much of life exists doesn’t seem to me to match that.

The familiar Problem of Pain is a real difficulty from the human perspective. It seems to me that when one raises one’s eyes from the human condition and looks at the whole of the living world it is an overwhelming difficulty for faith.

 

[PickyPicky]

Well what does it do in a deterministic universe? It allows us to perceive external stimuli and experience whatever goes on in the brain from a unique reference frame, but is the consciousness doing anything if choice is illusory?

OK, but that would seem simply to mean that nothing does anything in a determinist universe, which would be odd. What you seem to me to be saying is that if there is no free will, nothing that happens is caused by free will. And that, of course, is true.

 

[IWantGod]

OK, but that would seem simply to mean that nothing does anything in a determinist universe, which would be odd. What you seem to me to be saying is that if there is no free will, nothing that happens is caused by free will. And that, of course, is true.

But lets imagine a universe with completely random events. Nothing would happen because of freewill in that universe either.

Materialistic explanations lack the content required to explain freewill-events because freewill is entirely teleological in its activity; and thus the explanatory value of a materialistic world view is zero in this context. To will something is an act of intention and it is the fact of intention that is unlike anything in the universe we experience apart from our own minds.

Can you at least just admit that freewill is an anomaly.

 

[PickyPicky]

Can you at least just admit that freewill is an anomaly.

The truth is that philosophers are not agreed whether free will exists, or how it could exist, or even what (if it does exist) it is. In those circumstances to declare it anomalous is to assume what has not in fact been determined.

it is the fact of intention that is unlike anything in the universe we experience apart from our own minds

Just as it is not possible to describe how a human decision derived from free will would in practice look any different from a predetermined decision, so it is not possible to describe how, for instance, we could show that a chimpanzee’s decisions were the result of free will or not.

 

[gregoryphealy]

The whole of animate nature is a chain of creatures preying on, hunting, terrifying, killing, eating each other. I cannot see that as the work of God.

Hmm, this line of thinking, to me, seems to suggest something morally wrong with hunting and killing other creatures. It feels a bit like an emotive argument that only holds up in the context of a culture far removed from having to directly obtain their own food. The wolf feels no remorse for killing the rabbit, and I don’t understand why we should either. I suppose if you’re opposed to killing living organisms for food, we’d be left with eating some chemical soup or dirt? I guess I’m not really sure that this is the premise I’d hang my hat on for proof that God is an evil/nonexistent God.

That’s a “God moves in a mysterious way” argument of the kind that is so frustrating for non-believers because it just cuts off discussion.

Yea, I hate the trite arguments that some religious folk invoke. I was trying to avoid that. Suffice to say I think we grasp very little of what universes could exist, and we rationalize the injustices of our universe to imply “God could have done better”. At the same time, I’ll mention that I believe a lot of these apparent injustices are necessary for our virtue to shine through. If poverty, evil, death didn’t exist we couldn’t appreciate or exercise charity, good, and compassion (at least of our own volition).

The familiar Problem of Pain is a real difficulty from the human perspective. It seems to me that when one raises one’s eyes from the human condition and looks at the whole of the living world it is an overwhelming difficulty for faith.

I think this kind of ties into what I was getting into above. I disagree with the premise that not suffering is a good thing. And this touches on Jesus bearing His cross (whether or not you believe it, the story is archetypal in regards to suffering). We all endure suffering, and it’s our responsibility in the face of this suffering to acknowledge it and act virtuously so as to not worsen our (or others’) suffering. Suffering is necessary insofar as it’s requisite to growth (whether spiritually, physically, or intellectually) and the countervailing emotions or virtues. In order to be we must be limited (lest we all be nominally “God”), and in order to be alive, we must face the limitation of death. I posit that suffering is an innate consequence of being alive.

OK, but that would seem simply to mean that nothing does anything in a determinist universe, which would be odd.

Well, things do “stuff” but it’s in a prescribed fashion (prescribed by the laws of nature).

 

[PickyPicky]

Hmm, this line of thinking, to me, seems to suggest something morally wrong with hunting and killing other creatures. It feels a bit like an emotive argument that only holds up in the context of a culture far removed from having to directly obtain their own food. The wolf feels no remorse for killing the rabbit, and I don’t understand why we should either. I suppose if you’re opposed to killing living organisms for food, we’d be left with eating some chemical soup or dirt? I guess I’m not really sure that this is the premise I’d hang my hat on for proof that God is an evil/nonexistent God.

Then I’ve not been clear … again!

I am absolutely not claiming there is anything wrong with the wolf killing for food. I’m claiming that it is clearly not beyond the (all-powerful) power of God to create a world populated by herbivores, but the animate world is, instead, populated in a way that depends for its continuation on killing and pain, and that seems to me a world which does not support the concept that it was created by an all-loving God.

I disagree with the premise that not suffering is a good thing.

Then that is a fundamental disagreement we have.

 

[abucs]

Well yes, so you have argued before at length. For myself I don’t see why moral values imposed by some supernatural entity are more real or less absurd than moral values deduced by man’s reason working on the emotional results of our evolutionarily developed empathy. Quite the contrary, in fact.

The Christian view is not that some supernatural entity (God) imposes moral values but that goodness is part of the very fabric of reality which is God.

The difference in moral values is then the difference in degree in one’s separation from God.

When a Christian looks to be good he is looking to be part of the very fabric of reality which is the full presence of God. The existence of evil is seen as ‘the fall’. That is the world’s separation from God.

God’s kingdom where He rules absolutely is seen as Heaven. Where He has given up his presence altogether is known as Hell. Earth is not seen as Gods attempt to create a loving world. This is the difference between Heaven, Hell and ‘Earth’ (our material universe).

I haven’t heard of any wolf eating prey in Heaven.

It is interesting that many different religions see goodness as bound up with the supernatural (or God) rather than the supernatural simply having the characteristic of being good.

When you look at reality the second way then it is understandable to ask why isn’t my moral code the same as anyone else including God’s. From the first viewpoint that doesn’t make sense.

 

[PickyPicky]

At the same time, I’ll mention that I believe a lot of these apparent injustices are necessary for our virtue to shine through. If poverty, evil, death didn’t exist we couldn’t appreciate or exercise charity, good, and compassion (at least of our own volition).

Does the rabbit’s virtue shine through as the wolf tears it apart?

 

[PickyPicky]

Earth is not seen as Gods attempt to create a loving world.

Indeed not.