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To: stremba
Ah, Pascal’s wager! Of course, you realize, right, that this argument applies equally well to Odin, Allah, Neptune, Vishnu, or the flying spaghetti monster. It’s not particular to the Christian God. If you find that convincing, then you must also worship just about every other god that people have ever worshipped.

I do realize that. But you are applying the argument incorrectly and it doesn't affect or undermine my faith at all. "Pascal's wager" is not about promoting one god over another, it's the argument of the existence of a deity against the denial of a deity. It's an argument to challenge atheists. It is but one of many.

I submit that to move an atheist from their devout position all you have to do is prove their belief takes as much faith as your own. First, get them to admit they are strict and devout about their logical and scientific belief. Finish with what "proof" means and show that no scientific theory has proven or disproven the origin of anything from the universe to life any more than religion has. Then remind them how strict and devout they are about their logic and explain their belief is a leap of faith at some level as well. If you have them stumped, then you can toss in Pascal's Wager for fun.

I never shy away from these discussions and have found myself in quite a few over the years. I learned early on, however, that to truly start the process of changing one's heart and mind on this subject, you have to start at their level and create doubt about what they believe. You aren't going to convince them to go get baptized after one discussion. Jesus may have been able to do that, I've not seen it happen but have watched many try (sometimes even here on FR).

80 posted on 08/06/2013 7:53:20 AM PDT by Tenacious 1 (If the government told us to expect rain, I'd schedule an outdoor wedding.)
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To: Tenacious 1

Of course I wasn’t trying to actually undermine your faith. I merely was pointing out one reason why Pascal’s wager is a weak argument. It does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that God exists. In fact, it has been used in the opposite way to conclude that it’s safer to not believe in any God at all. To wit: if I choose to believe in the Christian God, then I’ll be punished by Krishna (I don’t know enough about Hinduism to know if that is truly what Hindus believe, just using Krishna as an example). If I choose to believe in Krishna, then the Christian God will punish me for all eternity. I’m better off just not believing in any god, and hopefully whichever (if any) actually exist will be forgiving.

I suspect (since I’m not one, I don’t know, but I have had discussions with many) that most atheists are not atheists based on faith, but rather on lack of evidence. Most know that nothing is ever proven in science. In fact, it is scientists themselves who will most freely admit that we haven’t figured everything out yet, otherwise there’d be no need to pursue science any more.

Almost all the atheists I’ve ever dealt with point mainly to the lack of evidence for God. If you don’t accept the Bible as an authority (doing so does require faith) then evidence for God is in fact lacking. That’s really what faith is: believing WITHOUT evidence. Atheists simply don’t have faith; they must have evidence to be convinced. I strongly suspect that if God, just for an example, wrote in big letters on the moon “I am God and I exist”, that very few atheists would remain atheists. There would now be evidence.


83 posted on 08/06/2013 11:14:28 AM PDT by stremba
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