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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 03/28/2005 : 04:41:20 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Dr. Mabuse
Regarding Pascal's Wager...
Check out this link:
http://www.abarnett.demon.co.uk/atheism/wager.html
Excellent article, Doc. You might consider putting it in Links.
Unless I've missed it, we haven't seen a good blither about Pascal's Wager in some time. There's been a little hinting at it, but no solid claim. We're overdue for one, methinks.....
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 03/28/2005 : 07:37:04 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by creation88
The only difference between us, is that I have realized the necessity of Christ in my life.
What does He do for you in this life? Surely, you're still a sinner, and you're likely to still get horrified by acts of evil. Having Christ "in your life" doesn't seem to do much, except for your afterlife. People without evidence of an afterlife, then, might find having Christ in their lives to be pretty much worthless.quote:
You say this as if I live in fear of these things. This is the point of my whole life, and my posts. Put your faith n Christ and you won't have to live in fear of this.
Give your money to the Mafia, and they won't burn your store down. A lack of fear doesn't make the extortion not exist, it's still extortion whether you go along with it or not.quote:
Just because you don't believe in my God, or don't "think he's the right God", doesn't mean that he is not the right God.
But where is the evidence that He is the correct God, and not Ba'al or Odin?quote:
People say "what you don't know can't hurt you." But in this case it can!
That's precisely my point. Faith in Christ may hurt you greatly in the afterlife if Christ was, indeed, a false Messiah of the god of Israel. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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moakley
SFN Regular
USA
1888 Posts |
Posted - 03/28/2005 : 10:14:23 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by creation88
People say "what you don't know can't hurt you." But in this case it can!
I don't recall if it was Michael Shermer or Dan Barker. But if fear is such a strong motivator for a god/religious belief, then why not pick the one with the worst version of hell. After all you don't want to take any chances. Especially when it comes to irrational fears of the supernatural. |
Life is good
Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned. -Anonymous |
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Capn_Danger
New Member
Canada
1 Post |
Posted - 04/05/2005 : 14:50:25 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by creation88
God is God no matter what you think his problems are. Thankfully for us he is a loving God who gives us a 2nd chance! He could have banished everybody to hell instantly because of our rebellion, and it would not have even been wrong!
What it is about god that allows him to cause people to suffer eternal torment and that not be wrong? The fact that he created us? I created my children, but that doesn't give me the right to make them suffer. Want to try another angle?
quote:
He created us, and we rebelled in sin, and he has given us a second chance which is utterly incomprehencable! He is such a good and faithful God, and all he asks is that you believe in him! Thats it! There's no payment. JUST BELIEVE!
Good? Somehow, I can't really see how tossing someone into eternal, never-ending torture is a good thing. It definitely isn't in the interest of their well-being.
What you're really getting at is that we should believe in god because he will reward. The pascal's wager link posted above is a very appropriate response to that. Simply stated though, defining god as good and able to rescue us says diddly squat about whether or not he exists (and, hence, whether or not we should believe in him).
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Thinking: The only job everyone else wants to do for you. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 04/05/2005 : 19:32:13 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by creation88
He created us, and we rebelled in sin, and he has given us a second chance which is utterly incomprehencable!
Dang, I missed this before (a hearty "welcome!" to Capn_Danger, and thanks for re-animating this thread).
What is utterly incomprehensible is really that creation88 is willingly taking responsibility for those who - long before he was a twinkle in his daddy's eye - "rebelled in sin."
C88: we didn't "rebel." If your God is giving "us" a second chance (more appropriately, a third chance), it's because He is a vindictive prick who gladly punishes the great-great-great grandkids for the sins of the great-great-great-grandfathers.
(Add in however many "greats" it takes to get through 6,009 years.)
There is your "loving" God: a God who is so compassionate that He is incapable of true forgiveness. A God of conditional love, since you gotta have faith.
These are limits that you are putting upon God, creation88. Note well that I am not calling whatever God which might be out there a prick, I am saying that if what you - a mere mortal - says is true, C88, then the picture you paint is of a giant asswipe of a deity.
Don't you think that your God deserves better than that? |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Hawks
SFN Regular
Canada
1383 Posts |
Posted - 04/05/2005 : 20:27:04 [Permalink]
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quote:
Dave W wrote:
What is utterly incomprehensible is really that creation88 is willingly taking responsibility for those who - long before he was a twinkle in his daddy's eye - "rebelled in sin."
C88: we didn't "rebel." If your God is giving "us" a second chance (more appropriately, a third chance), it's because He is a vindictive prick who gladly punishes the great-great-great grandkids for the sins of the great-great-great-grandfathers.
(Add in however many "greats" it takes to get through 6,009 years.)
Let's say that is rougly 24,000 generations and that we have roughly 25,000 genes in us. Then, after that many generations, you can expect to have roughly 25,000*0.5^24,000 of your ancestors genes in you (which is roughly 0), assuming that none of your ancestors shagged eachother . So, God wants to punish me because Adam and Eve sinned, inspite of me not having a single gene in common with them. That's hardly fair.
On the other hand, my assumption that these ancestors never shagged eachother must be wrong. How else could two people be the ancestors of over 6 billion?
What's the point of this post? I don't know, I started out with an idea that in afterthought has little merit. I'll shut up now. Sorry for the inconvenience. |
METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL
It's a small, off-duty czechoslovakian traffic warden! |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 04/05/2005 : 21:06:50 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.
There is your "loving" God: a God who is so compassionate that He is incapable of true forgiveness. A God of conditional love, since you gotta have faith.
Growing up Roman Catholic this was a notion I struggled with for some time. Or rather I should say I struggled to understand the answers I was being provided.
See, God is presented as unconditionally loving. That's the idea of grace. You can't earn it, you don't deserve it, but God loves you no matter what because he's such a great God. Joy to the world.
But, and here's the tricky part, God is also a just God. He must punish the wicked, even though it's a job he finds personally distasteful. God is going to send sinners to roast in the fires of Hell for all eternity, it's just that he will feel really really bad about it. The image this always conjured in me was of a violent, blubbering drunk screaming "I love you, but why do you make me do this?" as he smacked around his sobbing wife.
It left me with no desire to play the part of the wife.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
| Edited by - H. Humbert on 04/05/2005 21:09:51 |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 04/05/2005 : 21:23:36 [Permalink]
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Work the numbers backwards, Hawks: every person has two parents, and - assuming no incest - four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, etc. Given 20 years per generation, after just 29 generations, the number of any person's ancestors exceeds even the highest population estimates for the entire world. In an idealized world with constant intermixing of the global population, this would mean that everyone's ancestors were the world of 1420 CE (or thereabouts), just 72 years before Columbus sailed. And, of course, because the population only gets smaller prior to that date, everyone alive today is related to everyone who ever lived before 1420.
Of course, we don't live in an idealized world (inbreeding is/was common), and creation88's ideas include a Flood which left only three reproducing couples some 4,200 years ago, which just screws the math even more.
On the other hand, given that we can identify when "Mitochondrial Eve" (what a horrible name!) and "Y-Chromosome Adam" (ditto) lived (at vastly different times, mind you), we know that everyone alive today shares at least some genes, so your math doesn't apply well, either.
And the point, of course, is that math is fun. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Hawks
SFN Regular
Canada
1383 Posts |
Posted - 04/06/2005 : 19:33:05 [Permalink]
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quote:
...so your math doesn't apply well, either.
Quite correct, since the math also assumes that no ancestor had any allele in common with any other ancestor and that any ancestor would have to be heterozygous at every loci. This is clearly not the case. The math does not take into account mtDNA either, which is inherited differently from chromosomal DNA. Same goes for the Y-chromosome, which is not necessarily inherited at all.
I'll shut up again now. |
METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL
It's a small, off-duty czechoslovakian traffic warden! |
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