Pascal Upended

Great Debates
1

Inspired in large part by this thread: God exists is the safe answer; and this one: Believe in God. Believe in the “wrong” God? —

Let me assume for starters that your basic attitude and approach to the “existence-of-God” business is in a state of significant overlap with the following, and acknowledge that for those of you for whom this is a faulty premise, this OP may not apply:

**a) It is theoretically possible that I can believe or not believe in God, and theoretically possible that there is, or is not, in fact, a God in existence to be believed or not believed in.

b) If God exists and I believe in God, fine, and if God doesn’t exist and I don’t believe in God, no loss.

c) If God doesn’t exist and I believe in God, I won’t ever know I was wrong but I may have lived my life badly, if it makes a difference and the premise I lived by was wrong. Or possibly not, as it may make no difference. All in all, I’d rather believe correctly, and I have trouble believing things I don’t feel I have sufficient reason to consider to be true.

d) If God exists and I don’t believe in God…well, the “Pascal’s Wager” folks point to this one and hum “dum, de dumm dumm” ominously, but if God is good and forgiving and all the other things God is supposed to be, God would not judge me negatively for not believing in God. That would be a silly and unGodly kind of thing for God to get His Panties in a knot about, etc.**

Yeah, you more or less with me so far?

OK, that brings us to possibility e, then.

e) God exists, you don’t believe in God, and it turns out that God actually does care and is inclined to cast your bod and/or soul into the furnace of hell (illustrations courtesy of Jack Chick Illustrations Inc.) and let you burn there for eternity. I mean, what if?
OK, first off, if that’s how it is, then we have on our hands a God who is not forgiving and who is not good and who therefore is the “wrong God” regardless of whether there is a “right God” elsewhen or elsewhere. Even assuming we could somehow know that this is what we’re up against, I mean really know it with something approaching certainty, would you want to worship such as that? 'Tis such an entity (real or imagined) that appears to motivate those who use phrases such as “God-fearing”. I dunno about the rest of you folks, but I’m not worshipping anything that exists to intimidate me.

This God must be taken down. Are you with me? … whazzat? Oh yeah…I guess that’s relevant…

… we are of course going to get our butts kicked. Pretty much by definition. Rule Discordia and all that. The God of this description may not be Very Nice but is probably Omnipotent and might be kinda pissed at us.

But if that’s how things are, we go out with our middle fingers extended and our heads unrepentant and unbowed, do we not?

Well?

(Participation in this thread by theistic people who believe in a God quite different from the judgmental one described herein are thorougly encouraged to participate, but on the terms as specified — i.e., if your notion of God is wrong and God turns out to be like this, do you bow or do you rise?)

2

I’ve said it before: if the fundy’s God is real, then the hardest decision I ever face will be whether to worship such a monstrosity. The penalty for defiance is by definition the worst penalty possible; the penalty for submission is to act against everything I know is ethical. It is the ultimate dilemma.

Daniel

3

[nitpick]I’m not sure you understand the meaning of that term. “Fear” in this case is based upon the older meaning of ‘awe’ or ‘reverence.’ It doesn’t mean that we’d better be shaking in our boots.

I don’t have much to contribute to the actual thread, since I don’t think your d) is a good premise.

4

Y’know, at first I thought this was going to be about the rise of object-oriented programming.

That’s what I get for being an atheist geek.

5

Y’know, I spend a lot less time worrying about God than I do about the people who think they know what he wants out of us. You might try to pick your battles (and who you should be waving that finger at) better.

6

Care to clarify how being Christian is against everything you know is ethical? Either you have some zany ethics, or you misunderstand Christianity.

7

a) It is theoretically possible that I can believe or not believe in God, and theoretically possible that there is, or is not, in fact, a God in existence to be believed or not believed in.

so, A OR not A, and B OR not B gives us ab, aB, AB, Ab

b) If God exists and I believe in God, fine, and if God doesn’t exist and I don’t believe in God, no loss.

if B then A , if b then a

c) If God doesn’t exist and I believe in God, I won’t ever know I was wrong but I may have lived my life badly, if it makes a difference and the premise I lived by was wrong. Or possibly not, as it may make no difference. All in all, I’d rather believe correctly, and I have trouble believing things I don’t feel I have sufficient reason to consider to be true.

if b AND A then no problem

d) If God exists and I don’t believe in God…well, the “Pascal’s Wager” folks point to this one and hum “dum, de dumm dumm” ominously, but if God is good and forgiving and all the other things God is supposed to be, God would not judge me negatively for not believing in God. That would be a silly and unGodly kind of thing for God to get His Panties in a knot about, etc.

if B and a then you’re screwed, but if also D(good and forgiving et cetera) then no problem.

So, we have all four permutations addressed. The error here is that you have introduced D, making the assumption that God is good and forgiving.

D is in fact a bad assumption. If you’ll simply read the bible, you will see that at many points God is just plain mean. I mean, c’mon. Turning someone into salt because she peeked? Pretty cold. That whole flood thing? Forcing a boy into armed combat with a hardened veteran? Shafting the entire human race into an existance of suffering over a silly apple? Nope, he’s not forgiving either.

Really, if you’re looking to logic in order to determine whether you will or will not have faith, well… It’s sort of a moot point.

Faith is not necessarily logical. When said definition of faith means believing in something that can not be seen, measured, felt and so on then using scientific reason to approach it will not work. By the same measure, Pascal’s argument sucks because it makes the assumption that faith instilled by fear of retaliation is real true faith.

While I can’t prove the above statement accurately, it stinks of spiritual bondage to me. You’ll just have to come across your faith the hard way, or not. Nobody will persuade you one way or the other except you.

Read the bible, check out some other religious texts, inform yourself until you’re content with making a decision. Remember: Faith is one thing, religion is something entirely different. Jesus and his religion were pretty much at odds with one another, which is why they forked the troublemaker over to the Romans. The faith is the important part.

8

I agree with the OP completely, and I do believe in God.

I know that my faith and those religious practices I choose to follow are for my own benefit only. I support religious institutions that I see to have some social value and oppose those who do not. I judge people not by their faith in any specific enemy, but by the way they treat their fellow human beings.

Somethimes I think that God doesn’t want people to believe in him - that He wants the human race to outgrow reliance upon distant forces greater that itself and start taking responsability for its own actions. In which case, maybe I myself should obey and become an atheist; but how can one become an atheist out of belief in God?

If you want, you can call this “Alessan’s Paradox.”

My theory drives both atheists and relifious people crazy, sometimes. I’m not sure why.

9

The OP (and LHoD) weren’t talking about regular, non-scary Christianity, they were talking about a vindictive, megalomaniacal, “evil” god. Much different.

I see the same problem with this theory as I do with Pascal’s wager. If the bad god damned everyone who was not a true believer, and you didn’t believe in his ultimate rightness with all your heart (I’d assume a god would be able to tell whether or not you were merely agreeing with him on the surface or if you were a true believer), wouldn’t you be damned anyway?

For instance, say the god is a racist. He not only bars people of color from his kingdom, but only gives the real rewards to white people who share his beliefs. What would it take for you to not only admit, but actually believe that different races of human beings are unequal, if those are not your true beliefs? How would you sufficiently brainwash yourself to a point where the omnipotent god would be satisfied with you?

And more importantly, how much of yourself would you lose in this process? Would it really be “you” who would be entering heaven, or another person entirely? People’s “souls” are only the sum total of what they think and believe; if you are forced to give yourself a complete philosophical makeover in order to get into the afterlife, it’s not really your soul that is getting the “reward” but a puppet who has acquiesced to disgusting beliefs and in so doing eradicated (or at least permanently mutilated) their “soul.” And where is the honor in that?

Go down with guns blazing, I say. Better to have my soul snuffed out by an evil god than do the snuffing myself. I’d probably never pass any true believer tests anyway; I’m way too doubtful of everything.

10

Apparently you haven’t used Delphi.

11

Oh, I don’t know about that. This is GD, after all, and whether Delphi qualifies as “true” OO or not would be a good debate. For that matter, isn’t Delphi really a new language? I.e., Delphi is to Pascal as C++ is to C.

Sorry 'bout the hijack, AHunter3, I just wanted to clear that up. :slight_smile:

12

My own view on the subject (which is, of course, contrary to the vindictive punitive wrathful jealous God who will deliberately punish disbelievers) is that God is an abstraction — a personal God with whom one can communicate and have a personal relationship, but an abstraction nonetheless — and, as is the case with many abstractions, is real but not something that everyone perceives. Or, to add balance, that the concepts embedded in the term are highly useful to some people in comprehending and describing real things, but to others, less so.

To be truly unaware of everything pertinent to that God, that abstraction, would be like being unaware of gravity. If you were fundamentally ignorant of gravity you would not know where you could safely walk without falling. That’s rare. Most people old enough to hold their heads up with their own neck muscles have some familiarity with “falling” and “up” and “down”.

Is understanding “falling” and “down” different from having a thoroughly developed Newtonian and Einsteinian understanding of gravity, mass, acceleration, inertia, mutual attraction, the distance-squared rule, the behavior of light, and so on? Of course. Would knowing the entire package protect one from injury, wrong expectations or predictions of object behavior, or other undesirable outcomes? Yes, under various circumstances. Aside from which, there’s a deeper sense of appreciation (awe, if you will) that comes with the deeper understanding.

So to me, that’s how it is. There is that which is real, which is a deeper-level understanding of stuff that pretty much everyone is well aware of, which I call God, and do so believing that the long history of the legitimate use of that word and related words is all about that reality. Are there risks associated with not seeing, knowing, and understanding God? Yes, but not in a binary yes/no sense, and definitely not as a consequence of an angry vindictive God punishing nonbelievers for not believing.

Having said that, I’ll reiterate: if I’m wrong and the Authoritarian Sky Despot sits in judgment, that God is evil — the Creator of the Universe is wicked and must be opposed, and is not worthy of worship.

13

On the one hand, this idea of the “evil despot” God is amusing, as is the debate about what to do about this God. But it’s kind of late and dark here, and the New Year just started and I’m feeling a little contemplative, and…

This thread is kinda scary, because eternal punishment is a long time, and if God is an evil despot who’s going to send me to hell forever for not praying correctly, well, it would explain A LOT.

I think I need to head off to a thread where the implications are a little less troublesome for a late-night reverie.

-VM