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Pascal's Wage Reloaded.
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ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
If there is a heaven and a hell, you might go to either regardless of what you do in this world because, no matter how hard you may search, you could get it wrong. Even devoting time to the search may get you condemned to hell.
It's just blind guesswork, so it fails even as a gamble.
How are you @ChristineM ? I hope you guys aren't overwhelmed with this argument.
Altfish
Veteran Member
But if you don't believe in Heaven (and if I did I wouldn't want to be there) then I'm gambling for something I don't want.
Since there is a chance you can find God's guidance if he has put it on earth, it's still worth the gamble if there was not and still worth the search even if you ended up in hell, better then not trying at all.
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
They are both equally stupid, as far as I can see, and both speak of an unjust monster of a god.
Nope. I've had a little chuckle, pointed out a glaring spelling error (note, from me who cannot spell for toffee that is some achievement). But thanks for your concern
Your approach sounds much more reasonable than Pascal's.
In fact, it sounds to me like a rejection of Pascal's Wager.
My premises:
An infinite and just deity would not, could not create finite creatures and infinite reward and punishment for them.
Therefore, there is no heaven and hell.
Therefore, there's nothing to worry about.
An infinite and just deity would not, could not create finite creatures and infinite reward and punishment for them.
Therefore, there is no heaven and hell.
Therefore, there's nothing to worry about.
Koldo
Outstanding Member
None of them are reasonable. It doesn't make sense to punish people that are trying to find guidance nor does it make sense to have people figure out which guidance is right to avoid God's punishment.
A Vestigial Mote
Well-Known Member
Given the possibility that Bigfoot is your true father, and that this life would be the one chance you get to connect with him, we should strive to find Bigfoot and be sure to live a life trying to establish a connection with our true father.
I could say that... but what does it really matter? You would admit that it matters not at all. That's exactly how I feel about the possibility of heaven/hell. I have just as much reality-based evidence for the prospect of heaven/hell as I do for Bigfoot being my true father - that being some goofy ideas of such, and nothing more.
This assumes that the pleasures one finds on this world aren't the only pleasures one might experience throughout time. That could literally be the case - that is, that this life is ALL YOU GET. The only chance you have to experience anything. Think about THAT "wager". If you waste this life looking for false "truths" in everything except what is actually demonstrable and in front of you, then you will have wasted much of the one chance IN ALL OF ETERNITY that you had to actually experience anything at all. So, you face an eternity of nothingness in both directions (before and after you are alive) with one small punctuation of your existence, within which you decided it best to walk around asking everyone if they know where you can find Bigfoot.
And I say the consequences of having wasted your one chance at a living experience to go chasing after rainbows are also "too much."
Who is this "he?" Pascal? Good for him.
Not bad advice. I would say that reading and soaking in the thought processes of others throughout the ages does indeed have its benefits toward learning to appreciate and enjoy this life and/or give clues and revelations as to how bet to wrangle some of it to your advantage.
Depending on the reading material, also not bad advice.
I think this is awesome advice - I find myself wishing more people did this quite often.
Here's where I feel we start to have some mis-steps. In my estimation, holy books should be treated mostly as a form of entertainment or as historical lessons. There is not much else of use for them. A few wisdom-esque nuggets of mostly non-esoteric aspect (meaning, basically, that a religious text is certainly not the only place you can find certain true-to-life applicable ideas), among a sea of what end up necessarily being ignorant lies.
In your case, I know this translates to "assume whoever is writing is describing the truth" - which is pretty terrible... and you definitely don't do this type of "charitable reading" for anything but the Quran, if I had to guess. Best to admit that to yourself now and realize that this list item needs some serious attention from you first and foremost if you truly believe in the list.
This one's okay... though there is certainly a difference between "being stubborn" and "being unwilling to be gullible."
How about "don't follow what you can't possibly know to be true?" Though you may not like that wording, because it basically discounts most religious ideas and ideals from the start.
Talking to people may be beneficial to a point in getting to a level of understanding, but "accepting proofs" should mostly be an exercise in letting the evidence speak for itself.
Are "Jinn" an idea separate from Islamic influence? Meaning - does this idea have applicability outside of Islamic religious understanding? I am genuinely curious - because I wouldn't have thought so. Or perhaps its one of those things where the adherents of Islam are mostly the only people who believe in "Jinn" - but their belief would have it such that any spiritually-confused supernatural being in any culture would be labeled "Jinn" by them? Can you see where I might find the wording of this point a little biased?
I already made mention of how this could be entirely false - with a person losing out on a lot of what could have been alternative life experience in the only avenue they get to experience anything. As someone else mentioned - if you absolutely love toddling along after the coat-tails of religious figures and experience, then by all means... live your life to the fullest in that regard. But don't ever expect that someone else should be just as happy taking up the same HOBBY for a majority of their lives. That's an extremity of presumption only able to be held by an unhealthy mind.
And so this is you also getting to decide what is "honorable" for another person, isn't it? I don't find it honorable in the least. It's sad from my perspective. Just something to shake your head at for a moment before walking on, understanding that the target of your pity is very likely beyond hope. Do you see how this works? You pity me... I pity you. And yet I am the only one between us who seems to understand that my position and opinion is just that, and goes no further.
HonestJoe
Well-Known Member
How do you know that is honourable (in the eyes of God)? It is equally possible that there is a God but one who doesn't want people to seek them in this way, rather to just have blind faith and follow our instincts. That God might punish you with some kind of eternal hell for your approach.
The fundamental issue is that we literally don't know anything. Making any kind of assumption about what kind of gods could exist or what they might want is irrational. On that basis, I see nothing to gain putting any kind of effort in to seeking to do what any gods want. You're equally likely to get it horribly wrong as you are to get it perfectly right. Just life your life as best you can and deal with whatever happens (or not) when it does.
If this is the only life/existence you will ever have, you'd be wasting a lot of it chasing something that doesn't exist.
I suppose though some folks may have nothing better to do in this life than chase after the next.
Why should we take this as a given? Why don't you think this claim needs defending?
I suggest studying the psychology of belief and Emotional Intelligence. These will help inform a person about the mental mistakes they make in their thinking process that occur in the subconscious, and the person is not consciously aware happening. There are patterns of thought that a person can learn to stop, reflect, and identify happening to avoid making reasoning errors.
The issue is simply this...
I will not worship a God who sends people who do not believe in Him to hell even if hell exist and that God exist. Same case as being unable to revere a tyrant even if he were to control my country.
So why waste my time?
Shouldn't you be striving to find the truth about every single possibility with a potential for a catastrophic outcome if possibility of that alone is grounds for doing so? One possibility is that we will meet a race of transcendent beings after death that are offended by such thinking, that are offended by human beings who were given a reasoning and moral faculty to discover what is true, good, and right living life, but instead disabled the reasoning part and let themselves be distracted by a book, and will punish those who throw those gifts away?
It's just as possible as what you're worried about. Think of how much you are risking by not searching for the truth on that one. Or any other possibility man can contrive.
Here's my proposition. You can call it Aint's Wager. You should believe that your true purpose is to use your native faculties to determine what is true and good rather than to heed the words of men and their holy books, who will distract you from that purpose with false claims, costing you what would have been your eternal reward. By Pascal's reasoning, you have everything to gain believing this and nothing to lose.
I'm also curious about what you think searching for the truth entails, what progress you've made in finding it, and why you consider it truth. I did my searching between about 20 and 40 years of age (the first decade as a zealous Christian, the second as a secular humanist), and found what I considered to be truth - that these questions cannot be answered, and that searching for such answers for the rest of one's life is like looking for one's keys for as long. At what point does one abandon a fruitless search? If never, is that a good way to live?
Really? How much time do you think you devote to your religious studies and other religious activities? How do you think it has affected the way you live your life and how you interact with others and are perceived by them? What has been the opportunity cost - what you could have read or experienced instead? How much of your free time is consumed by your religious pursuits that could have been devoted to pursuing knowledge that you could have used?
How can you ever have any peace being so concerned and threatened by these possibilities, with questions that you have elevated to the highest importance, but that can never be answered? I used to be worried about such things once myself. It's a hell of a thing to do to somebody, burdening them with an idea like that.
"To the philosophy of atheism belongs the credit of robbing death of its horror and its terror. It brought about the abolition of Hell." - Joseph Lewis
That more or less describes how I arrived at secular humanism.
Agreed. I still like to read a lot. I still like to reflect on ideas. My arguments are my own. I can be persuaded by a compelling argument and evidence. I have tried to avoid false beliefs, beliefs that aren't useful or possibly harmful, by using reason to come to them and testing them empirically for usefulness. I looked at holy books and studied one in depth for many years, but I don't drink from that cup any longer. I found them to be unhelpful for any purpose - history, science, philosophy, or moral instruction - so I stopped looking there, kind of like eventually stopping looking for the keys.
My search for truth led me to agnostic atheism, to skeptical empiricism, to liberalism, and to secular humanism - not a God.
Books, not book.
My most useful tool in the kit is my unwillingness to believe insufficiently supported claims, but rather, to decide what is true about the world using only the principles of critical thinking - skepticism, observation/experience/evidence, and applying reason to these to come up with empirically testable hypotheses.
We might have different ideas of what truth is. I don't think it can be found by any other method than the one I've described. I don't use the word truth to describe anything that can't be demonstrated or tested, which is why I don't go to holy books looking for truth. Even if there is a God, nobody can know that, and the closest we can come to truth there is agnostic atheism - refusing to believe what can't be demonstrated, and refusing to guess whether gods exist or not.
firedragon
Veteran Member
Do you have any evidence to prove that all religions are just superstitions?
If there's an unending afterlife, "forever" is common to all options.
If I spend eternity regretting not having cleared out the clutter from my garage, then that would be an infinite cost, too.
... so why should I spend time I could use cleaning out my garage to study scriptures/pray/whatever? If we accept your premises, there's the potential for infinite cost either way.