From: Bill Roh (billroh@churchofvirus.com)
Date: Thu Jan 24 2002 - 14:28:32 MST
Here is why the argument is flawed IMO
1> Believing is not enough to win God's favor in any religion I am aware of. One
must act, witness, and worship. In other words one must devote part of their
lives existence on god to achieve the benefits. However, if you are an atheist,
any time spent on god is a tangible loss of life measured in time, effort and
money spent. In other words, if you believe and you are wrong, then you have
wasted all the effort - effectivly you have sold part of your single, brief life
to fantasy. I can imagine no worse personal crime than to dedicate ones effort
to satisfy delusion.
2> David: "The mounting and single value of the evidence is immaterial because
it takes only one divine intervention to change the result. Could happen at any
time." Bill: Divine intervention would violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics -
which means God would have to exist only in our Universe to operate - and if
that is the case, tell me which part of our Universe houses heaven and hell. The
Christian model of god is certainly man made as every attempt to expain that
model is easily disprovable, and in most cases attributable to a particlar
person.
So, to me, to accept Pascals wager for agnostics is to admit, unknowingly
perhaps, that you would prefer to accept the notion of a god than to live with
the evidence against. Agnosticism is to admit a fear of the science we uncover.
To prove this, simply switch out "god" with "Zues". Is the agnostic still going
to say that Zues might exist? Or any other god for that matter.
So like you said in your second paragraph - "nobody asks if the premise is
plausible". The athiest does ask, and the premise is not plausible, so the
athiest knows the question is rigged.
Bill
David Hill wrote:
> I scanned the text at plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager#1 to confirm
> my recollections of what the bet was. I don't have time for further depth,
> but my understanding is that the payoff matrix is:
>
> God exists, and believe-> win big
> God exists, and don't believe -> lose big
> God doesn't exist and either believe or don't -> no difference.
>
> I've always had a problem with this because though the premise proves the
> conclusion, nobody asks if the premise is plausible. If I alter it slightly
> to be: God exists, but doesn't want you to believe, the results also are
> inverted. I find the liklihood of the standard Christian God to be highly
> unlikely but possible and so side with the agnostics rather than the
> athiests. The mounting and single value of the evidence is immaterial
> because it takes only one divine intervention to change the result. Could
> happen at any time.
>
> I've gone so far as to postulate the existance of the first meta-God (Larry)
> who is the creator of Allah, Yaweh, Christ et cetera and who has been (until
> lately) distracted elsewhere doing God stuff. He created the above as a
> gullibility test for those of us here and is kinda disappointed at the
> results.
>
> Of course we can't speak of the second and third meta-Gods (Moe and Curley).
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-virus@lucifer.com [mailto:owner-virus@lucifer.com]On Behalf
> Of Steele, Kirk A
> Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2002 6:40 PM
> To: 'virus@lucifer.com'
> Subject: RE: virus: Kirk: Standing my ground
>
> no. search for Pascal' wager to understand agnosticism
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