[X] My Assistant

Belief in God isn't logical because <lots of arguments>. That is all.
-DlaglaczVakuen

This. Mass mail that shit to all of the existing religions, Dlaglacz.
They probably have access to the Internets with all the monies they earn from their teachings.

People have the right to believe in something if they want to. That's freedom and allowed, even if it is complete nonsense. I mean, if idiots didn't have the right to be idiotic, and were sent to jail for this crime, we'd have to make death sentence universal. That, or waste billions in more jails. We'd also live in a better world, but that's a different subject.

Then you have bigots who try and force it on other people. That's called propaganda, and is slightly frowned upon in some countries. Many if not most religions support this, which only ends up making things worse.

This post has been edited by Mika Kurogane: Apr 16 2012, 11:03

This. Mass mail that shit to all of the existing religions, Dlaglacz.

etc.

This answer sounds as if you stopped reading my post after my two sentences. Despite the fact that gods and logic are incompatible, it's not an argument that logic prevails.

Quoting a lot of stuff usually produces a wall of text, which is an eyesore. It's even worse when it's done separately. Of course, this is opinion, so take it with a grain of salt, sugar, spice, or whatever.

Making a longer post would have caused redundancy as I adressed that issue in another thread by trying to prove that science and religion can't get along.

This post has been edited by Mika Kurogane: Apr 16 2012, 14:19

Actually, I don't even care whether a god exists or not. It's irrelevant. Religion is still bullshit, even if a god exists. Even in the extremely improbable case that this god is exactly as described in the holy books.

Religion is made up by humans who do not know more than any other human. If you guessed a random number from 1 to 10 right, you can't claim that you knew it was going to be that number.

There is no reason to believe in anything that doesn't have the slightest spark of evidence. The only reason so much people believe it, is because it's taught to you during childhood; during the time when your brain is manipulable, and can be shaped into anything, like clay.

Addendum: And if I die and I get tortured in a hell because I didn't think he exists, well, then that's very unfortunate, but there just very incidentally happens to be a malevolent supernatural creature that wants to cause me pain after my death somehow unless I somehow guessed a number from 1 to infinity right and I didn't even know I have to guess a number. It's not like I could do anything to prevent that.

This post has been edited by Lolicon_of_Sin: Apr 16 2012, 23:05

LOL, Pascal's Wager/Gambit.

LOL, [en.wikipedia.org] Pascal's Wager/Gambit.

Seriously, what the fuck. Pascal played too much [en.wikipedia.org] facepalm game. Dlaglacz mode on.

"God is, or He is not"

Binary 101.

"A Game is being played... where heads or tails will turn up."

Again, binary 101, aka coin toss. By the way, some of you have just lost the game and should rectify your situation.

According to reason, you can defend neither of the propositions.

Uh, yeah. That's why we have closet atheists, aka agnostics.

You must wager. (It's not optional.)

I will bet if I damn want to. Well then, I'll just bet beans.

Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.

If I lose, I lose my beans. Give me back my beans, you motherfucker.

Actually, part 5-6 is full of shit. The rest kind of makes sense. If you wager something, lose your wager and lose nothing, that means you didn't wager anything. So something is nothing and... Uh oh.

On a more serious note, the wrong part resides here - at least in my opinion. Feel free to discuss.

If you gain, you gain all

Pascal assumes that God is capable of everything as the initial hypothesis. However, that also means he is capable of blowing up the whole world, in which case everything is lost. So... Yeah. I don't get it.

This post has been edited by Mika Kurogane: Apr 17 2012, 12:35

Lol chap... as Richard Dawkins said in The God Delusion, I'm pretty sure Pascal was just being sarcastic when he came up with the whole wager thing. There's no reason to take it seriously, and anyone who uses it as a serious argument for belief in god is a doofus who thinks he's being clever.

So, basically, Pascal was a troll.

Problem is science actually uses quite a bunch of his theories for modern applications.
What happens if someone suddenly decides to contradict them and succeeds in doing so ? As I said earlier, domino effect.

Something happened recently with neutrinos if I remember correctly.
[www.nytimes.com] That was a close call. Failed experiment, but they'll probably try again later. If it is indeed right that a particle can exceed the speed of light, a lot of modern theories will get invalidated.

This doesn't happen in religion because religious bonds are so tight the only thing bigots and fanatics will do is blow things up for the local god's sake and kill heretics with fire. Also, teachings are abstract things that cannot be explained through common logic. People choose to accept them and go with them rather than take the time to think about them. Which is, of course, their right.

How is this still on-topic ? Well, maybe your local god won't heal amputees because it is written somewhere that they can't do it and people should just go with that. It shouldn't be too hard.

This post has been edited by Mika Kurogane: Apr 17 2012, 17:38

The fact that scientists keep disproving previous theories is exactly what's so great about science. Science seeks to improve our knowledge as far as we can. I'm sure a load of theories still aren't absolutely correct, and maybe they'll never be correct, but we can only apply everything we know.
A religious person criticizing scientists for not knowing everything is wrong, because religions certainly don't know everything... au contraire, in fact, because all it does is make people believe things without evidence.
We will never know everything exactly. We can only work on knowing as much as we possibly can, and we can only apply the limited amount of knowledge we manage to gather.

Oh and the amputees topic is so absurd that I consider it closed. :P

Pascal wager is a joke because it assumes that if there is a God, that God is precisely the one you believed in, while in fact you may be a good christian only to find out that the correct gods to believe in were in the Viking pantheon and you're going to their hell.

The whole religion thing is made up of teachings and fallacies but science is too afraid to prove it because religion still has power and there are too many bigots around the world to do something about it without triggering a science/religion war.

I guess that was Pascal's idea behind the "joke". Back then, dissing religion could get you killed.

This post has been edited by Mika Kurogane: Apr 18 2012, 12:00

@Dlaglacz

I respect the spin you decided to try adding to the conversation, I found it very interesting. I only hope others can read it and apprechiate what you were trying to say rather than firing guns first and asking questions after.

Not so much a counter argument as it is another train of thought, what if god created our minds so we knew he existed, but not so we could understand his motives. Is that a god you would want to worship?

Kind of related, I wonder about worship itself. I never personally understood this one. Let us pretend god exists, what purpose would praying to him have? Animal sacrifice and other such things I can at least somewhat understand, but prayer? I find that one tricky. Does our belief in him give him strength? Which of course raises it's own questions but also, do our prayers sway his judgement? If I pray for Robbie Pie to die, and Robbie prays for me to die, one of us is going to be dead disappointed. (I know that is a butchered quote from the late George Carlin but the point remains)

Prayers are another way to coerce people into thinking their local god will actually listen to them if they have faith. The more, the longer, the harder you pray, the higher the odds. Actual proof has yet to come out of this.

People mix and match prayer and willpower. Willpower can indeed save your ass. There is scientific proof of it. Having a very strong mind and determination strengthens your bodily functions, which may end up saving you from a terminal illness. You could say prayer is a form of willpower to fight one's fate, then it suddenly becomes slightly more logical. When strong believers pray to their local god, their body might get better at fighting whatever is eating it from the inside.

The catch is that there is no divine action involved until proven otherwise.

Feel free to discuss.

This post has been edited by Mika Kurogane: Apr 18 2012, 17:25

Not so much a counter argument as it is another train of thought, what if god created our minds so we knew he existed, but not so we could understand his motives. Is that a god you would want to worship?

No, but that would only mean he made me this way.

Kind of related, I wonder about worship itself. I never personally understood this one. Let us pretend god exists, what purpose would praying to him have? Animal sacrifice and other such things I can at least somewhat understand, but prayer? I find that one tricky. Does our belief in him give him strength? Which of course raises it's own questions but also, do our prayers sway his judgement?

Our belief in him gives us strength. He's like a parent. When you were a child, the real ability of your parent to protect you from potential dangers was incomparably smaller than what you assumed. Your belief in such protection let you focus on happier things than potential dangers of neutral world to a small child. Prayer is a mechanical extension of whining to your parent for a gift. So many people never grow past this one...

If I pray for Robbie Pie to die, and Robbie prays for me to die, one of us is going to be dead disappointed. (I know that is a butchered quote from the late George Carlin but the point remains)

One of you is going to be alive disappointed, the other one will be dead. But eventually both your wishes will be granted (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

Technically, if wishes were granted simultaneously and not in a LIFO/FIFO manner, they would both die at the same time.

Of course, if they don't specify a reason/time/place/etc., their local god could also troll them, choose to ignore them and let them die on their own while still doing the job.

This post has been edited by Mika Kurogane: Apr 19 2012, 13:56

And if there's no God, they'd still die someday.

Yeah, I forgot that part.

Well, it is all part of his grand design! God didn't design up with regenerative capabilities... so therefore he cannot heal us in that way.

At least until our science advances to where we can create limbs. Then it will be apart of gods plan to heal us... and he will. So long as insurance will cover it.

(IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Science can already create limbs. It's called prostheses.

A religious person criticizing scientists for not knowing everything is wrong, because religions certainly don't know everything...

Popular Singaporean author Russell Lee once wrote: "How could we expect science to explain everything (including the origin of the universe) when it can't tell us if there's a Planet X beyond our solar system?"

It's a sad fact that many scientific discoveries and fantastic theories are ridiculed by most people.

au contraire, in fact, because all it does is make people believe things without evidence.

The wisest answer I ever got regarding the existence of God and Heaven: "You don't need proof. That's what faith is all about. If you believe, then it exists." Wisest here means no one can come up with a better explanation.