Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Trust God? I’d rather trust my reason…
The "trust god" answer:
Pressed long enough in an argument such as "why would an omnibenevolent god let [insert tragedy here] happen?" theists eventually come up with the trade mark answer: trust god. They say, "look, sometimes we just have to trust in god." We have to trust that he has a plan, and that despite our inability to fully understand his/her motives, we need to understand that god knows what he's doing.
My general response is to ask: Has he shown himself to be trustworthy??
Supposing for the sake of argument that god exists, what evidence or reason do we have that legitimately demonstrates the god of any religion to be trustworthy?
I'd like to hear some responses to this. But just so we're clear, let's try not to commit any vague appeals to the ancient texts. We need REAL evidence and reason outside of the bible to confirm the question, not just a 2000 year old story we cannot confirm. And as we have seen, the bible isn't exactly the most reliable piece of literature: http://www.project-reason.org/bibleContra_big.pdf
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5 comments:
Are you not familiar with Pascal's Wager? Pascal was a very famous French Mathematician and philosopher with many important discoveries of about 400 years ago. Pascal's wager states that if reason cannot be used to determine whether or not God exists, then the person should bet that god does exist rather than doesn't because that person has everything to gain and nothing to lose by doing so.
The philosophy uses the following logic (excerpts from Pensées, part III, note 233):
"God is, or He is not"
A Game is being played... where heads or tails will turn up.
According to reason, you can defend neither of the propositions.
You must wager. It is not optional.
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.
Wager, then, without hesitation that He is. (...) There is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite. And so our proposition is of infinite force, when there is the finite to stake in a game where there are equal risks of gain and of loss, and the infinite to gain.
Am I familiar with Pascal's wager?? That's um.. Kind of insulting actually. But I'll take some time address it (though I already have in a previous post with the help of some youtube friends: http://thesentientpuddle.blogspot.com/2010/06/problems-with-pascals-wager-and-belief.html )
Pascal's wager:
1. If you believe in God and God does exist, you will be rewarded with eternal life in heaven; thus an infinite gain.
- Which god? Can you just believe in any of the infinite amount of possible gods and go to heaven? Does "heaven" as conceived by Christianity actually exist for all possible gods?? What are the chances you have the right god, with the right theology, with the right denomination to make it into this imaginary utopic afterlife?
2. If you do not believe in God and God does exist, you will be condemned to remain in hell forever; thus an infinite loss.
- So an all wise and all good god would punish honest skepticism?? Does hell exist?? Not all Christians or religions believe in this.
3. If you believe in God and God does not exist, you will not be rewarded, but you will have lost nothing…
- But we have lost something haven't we? We have spent our lives living in false hope with a false belief. We spend our lives worshiping a god that does not exist, and attempting to shove all of science into theocratic dogma.
- You really think you are not losing anything?
Thanks for commenting. Hope my responses didn't sound too unmannerly
It doesn't say anything about defining god. It just says that there is something called god and we assume what we want about what it is. I have been searching for god, and have wagered that god is, and I have found some things, but I can't guarantee anything, that's why it's a gamble.
You really need to watch this video bro. I'd like to hear your response to it.
http://thesentientpuddle.blogspot.com/2010/06/problems-with-pascals-wager-and-belief.html
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