"Pascal's Wager is quite simple, and superficially appears to be a strong and compelling argument for theism. However, a little close scrutiny soon reveals the flawed logic and reasoning behind it, which actually makes it one of the weakest arguments a theist could come up with. The Wager Pascal's Wager can be presented in many different forms, usually something like this: "If you believe, and God exists, you gain everything. If you disbelieve, and God exists, you lose everything." Alternatively : "It makes more sense to believe in God than to not believe. If you believe, and God exists, you will be rewarded in the afterlife. If you do not believe, and He exists, you will be punished for your disbelief. If He does not exist, you have lost nothing either way. " It amounts to hedging your bets. The worst case for the theist is no afterlife, the worst case for the atheist is an eternity in Hell. You can see why this appears to be a potentially convincing argument - it is sensible to choose the least-worst case. The flaws The most obvious problems with Pascal's Wager are: How do you know which God to believe in? There are plenty to choose from, and if you pick the wrong one, you could be in big trouble (e.g. what if you choose Jesus, but get to heaven only to come face-to-trunk with Ganesh?). This is known as the "Avoiding the wrong Hell problem". If a dozen people of different religions came to you with Pascal's Wager, how could you possibly choose between them? After all, many religions are quite specific that they are the One True Religion, and not any others. Jesus Christ said "I am the way, the truth and the light. None shall come to the Father except through me." [emphasis added] and no doubt most other religions make similar claims. If a Christian considers the Wager as strong support for his faith, surely he must accept that it is equally valid for all other religions when presented to himself? God is not stupid. Won't He know that you're just trying to get a free ride into Heaven? How can you sincerely believe in a God simply out of convenience? If there is no God, you have still lost something. You have wasted a good portion of your life performing the various devotional rituals, attending Churches, praying, reading scripture and discussing your deity with His other followers. Not to mention giving your hard-earned money to the church, wasting your intelligence on theological endeavours and boring the hell out of people who really don't want to hear your Good News. Can you get away with just sort of generally believing in a Supreme Being, without specifically believing in one particular Deity? Probably not - God will still know what you're up to. Also, many Gods are quite particular about how they should be worshipped. Many born-again Christians will tell you that the only way to Heaven is through accepting Jesus Christ as your personal saviour - nothing more and nothing less. General-Deity-Belief and being nice simply won't do. Many people believe that all the different religions are merely alternative routes to the same destination. Nice and tolerant (if a little warm'n'fuzzy) though this may be, there is no valid reason to accept this stance over the fire-and-brimstone fundamentalist position : if the fundies are right, then the un-Saved liberal theists are in just as much trouble as the nonbelievers. Few, if any, atheists disbelieve in deities out of choice. It's not as if we know the god is really there, but somehow refuse to believe in it (for example, see if you can choose to truly believe that Australia does not exist). Most atheists disbelieve simply because they know of no compelling evidence to suggest that any sort of god exists. If you want an atheist to believe, show her some good evidence, don't just say it's in her best interests to believe even if there is no god. A person cannot choose to sincerely believe in something, just because it is pragmatic to do so. Sure, you could say all the right prayers and attend church regularly, but that is not the same thing as actually believing, and any God worth his salt would obviously see straight through that. It is quite insulting. It amounts to a thinly veiled threat, little better than saying "Believe in my God or He'll send you to Hell" (in fact, this is often the form it is presented in). Also, the theist making this threat assumes that the atheist believes there is a Hell or a God to send her there in the first place. If you don't believe in Hell anyway, it's not a scary thing to be threatened with - a bit like saying "If you don't start believing in unicorns, one will trample you to death while you're sleeping." Who would be worried by that? It is often self-refuting, depending on the person's description of God. If you believe that God will forgive anyone for anything, or judge people purely on how they lived their life and not what they believed, or that everyone gets to Heaven regardless (unless maybe they were genocidal cannibal serial killers), then the Wager is meaningless. You might as well say "Believe in God, or you'll... erm... go to Heaven anyway." In such a case, it doesn't make a scrap of difference whether the person believes or not. Pascal's Wager is hopelessly flawed. It sounds good at first, but poke it with the spike of reason and it quickly deflates, letting out all the hot air."
Ironically, Christians believe God has created all things. If God has created all, then God has also created reason, and one can use reason to challenge effectively Christian belief in God.
"It makes more sense to believe in God than to not believe. If you believe, and God exists, you will be rewarded in the afterlife. If you do not believe, and He exists, you will be punished for your disbelief. If He does not exist, you have lost nothing either way. " So, you're gaming God. I don't think he 'd like this. "I believe in Him just in case?" MMMMMMMMM, go to Hell, do not pass go, do not collect 200 bucks. Lowest rung. I (pretend) to do right to avoid punishment. A true Christian would live a Holy life, and if banished to the nether regions by God, would consider it obeying his Deity.
The most important aspect has been avoided - SPIRITUALITY- Are we simply meat or is there another dimension to us! It's very easy to argue a point when we get to pick and choose the scope of the debate!
Drew Carey said it best in the 80's. "Hey, the Pope has a bullet proof Popemobile. If he's afraid of dying, what chance do the rest of us have?"
Hell is a belief. Time and space are beliefs. So this must be hell. Who believes this? Whoever wants this. Because belief follows wish. Who wishes this? Everone who ever walked the lonely paths of hell. The return is determined by desire. Is the Truth what you want? Then you will believe you can find it. And you will find it. And it will set you free from hell. Jesus
i can hear it now. we will read a testimonial. we prayed and our son came back to life. Understanding reality Let's simply look at an example. Imagine that the rate of remission for some particularly nasty type of cancer is 5%. That means that if 20 people get this type of cancer, it is almost always fatal. Only one in 20 of the people who get the disease will survive. Knowing this, you can see the reality: 20 people contract the disease All of them have read James 5:15, so all of them pray. 19 of them die The one who lives proclaims, "I prayed to the Lord and the Lord answered my prayers! My disease is cured! It is a miracle! I KNEW God would answer my prayers!" You never hear about the 19 who died. No one ever writes about that in a magazine. "Person prays, then dies" is not a great headline. And since they are dead, you will never hear from any of the people who had a deadly experience with prayer. Therefore, if you don't look at all the facts around the "answered prayer," and you only hear about the one out of twenty prayers that succeed, it appears that prayer is successful. The fact is, people who pray die from this disease at exactly the same rate as people who do not. We can see the reality of this situation simply by opening our eyes. But we do have to open our eyes -- We have to look at both the successes AND the failures of prayer to see the reality of our world. When we take a scientific approach and we do look at both sides, we see what is really happening. When a prayer is answered, what is happening? It is nothing but a coincidence. We know this without a doubt in two different ways: If we look at disease remission rates for praying people vs. non-praying people, and we control for all variables like income, known risk factors, etc., disease remission rates for the two groups are identical. People who pray for a cure gain no advantage from prayer. We can take 200 sick people. With 100 of them we create a prayer circle and we pray for them. With the other 100 we do not. Then we look at what happens to those two groups of people. We find that both groups have the same outcome. The prayed-for group does not recuperate faster or live longer. You can pick any disease. If you analyze both the successes AND the failures of prayer, you will find the same thing. It does not matter how many people pray, how often they pray, how sincere they are or how devout and worthy the patient is. It simply is a fact that, statistically, God ignores all medical prayers. Plenty of scientific studies confirm it, as shown in this article: In the largest study of its kind, researchers found that having people pray for heart bypass surgery patients had no effect on their recovery. In fact, patients who knew they were being prayed for had a slightly higher rate of complications. http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/god6.htm
chill out vhehn, no where in the article is prayer, GOD, or religion even mentioned and you blow up like a iraqi suicide bomber with your response. The article is about positive thinking and not giving up.