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Most religions don't simply require you to believe that God exists. They require you to make sacrifices, and adhere to rules. Not just the ordinary ones needed to be a moral/ successful/ happy person in everyday life, either. Religions typically require significant sacrifices, and obedience to strict rules, that can seriously interfere with happiness, success, even morality. Religions require people to donate money; participate in rituals; spend time in houses of worship; follow rules about what to eat, what to wear, what drugs to avoid, who to have sex with and how. Religions require people to cut off their foreskins. Cut off their clitorises. Cut off ties with their gay children. Dress modestly. Suppress their sexuality. Reject evolution. Reject blood transfusions. (For themselves, and their children.) Refuse to consider interfaith marriage. Refuse to consider interfaith friendship. Memorize a long stretch of religious text and recite it in public at age thirteen. Spend their weekends knocking on strangers' doors, pestering them to join the faith. Donate money to fix the church roof. Donate money to send bibles to Nicaragua. Donate money so the preacher can buy a Cadillac. Have as many children as they physically can. Disown their children if they leave the faith. Obey their husbands without question. Not eat pork. Not get tattoos. Get up early to sit in church once a week, on one of only two days a week they have off. Cover their bodies from head to toe. Treat people as unclean who were born into different castes. Treat women as sinners if they have sex outside marriage. Beat or kill their wives and daughters if they have sex outside marriage. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Agreed. Since a lot won't bother to read your link, I read, and and post here what I see as the best paragraph in that post:
"Not because it's a great argument... but because it's such a manifestly lousy one. It doesn't make logical sense. It doesn't make practical sense. It trivializes the whole idea of both belief and non-belief. It trivializes reality. In fact, it concedes the argument before it's even begun. Demolishing Pascal's Wager is like shooting fish in a barrel. Unusually slow fish, in a tiny, tiny barrel. I almost feel guilty writing an entire piece about it. It's such low-hanging fruit."
Right on. I particularly like the line above that Pascal's Wager concedes the argument before it's even begun. If you're only a believer because you're scared of unproven consequences invented by others, then your beliefs are unfounded.
......How about the cops, ...teachers, judicial system....
Looks like a theme to me, anything in authority will have its issues, although we still need
cops teahers parents...the list goes on and on and on.
authority bashers are just that...if its not one line its another.
The interesting thing in the rant.. is theres no rejection or overview in the good things
Heres an example.....
In many religions pastors, clergy, nuns...millions over the years have gone without, sleep food ,
family , in order to facilitate the needs of YOUR ANCESTORS who needed them in order to
come to the realization which allowed, obviously for YOU....
No good....lets zero in on the very few occasions...(relative to totality to be sure) and little rules so we can do some good ole healthy complaining.
Man is a social being. Man will always look to the mystery of this setting in origin, as children always look to their parents.
Collectively, man can only negotiate what befits his standing. Man, deserves imperfection in his
leadership including all aspects of authority . Plucking out the negative is neccesary, without which progress & growth would not be possible.
There will however be no logic in complaining without offering a solution...no one take marketing here...
School will never be out on spiritual growth...its healthy living.
a long list of things Pascal couldnt have imagined.
Can anyone say anachronism?
Pascal was envisioning a choice between the religious indifference possible in his time and a rationalist version of Catholic Christianity, not anything involving female circumcision, Darwin, or Hebrew National Frankfurters (though I think he might have enjoyed the last of those).
Didnt William James speak of live choices people face? We see what absurdities we get when people ignore that.
OK, change the line to "read a long stretch of religious text in public at age thirteen"
The point remains the same.
My point however, is that when someone posts rampant ignorance, I tend not to take them very seriously.
By the way, you dont have to have a bar mitzvah ceremony to be "saved". 13 is the youngest its ALLOWED to read from the Torah in public. Its a cultural thing that one wants to do that as soon as possible, but its not, AFAIK, a het (a sin) to NOT do so. Ergo even with your emendation, its absolutely irrelevant to Pascals wager.
all the OP has proven, is that certain humanists/atheists have as little qualm about discussing things they are ignorant about, as any religionist.
The logical point about Pascals wager, could more cogently have been made without the list. But then that would raise the question of what requirements there are in any faith Blaise Pascal (or anyone positing Pascals wager as a reason for "belief") has.
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