Pascal's Wager
http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Pascal%27s_Wager
Look at that list of counter arguments. Just look at it. That's a lot of counter arguments. Geez, you'd think you'd need just one, right? Kinda looks like shooting in the dark, but instead of hoping you hit the target, you're hoping someone will be convinced the lights are on.
There's a reason Pascal's Wager has existed for so fucking long and been used so fucking much and there isn't a fucking counter argument to it.
It. Is. Simple.
Forget for a moment that we're talking about God or even Snagglepuss. Let's just use a variable of X. Here's Pascal's Wager:
I've got a box. Inside it may or may not be X. I'm going to lift the box and show you, but first you have to guess if X is under the box.
If you believe in X and X exists, you win $5,000.
If you believe in X and X doesn't exist, you lose nothing.
If you don't believe in X and X exists, you lose your computer.
If you don't believe in X and X doesn't exist, you lose nothing.
That's Pascal's Wager. The box is lifted when you die, X is God, you win eternal happiness instead of $5,000 and get eternal torture instead of lose your computer.
The reason it's stood the test of time is it's just math. Pascal was not some preacher. He was a mathematician. His wager isn't just the tool of Christians trying to do whatever it is atheists think they're trying to do to them. Probability theory and decision theory and game theory and loads of other logic was influenced by it because it's true.
Check out the quotations on this page. Pascal was all about measuring the uncertainty. He wasn't Mr. Christian trying to convert heathens. This is the logical thought process of a genius who considered both religion and atheism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager
Now, there are arguments that Pascal's Wager DOESN'T APPLY to the discussion of Snagglepuss's existence. And there are very valid ones. But you have to move beyond what Pascal's Wager is before you can apply them and then you're coming up with your own rules and it has nothing to do with his wager anymore.
Here's some valid points against using the wager for Snagglepuss.
1. You don't lose nothing if you believe and he doesn't exist. You lose time and energy and money that went to the church.
2. There's no way to know that believing in him is enough to win.
3. If he needs me to believe in him, he's not worthy of my belief.
4. If he existed, he should tell me he exists and not make me wager.
My thoughts on those points are this.
1. I don't think someone is belonging to a church they hate because of the fear of brimstone unless they're mentally ill. People come out of church smiling pretty regularly. It's a two hour weekly meeting where you see all your friends, feel good, sing, find out about community events, help the poor, help each other, and dress up in your Sunday best. And the cover charge is an optional donation. But that has nothing to do with whether Snagglepuss exists, so I don't really care about that point.
2. If I told you pressing the tilde key (~) on your keyboard would save your life tomorrow, you'd think I was stupid. If everyone told you that for thousands of years, it'd be more established and you'd think it was less stupid, but it would still be your choice. We don't know what's going to save your life tomorrow. Lots of people think pressing the tilde key will do it though. Do you not press it based solely on the idea that you don't personally know it to be true? This point usually means the person doesn't actually understand Pascal's Wager at all. Because "option A" costs you nothing and wins you everything and "option B" costs you nothing and kicks you in the balls. If someone is using this point, they are ignoring the "costs you nothing" part, which is really half the wager.
3. Can you believe people say this one? I'd like to see this in court. "No, your honor, if the law needs me to believe I can't run a red light, it's not worthy of my belief."
4. Again, the weird arrogance.
You know where it comes from, right? When you declare "there is no God" you are also declaring "Whatever is the next rank down is now the ultimate being. What's that? It's me? How delightful!" It's important to swim with sharks, be crippled with illness, and get your ass kicked from time to time. I speak from experience. Forget God or Snagglepuss. The idea that we are the pinnacle of anything is the pinnacle of ignorance.
Snagglepuss 3
You Can't Define Godhttp://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=God_can%27t_be_defined
I'm just posting the whole thing cause it's short and ties in the with last one on "You Can't Prove God Doesn't Exist"
I'm just posting the whole thing cause it's short and ties in the with last one on "You Can't Prove God Doesn't Exist"
When do we hear it?
This argument is a common companion to "You can't prove God doesn't exist." The theist claiming, "God can't be defined," means to imply that we, as humans, lack the capability to properly comprehend the truth of what God is, and therefore we are not competent to define him, let alone disprove him.
Counter Apologetics
- The first problem with this statement is that the claim of an undefinable entity requires no refutation, so the argument lacks rhetorical power.
- The atheist can point out that the claimant is attempting to 'sneak' premises into the argument. The notion of 'god' has a long history associated with it, and the entity it describes has been given numerous attributes; the theist is assuming that these attributes can be defined for an undefinable God, while there remain other attributes that cannot. The theist is also sneaking in the assumption that a fundamentally undefinable entity can nonetheless exist in reality.
- If something is undefinable, then by claiming it exists is to provide definition, making the argument self-refuting.
- By raising this objection, the theist is admitting that despite being undefinable, he or she believes that God nonetheless exists. How does he or she arrive at such a claim without the capacity to even so much as define the object of the claim?
- If humans lack the intellectual power to define God, how can humans be expected to have the intellectual power to evaluate claims about this god? How did the theist arrive at a specific version of the god claim? Here, some may claim that they have supernatural knowledge of a particular god, but not enough knowledge to adequately define him. Even so, making it supernatural is no more than an appeal to ignorance and a claim of personal revelation.
- If the theist assumes that God created humankind to worship him, why does this God not give us the capacity to define what we are worshiping? Why does he instead demand that we worship an ill-formed, contradictory mess of an idea that doesn't come close to representing his essence? For that matter, if we worship one particular (inadequate) model of him, are we worshiping God or the model of God?
I know I could just say "dark matter or suitable cutting edge undefined scientific idea" and be done with it, but this won't take long.
YES! You can't define something you don't know. And we don't know Snagglepuss. Even the most hardcore non-mentally-ill Christian will tell it's faith, not knowing. I'm going to use bulletpoints to respond to their bulletpoints cause I wanna feel fancy, too.
- The first one needs translating first, I think. "The first problem with this statement is that the claim of an undefinable entity requires no refutation, so the argument lacks rhetorical power." means "Saying that something is undefinable is not something that can be argued, so it's not convincing." So it's just an outright dismissal and disregards all things scientific or Snagglepuss that aren't defined. I doubt there's many theoretical astrophysicists quoting this one.
- Yeah, it really throws a wrench in the atheist's argument if he can't quote Leviticus, doesn't it. If you want to talk about whether Snagglepuss exists, that's fine. If you want to talk about how much religion sucks, that's fine. You actually don't make any sense when you try to make the argument "Religion sucks therefore Snagglepuss doesn't exist." It's two separate things, but it's much harder to be smug when faced with logic and not dusty old fairytales.
- No, it doesn't. This one makes zero sense and I'll point to undefined hyperyupitismarians as an example. I just created something without a definition. Things can exist without being defined.
- I'm going to sound like a broken record if I keep talking about undefined science, words, and so on. I think they'd be less hung up on definitions if they learned German. Nevermind. I can claim lots of things exists that I don't know the definition to or that can't be defined. For all we know Snagglepuss can be defined and we just don't know the definition. I can arrive at such a capacity yada yada, because I do not claim the certainty that Snagglepuss exists. It's very easy to say there is probably an external force that influenced the universe at some point and may be influencing the universe today without a definition of that force. We can't define the structure of the hydrogen ions that were present at the Big Bang. Do you doubt their existence? No, you trust scientists that they were there.
- Good point! Let's see it again: "If humans lack the intellectual power to define God, how can humans be expected to have the intellectual power to evaluate claims about this god?" And I'll reply: "Yes. I agree." Keep in mind this is meant to be an argument in favor of having the intellectual power to evaluate claims about this god despite humans lacking the intellectual power to define God. Yes. We don't know. That's why you can't think there is no Snagglepuss.
- The last one is assuming all religion is correct and has nothing to do with the existence of Snagglepuss, just a couple old holy books. Nothing to talk about there since Snagglepuss doesn't have a religion.
Snagglepuss 2
You Can't Prove God Doesn't Exist
http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=You_can%27t_prove_God_doesn%27t_exist
"It is not uncommon for apologists to make statements like, "You can't prove God doesn't exist," when they are challenged to support their own claim that God exists. Such statements are intended to shift the burden of proof, and therefore represent a logical fallacy."
I guess my efforts to defend the existence of Snagglepuss are continuing. Look at that last sentence. If there's a site called "Stuff Atheists Like" I'm guessing "Phrases They Learned In High School Debate Team" is on there. Never trust a man who says "therefore." Here's something better:
Philosopher Bertrand Russell posed a famous counter-argument to this claim by stating the following:
- "If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."
And finally, the Great Pumpkin objection to the argument: "Many people might object that if belief in God is basic (i.e., rational without evidence), why can't any belief, such as a belief in the Great Pumpkin, also be basic?"
Do you see the problem with all of these things? A theist says "You can't prove God doesn't exist." The atheist says "You can't make me disprove it and you can't disprove the Flying Spaghetti Monster either so FSM is just as possible as God." That's when I say, "Yes. I agree." You can not prove that there is not a magical cat named Snagglepuss or a Flying Spaghetti Monster or God, in whatever form you want to color him.
That means there's a possibility. That even if you account for 99% of all knowledge in the universe forever and ever and ever, you can not say "There is no God" because you don't know what's in that 1%. You can't say "We are not a butterfly's dream" as long as that 1% exists. There is some fancy debate team term for this argument that sounds really dismissive, I think. Doesn't change the fact that it's true.
I hate to talk on dark matter because in ten minutes the information will be out of date, but I'll do it anyway to illustrate a point. We currently have no way to prove that dark matter exists. If you know more than me and this is not true, substitute in another cutting edge substance. If you want to get snobby and in denial and say nothing like that exists because science, remember we used to worry about ptomaines and caloric.
So dark matter is trusted to exist but can't prove it. We can see how the universe reacts around where we think it is and then we try to make up rules that bring us closer to an understanding of the truth. We can't prove it and we can't disprove it. But stuff is happening around where we think it is that doesn't have a scientific explanation.
Is this sounding familiar? Kinda sound like Snagglepuss?
Yes, no one can prove Snagglepuss exists. Yes, no one can prove Snagglepuss doesn't exist. Yes, no one can prove Russell's Teapot doesn't exist. Yes, no one can prove the Great Pumpkin doesn't exist. It's not an argument against the existence of Snagglepuss. It's an argument for the possibility of the existence of Snagglepuss.
I don't know what the debate team term for putting words in someone's mouth is, but "You Can't Prove God Doesn't Exist" are not the same words as "God Exists".
I don't think I bookmarked the "God of the Gaps fallacy" because the language on the site was SO bad. (I mean really, theists being apologists [implying wrongness] and atheists being counter-apologists [implying successful countering of wrongness] is one thing, but just calling a whole subset of beliefs "arguments from ignorance"? They're not even trying to seem fair.) Anyway, God of the Gaps is another one of those things that atheists say and never think about. They just feel all smug about using a new phrase that sounds dismissive to add to their debate team vocabulary.
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During World War II the German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer expressed the concept in similar terms in letters he wrote while in a Nazi prison.[4]Bonhoeffer wrote, for example:
- "...how wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know."[4]
In his 1955 book Science and Christian Belief Charles Alfred Coulson (1910−1974) wrote:
- There is no 'God of the gaps' to take over at those strategic places where science fails; and the reason is that gaps of this sort have the unpreventable habit of shrinking.
- ---
- So God of the Gaps means we used God to explain why the sun rose until we learned about the solar system. We used God to explain disappearing birds before we learned about migration. Anything we did not know was traditionally explained with "God did it." So the current version is something like "God exists in ever-shrinking gaps of knowledge."
- Again:
- "God exists in ever-shrinking gaps of knowledge."
- I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when an atheist says this and sits back, folds his arms, and smiles.
- "Yes. I agree. God does exist."
- Look at the original quote. It's not atheism! "We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know." Sound like Galileo? "Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe." Stephen Hawking, Einstein, they all have quotes like this.
- But yes, we have gaps in knowledge and will always have gaps in knowledge. That is why intelligent people will never say "There's no God" and why I will say "There's probably a Snagglepuss."
Snagglepuss 1
I don’t talk about my religious beliefs much because that’s how I think religious beliefs should be. Still, I was pulled into a theological debate with two atheists who said they just wanted to know what I believe. How could a guy be smart AND believe in God? I made my point that I think there is a probability that a god-like entity existed or exists. Once it was made clear that I was not saying Jesus founded America or any other nonsense, one said there was probably a god and the other said there was possibly a god. They clarified for me their definition of atheist as someone who rejects religion, not someone who rejects the idea of a god. That is, apparently, an anti-theist, which was a new word for me and if theist ever shows up in scrabble, I am so rocking that triple word score with it.
Still, one of them is sending me links to atheist talk shows and sites and wikis. I liked one called Iron Chariots despite the snide, smug language used on it because it listed arguments and counter-arguments. Here are some of them and my thoughts which will hopefully shed some light on why I believe.
Before we start, I want to talk about the word “believe.” It’s not some fucking trap. It’s just a word. Even the most hardcore atheist person believes. Even if they say “I only believe in things I see with my own eyes” or “I only believe in science” or “I only believe on provable, repeatable results (and MythBusters episodes)”. This stuff is said because they’re worried about some slippery slope argument that ends with me going “AHA! You believe in Gah-ahd! Neener neener neener!” No. Here’s how I tried to explain it.
Me: You believe a Diet Coke has 0 calories because it says so on the label. You trust the label and have no scientific knowledge of it.
Atheist: No. I know Diet Coke contains 1.3 calories because I read that on a website.
You see the problem? Every time you get convinced of your own knowledge, you are denying that you are just believing someone else. He was just believing the website instead of the label. Again, it’s not a trap. If your friend told you he had Cheerios for breakfast you would… believe him. It’s a normal thing to believe.
Still, some people have trouble with that word because they say it carries eons of religious oppression. Fine. I’ll use the word trust instead of believe. And I’m going to use Snagglepuss instead of God for the same reason. I trust in Snagglepuss’s existence.
Note: I’m going to tell you why in small words. Language was invented to communicate. Using a ten dollar word when a ten cent word will do impairs communication. There’s a bunch of reasons to use big words, but few of them deal with communicating.
Science is a Faith
“Science is a faith is a statement that reflects a straw man or equivocation fallacy propagated by apologists to attempt to discredit "belief" in science as being no more sound than belief in God. Science does contain philosophical underpinnings which are unprovable, which thus require "faith" in the epistemological sense. However, science distinguishes itself from purely faith-based beliefs in the same way that philosophy does; by the application of logic. Science also goes one step further by adhering to demonstrable, repeatable experiments and empirical data.”
That says “Science is a faith is what theists use to say that belief in science is like belief in God. Science does require faith, but science uses logic, experiments, and data.” So when you take away the big words, it is just agreeing with the argument that science is a faith, but it says science is better because you can reason science and get repeatable results. So when I drop a ball, it accelerates towards the earth at the same speed every time because gravity. (Fun fact, using because like that is now accepted and because is a preposition, too!)
This website has real balls admitting science is a faith even as much as they are, but the problem with their reasoning and repeatable results is they only exist within the sphere of science. It’s self-referential. Science is right because science says so. It only works for stuff science knows and it isn’t permanent, just temporary til the next scientific discovery gets us closer to the truth (we hope). Note that atheists have no problem using this argument as Bible is right because Bible says so. Here’s an example.
Q: How much does a kilogram ball weigh exactly the same as 1,000 gram balls?
A: Yes
Except it’s not. Not really. (And if you want to get on me about saying the word “weigh” when talking about mass, you can fuck off now because I’m not interested in semantics) The kilogram is a thing, a little weight. And it’s been absorbing air molecules and losing mass in washings for 120 years. So today’s kilogram is a different weight than yesterday’s kilogram. So 1,000 gram balls would not weigh a kilogram logically. But in science, they do because science is self referential. There’s no standard for the gram. It’s defined as 1/1000th of a kilogram (don’t ask why it’s not the other way around, there’s French history in the reason). So the end result is that a kilogram isn’t a kilogram and a gram isn’t a gram and 1,000 grams are not a kilogram. Not in the real sense of the words. But it is provable in science. It “adheres to demonstrable, repeatable experiments and empirical data.”
So, yeah, science is a faith. You trust scientists. You trust doctors. If a guy in a white coat at a hospital comes up and says “Your father is dead” you don’t respond “Prove it” and start slapping the corpse. If you did, the doctor would lock you up and tell your family you were crazy. And they would trust him because you don’t need proof when you have faith.
I’m going to go play at Gymboree with my kid, but here’s the other articles I liked because I believe them or see a glaring hole in them. Maybe I’ll go into more detail on them later.
http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Argument_from_design (this one has multiple arguments)
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