hypothetical ? to atheists

[9Harmony]

I was just wondering...

So, lets just say you are right and God doesn't exist. And after we die, it is truly over, there is nothing after this life.

And if that is true what's it going to hurt to fantasize or imagine that God does exist. That there is something after here.

Doesn't that sound like more fun? I mean really, why not have fun with it and dream up something incredible to look forward to? And if you turn out to be right after all, no harm, no foul. But if the theists are right and you were wrong, there is something beyond this realm, wouldn't it be beneficial to at least pretend you believed all along?

Just thinking out loud (in writing) *smile*

Enjoy!

 

[Letalis]

I dunno...I thought you needed true faith. Even if it is just a little.

 

[9Harmony]

maybe the faith will grow in the pretending.

but the point is, it seems like such a lonely existence to believe that this is all there is. using our imaginations to lift ourselves to a higher place can only be beneficial i would think.

 

[Arikay]

One correction, atheism says nothing about an afterlife just about a lack of belief in god. Although some atheists also don't believe in an afterlife.
To answer your question, no I don't think there is anything wrong with believing in a god. The problem starts when people start believing this god is talking to them and wants them to kill people. Or when people try to force their gods will on other people. etc.

Ahhhhhh Nooooo pascals faulty wager, run away, run away.
(In case you didn't know, the second part of your post is called pascals wager and is a faulty one at that.).

 

[9Harmony]

Ahhhhhh Nooooo pascals faulty wager, run away, run away.
(In case you didn't know, the second part of your post is called pascals wager and is a faulty one at that.).

Do tell. I've heard the term but not sure what it means.



___________________________________

 

[Letalis]

Some people believe they're destined to believe, and others are destined not to believe. Predestination, or something like that.

 

[vajradhara]

Namatse harmony,

thank you for the post.

ah.. the old Pascals Wager again

here's some background on the actual wager:

In the seventeenth century the French mathematician and theologian, Blaise Pascal (1623- 1663) put forward a wager in his Pensees (Thoughts):


If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having, neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is ... you must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked. Which will you choose then? 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.






Pascal's argument sounds deceptively attractive. Many a religious person finds this argument decisive. After all, they say, if I believe and then it turns out to be true I get to enjoy heavenly bliss; but if my belief turns out to be false, and there is no God, then when I die, I lose nothing. An atheist, the religious person may continue, if he turns out to be wrong will suffer an eternity of torment. If the atheist turns out to be right then it is only equal to the believer's "worst case." Obviously then, the believer will say, you must wager on the side of belief.

But Pascal's argument is seriously flawed. The religious environment that Pascal lived in was simple. Belief and disbelief only boiled down to two choices: Roman Catholicism and atheism. With a finite choice, his argument would be sound. But on Pascal's own premise that God is infinitely incomprehensible, then in theory, there would be an infinite amount of possible theologies about God, all of which are equally probable. For we cannot measure the probability of the correctness of each theology when the subject they teach is supposed to be infinitely incomprehensible. As the philosopher Antony Flew (b.1923) concluded: The main but not the only fault of the argument is that Pascal assumes that there are only two alternative bets; become a Roman Catholic or not. But on his own basic premise of total ignorance, the set of conceivable alternative cosmic systems, all of the hypothesis is equally probable, must be infinite, as must be the subset of those promising eternal bliss, and threatening eternal torment, respectively, to reward, and to punish an infinite range of different favored and disfavored way of life. This refutation is, on Pascal's own assumptions, decisive.




the interested reader is directed to this site for more information:

http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/pascal.html

 

[Arikay]

Pascals wager was a wager made by Pascal a mathematician and theologian that is very similar to what you said, basically that if there is no god then atheists or christians lose nothing, but if there is a god, christians gain and atheists lose. The problem is that it assumes that there are only two options, that either the christian god is real and will send all non believers to hell, or that there is no god. But since the actual nature of god or the universe is not known, its just as risky being a christian as an atheist, because its possible that a non christian god is real and both the atheist and christian goes to hell. Or it is possible that god respects people who stick by their convictions even though it means possible punishment (I believe the decipels are honored for doing just that) and thus god loses respect for anyone who is swayed by the wager and chooses to pretend to escape punishment. Etc.

Another argument is that god can see into our hearts and can see if we trully believe or not, thus pretending wouldn't be enough and the wager fails.

The wager can also be extended into christianity. Christians should worship the harshest version of the christian god and the one who has the most rules to get into heaven. Because if god turns out to be nicer, then you lose nothing and go to heaven. but if he turns out to be the harsher version, and you believed in the nicer version, then you go to hell. But I doubt that will sway any christians away from their current beliefs.

Do tell. I've heard the term but not sure what it means.



___________________________________

 

[Sopharos]

I was just wondering...

So, lets just say you are right and God doesn't exist. And after we die, it is truly over, there is nothing after this life.

And if that is true what's it going to hurt to fantasize or imagine that God does exist. That there is something after here.

Doesn't that sound like more fun? I mean really, why not have fun with it and dream up something incredible to look forward to? And if you turn out to be right after all, no harm, no foul. But if the theists are right and you were wrong, there is something beyond this realm, wouldn't it be beneficial to at least pretend you believed all along?

Just thinking out loud (in writing) *smile*

Enjoy!

No harm, and no gain either. So doesn't matter either way, but better to choose that which is simpler and less demanding, which, in my opinion, is atheism.

 

[Philosoft]

I was just wondering...

So, lets just say you are right and God doesn't exist. And after we die, it is truly over, there is nothing after this life.

And if that is true what's it going to hurt to fantasize or imagine that God does exist. That there is something after here.

Doesn't that sound like more fun? I mean really, why not have fun with it and dream up something incredible to look forward to? And if you turn out to be right after all, no harm, no foul. But if the theists are right and you were wrong, there is something beyond this realm, wouldn't it be beneficial to at least pretend you believed all along?

Just thinking out loud (in writing) *smile*

Enjoy!

I suppose if I was overly troubled about death and the cessation of consciousness, if I felt that there has to be some cosmic purpose for my existence, then I might do something like you suggest. But I don't. So I don't.

 

[Fiendishjester]

I was just wondering...

So, lets just say you are right and God doesn't exist. And after we die, it is truly over, there is nothing after this life.

And if that is true what's it going to hurt to fantasize or imagine that God does exist. That there is something after here.

Doesn't that sound like more fun? I mean really, why not have fun with it and dream up something incredible to look forward to? And if you turn out to be right after all, no harm, no foul. But if the theists are right and you were wrong, there is something beyond this realm, wouldn't it be beneficial to at least pretend you believed all along?

Just thinking out loud (in writing) *smile*

Enjoy!

This is an interesting question. The problem here is that the argument only works in a realm where the religious choices are finite. For example, what if Atheists and Christians are both wrong, because it's Islam that is the right religion, and both of them will burn in hell because they did not follow it during their lives? As you can see, this kind of logic works for every single kind of belief system in the world, even one that I could make up at this very moment. Based on that, it is kind of arbitrary, and so there is no way to really choose what to believe in or not to believe in. Some people choose not to believe in any God because if they are right, then they can do whatever they want to in this life. Many people feel limited by the rules of religions, and so if they did believe in God, they might not be able to do certain things they wanted to do, and if there was no God, then their lives would be wasted since nothing would happen to them after they died.

 

[IronEagle]

9Harmony, Pascal wager is "game theory" (or more precisely "decision theory") applied on religion.

Decision theory can be viewed as a theory of one person games, or a game of a single player against nature. The focus is on preferences and the formation of beliefs. The most widely used form of decision theory argues that preferences among risky alternatives can be described by the maximization the expected value of a numerical utility function, where utility may depend on a number of things, but in situations of interest to economists often depends on money income. Probability theory is heavily used in order to represent the uncertainty of outcomes, and Bayes Law is frequently used to model the way in which new information is used to revise beliefs. Decision theory is often used in the form of decision analysis, which shows how best to acquire information before making a decision.

read these:
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/whatis.htm
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/

 

[Zen_Woof]

I was just wondering...

So, lets just say you are right and God doesn't exist. And after we die, it is truly over, there is nothing after this life.

And if that is true what's it going to hurt to fantasize or imagine that God does exist. That there is something after here.

Doesn't that sound like more fun? I mean really, why not have fun with it and dream up something incredible to look forward to? And if you turn out to be right after all, no harm, no foul. But if the theists are right and you were wrong, there is something beyond this realm, wouldn't it be beneficial to at least pretend you believed all along?

Just thinking out loud (in writing) *smile*

Enjoy!

If no one used this idea to discriminate against or to make others unhappy, then no foul. If we could all tolerate each other's beliefs, we would all be happier IMHO. But alas, what happens is that someone stumbles onto what they see as the truth and they want to spread it. No problem there. But then power and ego get mixed into it. Perhaps this person has wrapped the idea of his or her worth into the idea that their idea is right. Or perhaps he or she really believes the world would be a better place if everyone believed the way he or she did, so he or she tries to show unequivocally how right the view is ... and on and on ... fighting erupts, people become confused, electronic Forums are built ...

With metta,
ZW

 

[Nathan David]

Personally, I'd rather be right than happy.

But I think there is harm in choosing your imagination over your perception of reality. There's nothing wrong with imagination; I imagine things that aren't real all the time. But I make sure to keep imagination in it's place, because, IMHO, the more accurate your perception of reality, they better you are able to deal with life.

 

[9Harmony]

Namatse harmony,

thank you for the post.

ah.. the old Pascals Wager again

here's some background on the actual wager:

In the seventeenth century the French mathematician and theologian, Blaise Pascal (1623- 1663) put forward a wager in his Pensees (Thoughts):


If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having, neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is ... you must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked. Which will you choose then? 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.






Pascal's argument sounds deceptively attractive. Many a religious person finds this argument decisive. After all, they say, if I believe and then it turns out to be true I get to enjoy heavenly bliss; but if my belief turns out to be false, and there is no God, then when I die, I lose nothing. An atheist, the religious person may continue, if he turns out to be wrong will suffer an eternity of torment. If the atheist turns out to be right then it is only equal to the believer's "worst case." Obviously then, the believer will say, you must wager on the side of belief.

But Pascal's argument is seriously flawed. The religious environment that Pascal lived in was simple. Belief and disbelief only boiled down to two choices: Roman Catholicism and atheism. With a finite choice, his argument would be sound. But on Pascal's own premise that God is infinitely incomprehensible, then in theory, there would be an infinite amount of possible theologies about God, all of which are equally probable. For we cannot measure the probability of the correctness of each theology when the subject they teach is supposed to be infinitely incomprehensible. As the philosopher Antony Flew (b.1923) concluded: The main but not the only fault of the argument is that Pascal assumes that there are only two alternative bets; become a Roman Catholic or not. But on his own basic premise of total ignorance, the set of conceivable alternative cosmic systems, all of the hypothesis is equally probable, must be infinite, as must be the subset of those promising eternal bliss, and threatening eternal torment, respectively, to reward, and to punish an infinite range of different favored and disfavored way of life. This refutation is, on Pascal's own assumptions, decisive.




the interested reader is directed to this site for more information:

http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/pascal.html

Namaste Vaj,

thank you for the info. it turns out i am familiar with the concept just not the name.

Have a great day!

Loving Greetings, Harmony

 

[sacred_stone]

Pascal's Wager again? This is the second time today. Boy they're getting good.

 

[flicka]

Well, yes. It does sound like more fun. Thats why people enjoy having fantasies and daydreams...

 

[vajradhara]

Namaste Vaj,

thank you for the info. it turns out i am familiar with the concept just not the name.

Have a great day!

Loving Greetings, Harmony

thank you... you enjoy your day as well