Dubious wrote: ↑Fri Jun 02, 2017 10:04 am
True, but the key word here is "Developing World", where the backwardedness of supersition and magic still have a foothold....The "Secularization Hypothesis", as you call it has long ceased to be a hypothesis in Europe where Christianity became established even before the end of the Roman Empire.
Ummm...you're a little early there.
"The Secularization Hypothesis" isn't about the ancient world but the modern one. It was Nietzsche's belief, and a popular belief in academics up to the 1960s or so. It's only recently been exposed as badly mistaken.
According to the Religious Studies Project:
“The secularisation thesis – the idea that traditional religions are in terminal decline in the industrialised world – was perhaps the central debate in the sociology of religion in the second half of the 20th century. Scholars such as Steve Bruce, Rodney Stark and Charles Taylor argued whether religion was becoming less important to individuals, or that only the authority of religions in the public sphere was declining. Data from the US and South America, however, began to challenge many of their basic assumptions.
The secularisation thesis is probably the biggest central theme and certainly the most hotly debated in the sociology of religion, certainly since the 1960’s."
Definitely! Though it may sound contradictory to you, that is true for many agnostics and atheists alike especially in cases of severe mental trauma or on the expectation of oblivion to follow shortly.
Oh, I know it. It's a very common human experience to be cavalier about your eternal future until you're staring it in the face, with no going back. Unfortunately, by the time some people wake up, they've wasted most of their lives already -- and at some point, elderly people tend to become so entrenched in their disbelief that they ride the flaming plane into the ground rather than admit their lives have been mis-invested.
Don't get to that point yourself, is my suggestion.
Eventually, we all die alone...and what's it all worth? Nothing!
That's one possible outcome. What assures you that it's true?
Dubious wrote: ↑Fri Jun 02, 2017 10:04 am
And that's the existential plight of the Western world today; once all "religion" is denied, what has Atheism got to offer in its place? Nothing. No guidance, no purpose, no meaning, no morals, and no hope.
Truth discovered independently...
But truth, in an Atheist world, is not virtue. Why face a grim "truth" if it gives you no happiness or comfort to do so? Who will reward you if you embrace truth, and who will chide you if you embrace comforting falsehoods instead? There is nothing to choose between them, for the Atheist.
There are, in fact, no virtues in such a world. Not even a search for truth is dignified thereby. If Materialism and soul-extinction are all that await us, what does it make sense to do but "eat, drink and be merry; for tomorrow we die"? Believe an truth or lie you like...it will make no difference. Worm food we all will be.
"What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul, or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?" That's the question Jesus Christ asked. It's a very good one.
Yet neither atheists or agnostics feel out of place in a universe with no god at its center.
Oh, maybe
you don't: but I assure you, many of them do. The wisest among them have been tempted to Nihilism by that realization. Thomas Hardy was a passionate firm-agnostic, and spent his life lamenting the death of God. Nietzsche's madman cries out that the murder of God is a deed "too great for us," and one that pulls the very axis out of the world. Camus started one of his books by asking why, given the absurdity and meaninglessness of the universe, we all don't just kill ourselves.
You can't get more despairing than that. I'd say you're speaking only for yourself, there; if even that.
Pascal was an opportunist hedging his bets on the bible.
That won't change anything, even if it were true.
Consider this: you won't care if your bridge engineer is a liar, a cheat, a wife-beater and an abandoner of his children. You won't care if he drinks, uses drugs and murders his neigbours; at the moment you drive across the bridge, the only think you'll care about is whether or not he got his calculations right when he built the bridge: will it hold up a car.
Similarly, it won't matter if you say Pascal was a rascal. What will matter is this: was he right, in this particular case. And the answer, logically, is absolutely, yes.
If belief becomes conditional with the intent of covering one's ass on a very low "just-in-case" possibility upon death then faith itself is merely a matter of expediency, an insurance policy.
Sure. But it doesn't matter. If Pascal was right, who cares WHY he was right?
Maybe his personal reasons, and the reasons of many who follow him in his reasoning are completely morally bankrupt: so what? Any moral failing is on them, if it's true.
But whether they are rascals or not, all that's going to matter to you, at the end of the day, is whether or not, on this particular occasion, whether accidentally or by intention,
they spoke the truth.
Even an atheist will notice a moral gap in this wager. I'm surprised you theists don't see it!
We see that possibility. But as I point out above, you can see now that it doesn't matter a whit. The engineer's bad character will not be the cause of his bridge collapsing: only mathematical miscalculation on his part will do that. Likewise, Pascal et al.'s lack of a moral motive will not stop Pascal's calculation from being correct.
It is. It's utterly rational. You can see it is. You may cast doubt on the motives of Pascal, but that won't make his mathematics wrong. If he was merely being a self-serving rational strategist, then you should take his advice: for do you not want the most rational, strategic and self-serving outcome for yourself?
The Bible says, "It is appointed unto a man once to die, and after this, the Judgment." That's either true or its false. There's no third alternative. If it's false, you will have no reward for saying so. If it's true, you have an infinite loss for failing to consider it.
And likewise, the Bible says, "...and what will you do in the end of it all?"
What will you do?
that can be a synonym for "indoctrinated," which is a good description of anyone who imagines they can rationally sustain their Atheism.