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.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Jun 02, 2017 3:34 pm
"The Secularization Hypothesis" isn't about the ancient world but the modern one.
I’m aware of that. What I tried to say, but seemingly failed, is that the “sacralization” process which commenced in the ancient world and eventually enfolded all of Europe as the First World of Christianity, became the site ~ 1700 years later for its gradual de-sacralization. This happened for many reasons all commencing with the printing press and the rise of more secular philosophies.
The power of religion is now centered in those multitudes who are far less advanced, more prone to superstition and magic. This degrades the former prestige and power of those beliefs inversely to the number of people who still unquestioningly accept the bible as the holy fount of godspeak!
Dubious wrote: ↑Fri Jun 02, 2017 10:04 amDefinitely! 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.
Is it ever too late to accept Pascal's Wager? Would it be less hypocritical doing it sooner than later?
Dubious wrote: ↑Fri Jun 02, 2017 10:04 amEventually,
we all die alone...and what's it all worth? Nothing!
That's one possible outcome. What assures you that it's true?
Just because we have larger craniums doesn’t exempt us from what all other life is subject to. The main difference being we can make up band-aid stories of an afterlife and of god’s great concern for us humans while all other creatures just live the life they’re given.
Dubious wrote: ↑Fri Jun 02, 2017 10:04 amTruth discovered independently...
But truth, in an Atheist world, is not virtue.
Truth is truth; whether in your favor or not it never gets “personal” or “customized to beliefs! It took us a long time in the West to accept that brutal fact though still not universally accepted.
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.
Whether “grim” or not, it is what it is. The rest of your statement clearly defaults to wishful thinking. But for the intensely religious Truth remains a matter of perception more than inspection. These cute story, value-added laminations of mythological proportions once so effective has mostly faded within the Western psyche collective.
Death is not in the least frightening; being the end of your personal calendar, you’ll simply be what you were before you became, totally unaware of how long it took to make your debut along with the rest of all the animals on planet Earth.
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"?
That would be the theist’s vulgar view if he ever lost faith; the atheist or agnostic not being preconditioned to it thinks of his existence in the world in very different terms. I know you would like to think of atheists as damned and miserable, even if they don’t know it themselves being too far gone along the path of perdition, but it just ain’t so!
"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.
If by “soul” is meant human integrity, decency and self-respect, then it is indeed a very good question!
Dubious wrote: ↑Fri Jun 02, 2017 10:04 amYet 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.
This statement is weird! If Hardy was such a “passionate firm agnostic” why would he be lamenting the death of god?? Could Nietzsche have been more convincing than god by destroying poor Hardy's faith in Him?
That’s plain silly! Faith is not usually subservient to what philosophers have to say. But that was then. If Hardy were alive today would you still believe he’d have the same reaction or find spirituality elsewhere...as many have?
You can't get more despairing than that. I'd say you're speaking only for yourself, there; if even that.
I would imagine myself despairing if I felt compelled to believe in a few pages of a book called the bible as the word of god and have my “Weltanschauung” limited to what it proclaims as truth and revelation.
Dubious wrote: ↑Fri Jun 02, 2017 10:04 amPascal 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.
Yes! For us, being the opportunists we are, that would be the logical conclusion but I question whether a god could be stupid enough not to notice that the game was rigged and fall for such subversive logic! If we can figure it out you’d think god would know! Faith becomes a human strategy in an either/or showdown of probabilities.
Dubious wrote: ↑Fri Jun 02, 2017 10:04 amIf 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.
Then why not simply call faith a methodology for calculating the odds. If correct you win; if you lose, no loss since oblivion can’t acknowledge such including both time and universe.
Dubious wrote: ↑Fri Jun 02, 2017 10:04 amEven 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.
But also as mentioned it forces belief based on a highly immoral motive; I don’t believe god would calculate the way Pascal has and which you so readily accept. It makes faith cheap. If knowing there was nothing in it relating to life or more purposely the after-life, God's existence would be of no concern to anyone and not even Pascal would have bothered to make his wager!
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?
So finally we have your version of what faith is based on and relies upon; Pascal's Wager as a measure of pure rational practicality. And here I always thought that its absurdity is precisely what made faith believable knowing it to remain uncontaminated by any influx of rationality! This kind of turns things inside-out...almost as if faith were another form of Nihilism!
The Bible says, "It is appointed unto a man once to die, and after this, the Judgment."
Says who? The bible doesn’t say anything except that which men appointed it to say...even though I confess to the first part being indisputable.
And likewise, the Bible says, "...and what will you do in the end of it all?"
What will you do?
What I’ll do is to keep existing, for as long as allowed, within the open range of an indifferent universe until finally expectation meets reality.
