Pascal's wager is bullshit

[echoVanguard]

You don't get to declare people logical and then use their opinions as a measure of truth

This seems like it's heading in the direction of a No True Scotsman, but I'm not sure from which of us.

echo

[Kaelik]

Your argument breaks down into two parts.

"you have no evidence that it exists" - If something is true is it true regardless of someone finding evidence for it. Black holes existed long before we "discovered" them. Lack of observation is no proof of falsehood.

"it`s actually impossible to ever have evidence ever" - I'm sorry, but that's a straw man. Plain and simple, it's a strawman. Your entire argument is made possible by wanking and then burning a strawman.

But, please. I would be lothe to ruin your mental masturbation. Please continue.

Please learn to read. I was specifically responding to agnostics. Therefore:

1) Something is either true or false before we have evidence, well then, we should take a position (IE atheism) until evidence is presented. Positing that Black Holes exist before you have evidence of it is not worthwhile unless you actually do find evidence, or you are claiming something is possible, and we should look for evidence. Neither of which agnostics are famous for.

2) No evidence ever can be found for God's existence or lack there of is an agnostic position. It's one that I consider to be exceptionally stupid, hence me saying that it is stupid, because it's functionally identical to atheism, and therefore not worth distinguishing.

Thank you Tzor, now that you are done proving that you can't pay attention, maybe next time that someone specifically asks me a question about agnostics, you won't claim that my criticisms of agnosticism are a strawman of your religion?

[Cynic]

Ah, I love this place. A discussion on the most ridiculous of assertions leads to a discussion on matrices.


Raising a kid to have any sort of belief, when that belief is in the minority or mostly disdained of by the majority, this becomes amazingly tough. My parents and that side of the family are crazy. Hindu. My wife's side is also crazy Christian. As someone watched by Hindu grandparents for a couple days a week and then bombarded by religious chants makes them quite skeptical of Atheism. WIth all this in mind, how do you, as a parent, teach your kids? This is the reason for the "Brochure idea."

[Maj]

You know, I have always been surprised when people say that religion is an issue and that it's everywhere.

Then I drove to California for my sister's wedding.

I get that historically, there's going to be a lot of religious stuff in California. I mean, we were in San Rafael and as part of our cultural education, Mom made sure to take us to the mission there and walk around the church and take pictures and so on. But all that aside, religion was way more in my face than it is around here (Olympia, WA). Even driving through Oregon, there are way more manifestations of "Jesus FTW!!!" than around here. It was rather bizarre, creepy, and made me want to drive faster.

Personally, I don't care what you believe. Just save your proselytizing for someone who gives a shit.

One argument about atheism that's been getting to me lately is the assertion that atheism requires faith(tm), just like any other religion. It doesn't take an act of faith to not believe in a god, just like it doesn't take active belief to not think Santa Claus will bring you presents if you're good.

I don't know where my ideas came from - my life didn't get particularly religious until around age eight - but my version of the "scale" of godliness looks something like this:

Theist: There is a god/divine presence/being/gods/whatever.
Agnostic: Who gives a shit? (also: There is nothing to confirm or deny the existence of above things, therefore the question isn't.)
Atheist: There is no such thing as god/divine presence/being/gods/whatever.

It makes perfect sense to me that active denial in the face of no evidence is equivalent to active assertion in the face of no evidence. Most atheists that I have spoken to about the subject have told me that I have been misinformed as to what atheism is and that it actually falls into the class of what I call agnosticism.

<shrug>

WIth all this in mind, how do you, as a parent, teach your kids?

What's your goal?

Because if your goal is to make sure your child is atheist, then you're going to have to work on indoctrination just like everyone else. If your goal is to give your child the tools with which to decide their own beliefs, then you have to give them as much information as you can about what it means to believe, and ultimately respect whatever decision your child makes (and any changes to those beliefs that happen across the course of your child's life).

The eight year old who loves to go to church/temple/shrine/whatever can still grow up to decide that it isn't a good thing. The atheist who hates church/temple/shrine/whatever can grow up and believe that it is. The truly important part is giving your children the keys to making their own decision, and loving them regardless of their choice.

[Zinegata]

No. People who spend negligible amounts of money on tickets are not (very) stupid. Really, watching the lottery show costs more than the ticket itself (okay, I actually have no idea about lottery tickets in America, but a "fair" ticket in Russia is $2...$4, 0.5 to 1.0 the hourly wage I got as a college dropout). On the other hand, a lottery as a means of systematic investment (buying thousands of tickets) is dumb, dumb, dumb, because the miniscule* chance to change your life for the better by winning a lot of money is not compensated by the very noticeble negative impact wasting money on thousands of tickets makes in your life.

Remember, the lottery organizers (assuming their honesty) do not care how many different persons buy their tickets (given a constant amount of sold tickets). To them, every buyer is as good as the next one. The buyers, on the whole, are going to lose. And you making yourself a bigger part of the whole will make you lose more.

*I know a dictionary word Mozilla spellcheck doesn't know. I'm awesome.

It's smart to run a lottery. It's stupid to be one of the people betting on one.

Again, Pascal's wager boils down to "Bet on God because while no evidence supports he's real, the rewards are infinite and you don't lose anything for doing so!"

Lotteries are basically "Bet on a system because while the evidence flatly shows that you have a near zero percent chance of winning, the rewards are big and you only lose a couple of bucks doing so"

I'm not saying people should treat lotteries as an invesment (but some nutjobs do). I'm saying people will be people and bet on pretty stupid things all the time.

So "disproving" Pascal's Wager doesn't really make one a better atheist. Recognizing it's not a great bet - just like the chances of winning a lottery - just means you're a more rational and logical person.

[Prak]

I actually met someone today who equivocated number of adherents to betting odds. There's some christian group that sets up on my campus weekly and proselytizes to anyone walking by. I take great joy in displaying their idiocy and ineptitude to all within earshot, but today took the fucking cake. I was seriously close to quoting Brian from Family Guy within about five minutes and saying "Can I buy pot from you?" to this guy's cracked out approach.

But it eventually came to:
"So, you're saying that number of followers is betting odds? The more people who believe something, the more likely it is to be right?"
"yes."
"Wow. ...You realize that even then Christianity's a shit bet, right? it's only 30/70 for 'Jesus or anything else.' Sure, it's great odds against any specific other theology, but overall, it's still bullshit."

[Jilocasin]

WIth all this in mind, how do you, as a parent, teach your kids?

I'm not a parent but the woman who wrote this blog is (it seems to be inactive now) and the archives might be interesting to you.
http://possummomma.blogspot.com/

[cthulhu]

Lotteries are basically "Bet on a system because while the evidence flatly shows that you have a near zero percent chance of winning, the rewards are big and you only lose a couple of bucks doing so"

Recognizing it's not a great bet - just like the chances of winning a lottery - just means you're a more rational and logical person.

The lottery is pretty funny - the state lottery rates of return are generally pretty good (compared to say, betting on horses), so if you're just spending a few dollars a week and have significant dispoisble income per week, you can easily construct a positive benefits assessment (expected value + enjoyment from gambling > marginal value of 5 dollars)

[Psychic Robot]

I take great joy in displaying their idiocy and ineptitude to all within earshot

Here's how these exchanges actually go.

PREACHER GUY: Repent now!
PRAK: You...you ignorant bigot!
PREACHER GUY: [More preaching.]
PRAK: Hey, everyone! Everyone! Hey, look at me! Look at me winning this debate! Look, everyone! I am a spectacle for your amusement! Look!

Sometime later, on The Gaming Den:

So then I totally pwned this Christian on campus by pointing out his logical fallacies. I'm basically Brian from Family Guy, except I own a katana.

[Red_Rob]

It makes perfect sense to me that active denial in the face of no evidence is equivalent to active assertion in the face of no evidence.

What pisses me off is that this argument applied to anything other than religion is immediately seen as bullshit, but because of the misplaced respect people give religious beliefs it is accepted when it comes to god. Let's look at these phrases:

"I have no evidence for or against the existence of fairies so therefore i refuse to say for sure they don't exist."
"I have no evidence for or against the existence of the Easter bunny, therefore I refuse to say for sure it doesn't exist."
"I have no evidence for or against the existence of the giant flying spaghetti monster therefore I refuse to say for sure it doesn't exist."

Let's get one thing straight. If God was made up by people, which I believe he was, then they wouldn't want something you could point to and say "Well, that proves there's no God, doesn't it?". Therefore of course there is never going to be any evidence for or against his existence, because the people who invented him set it up that way. Lets look at the "facts":

God is everywhere but is undetectable.
God can affect anything in the Universe, however if you ever specifically test for his existence he will provide results as if there was no God. This is ostensibly because he only values faith in himself, and once proof is provided there is no need for faith.
God provides answer to prayers, but only certain prayers, and see the above statement about being tested.

Well, look at that, a perfect set of rules that mean you can never prove or disprove his existence. Almost like somebody made it that way!

So no, agnosticism is not a defensible position. It is a cowards reaction to the mainstream acceptance of religious belief as somehow special and distinct from other beliefs, or to the horror stories the religious use to try to scare people into following their religion. Agnostics try to pass themselves off as more intelligent or open minded, however the only real intelligent response to a claim without any scrap of corroborating evidence is "prove it."

"Assertions made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.” - Christopher Hitchens

[Koumei]

There really isn't any actual point in arguing with zealots. You can't change their mind, they can't change yours, and you just piss each other off. It just doesn't achieve anything, and is unlikely to sway anyone that was listening in the first place.

Sure, religion as a whole is a force of evil that does terrible things, and it would be a good deed to turn enough people against, for instance, the Vatican, that it lost its power. But you can't do that by getting into shouting matches with evangelists.

Now sure, maybe you can help by showing the world in general that it's retarded to believe in this magical sky fairy and that if you think about it sensibly, it's not real and people can do more good by just saying "this is all there is. Just this existence. People. No great power to appease or offend, merely people to do good deeds to." but that's done through... apparently youtube. Not by loud arguments.

And if you are too insulting about it, people who might have been on the fence just get confrontational, offended and stubborn. Ultimately the crazy guy on the street isn't who you want to convert, nor is the Republican senator who pushes in a special "The Bible says we can have slaves, therefore it's legal" bill or the Pope: that's impossible. The people you want to convert are the ones who, over time, will actually see reason and then stop giving religion their money and their votes.

Incidentally, I'm certain I recall at least one Bible verse that outright says God will appear before you if you ask him to. Does anyone remember the exact verse? You can't really convert anyone with it, it's just an odd peculiarity in the face of things like "You can't test God".

[violence in the media]

Incidentally, I'm certain I recall at least one Bible verse that outright says God will appear before you if you ask him to. Does anyone remember the exact verse? You can't really convert anyone with it, it's just an odd peculiarity in the face of things like "You can't test God".

Not to mention the whole host of people in the Bible that don't need to have any faith in god whatsoever--because he manifests, talks to them, and does stuff. Moses, for example, is not presented as having one-sided, crazy-person conversations with himself.

Hell, even Thomas calls bullshit on the ressurrection until he gets to see Jesus and finger him. Jesus doesn't even bar him from heaven for this! So, clearly, this "faith" requirement isn't a hard and fast one, it's not incompatible with evidence, and Jesus/god is willing to provide proof to people that need it. So, anyone who accepts this stuff on faith alone is clearly selling himself short--tangible evidence will be provided if you hold out long enough or if god really needs you to do something.

[Prak]

I take great joy in displaying their idiocy and ineptitude to all within earshot

Here's how these exchanges actually go.

PREACHER GUY: Repent now!
PRAK: You...you ignorant bigot!
PREACHER GUY: [More preaching.]
PRAK: Hey, everyone! Everyone! Hey, look at me! Look at me winning this debate! Look, everyone! I am a spectacle for your amusement! Look!

Sometime later, on The Gaming Den:

So then I totally pwned this Christian on campus by pointing out his logical fallacies. I'm basically Brian from Family Guy, except I own a katana.

Nah, it's more like I simply state that I already know "the Word" and find it worthless, they continue to proselytize, a debate begins, and a crowd gathers as I ask the guy if I'm understanding what he's saying by restating it in terms that cut through believer bullshit. Some of that crowd are timid christians who wish to help the first, but can't really get heard. A lot are simply content to laugh as I reveal the inadequacies and inability to argue that's already on display, and simply put on a larger stage by their attempt to evangelize to someone who enjoys arguing with them. More like "oh look, people are gathering and garnering as much amusement as I am. That's nice"
Then, "Oh, hey, thread on Pascal's Wager. A campus proselytizer basically used an even more fallacious form of that, might as well mention it." And I never stated I'm basically Brian from Family Guy, my sense of humour merely works primarily in allusion, and what this man was saying made it seem like he had access to rather potent weed that I'm sure my friend would love to try.

[tzor]

Please learn to read. I was specifically responding to agnostics.

Sometimes Kaelik, it is near impossible to determine what you are responding to when you rable on with your straw man attempts and butchering of the English language.

1) Something is either true or false before we have evidence, well then, we should take a position (IE atheism) until evidence is presented. Positing that Black Holes exist before you have evidence of it is not worthwhile unless you actually do find evidence, or you are claiming something is possible, and we should look for evidence. Neither of which agnostics are famous for.

Before we go any further, we need to establish your use of the word evidence. Is it

1. 1. an outward sign
   2. something that furnishes or tends to furnish proof : means of making proof
2. one who bears witness

Something is either true or false. Our knowledge is always incomplete. Therefore we have three states, one leaning towards true, one leaning towards false and one completely in the middle. Ideally this in a range and not a tri state system, but the Chinese notion of TRUE, FALSE, and UNKNOWN can be applied. We can still divide this further; UNKNOWN leaning on TRUE and UNKNOWN leaning on FALSE.

The agnostic is one who chooses that UNKNOWN.

In terms of Pascal's Wager, this is an interesting notion indeed.

2) No evidence ever can be found for God's existence or lack there of is an agnostic position. It's one that I consider to be exceptionally stupid, hence me saying that it is stupid, because it's functionally identical to atheism, and therefore not worth distinguishing.

I'm going to call you on that one. "No evidence has been found for God's existence or lack there of " is the agnostic position. The agnostic is rather agnostic about future evidence that he does not have access to. Only that evidence which he has can he use. To argue without evidence that evidence cannot be found is illlogical.

To even suggest that it is "functionally identical to athieism" is the height of binary logic arrogance.

Now back to the agnostic and Pascal's wager. Basically, Pascal placed the bet as a single wager. But it is really like a roulette table. The agnostic splits his bet in two ways.

[Psychic Robot]

What pisses me off is that this argument applied to anything other than religion is immediately seen as bullshit, but because of the misplaced respect people give religious beliefs it is accepted when it comes to god. Let's look at these phrases:

"I have no evidence for or against the existence of fairies so therefore i refuse to say for sure they don't exist."
"I have no evidence for or against the existence of the Easter bunny, therefore I refuse to say for sure it doesn't exist."
"I have no evidence for or against the existence of the giant flying spaghetti monster therefore I refuse to say for sure it doesn't exist."

Let's get one thing straight. If God was made up by people, which I believe he was, then they wouldn't want something you could point to and say "Well, that proves there's no God, doesn't it?". Therefore of course there is never going to be any evidence for or against his existence, because the people who invented him set it up that way. Lets look at the "facts":

God is everywhere but is undetectable.
God can affect anything in the Universe, however if you ever specifically test for his existence he will provide results as if there was no God. This is ostensibly because he only values faith in himself, and once proof is provided there is no need for faith.
God provides answer to prayers, but only certain prayers, and see the above statement about being tested.

Well, look at that, a perfect set of rules that mean you can never prove or disprove his existence. Almost like somebody made it that way!

So no, agnosticism is not a defensible position. It is a cowards reaction to the mainstream acceptance of religious belief as somehow special and distinct from other beliefs, or to the horror stories the religious use to try to scare people into following their religion. Agnostics try to pass themselves off as more intelligent or open minded, however the only real intelligent response to a claim without any scrap of corroborating evidence is "prove it."

"Assertions made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.” - Christopher Hitchens

Like most militant atheists, you ignore the nature of humanity and try to reduce existence down to a series of ones and zeroes. In fact, since you're undoubtedly a liberal, chances are that you believe in things that have about less evidence as the existence of God (such as the benefits of multiculturalism).

[Cynic]

Look, my attempt isn't to turn my kid into a copy of my. I just want her to have the tools to critically look at herself and try to make a decision about what she wants to be or do.


It isn't just how to think but also how to relate that to other people. For example, I'm an atheist and I doubt that I could talk to my parents about it. I'm already the black sheep of the family for marrying a white girl and knocking her up before we got married. I don't mind telling them but as they help me take care of my kid, it's just best not to rock the boat.

So if my daughter does turn out to be an atheist, agnostic, buddhist, Thor devotee, then fine. But how does she relate this to others? How do you take this information and build relationshiops with family and friends that you love. This is even more complicated when the loved ones are fundies or close minded when it comes to belief. Sure, it's easy to say that you don't give a crap about what they think and just live your life. But that's really hard to do. I've found life is full of wins, loses, and most often compromises. SO interaction with people when your beliefs are at violent odds with each other is insanely difficult.

[name_here]

Someone pointed out that Pascal's wager isn't actually a good bet even assuming God exists, because an honest atheist might get better treatment than if they were pretending to believe just in case.

[tzor]

Lets look at the "facts":

Facts are interesting things. But those aren't facts. They are "assertions" and more importatly they are strawmen.

Now let's look at reality. Many things happen in the world and all of them are vastly complex. Often we live in a world of incomplete knowledge of all the facts of every event, and we often engage in great debate going off with only the bare minimum of facts that support our argument.

You suggest that this problem is different when the subject is not "religion" but I would suggest that the same type of argument does in fact occur in other non religion areas. Take Global Warming (PLEASE) as an example. If you want to see athiests turn into babbling fundamentalists, talk about global warming.

When things do not prove or disprove beyond all reasonable doubt (and even then it often has to hit you on the head a few times to be sure) it is easy to dismiss evidence you don't like. "Oh that short form birth certificate doesn't prove a thing" "Those temperature readings are corruted by meters that have been influenced by urbanization, like the one next to the location where a resturant was built with the stove exhaust fans right next to the detector."

Consider the following ... is it "evidence" or "heresay" or "nonsense" ... the choice is yours to accept or dismiss as you feel appropriate. Let' us consider the recent Japan earthquake. I mean it's not like God telegraphed that event to people long before it happened, or did he?

NIIGATA, Japan (CNA) – The epicenter of the earthquake that caused a deadly March 11 tsunami is located near the site of an apparition in which Mary warned about a worldwide disaster that could afflict humanity….Hundreds of people have already been confirmed dead in the city of Sendai, located less than 90 miles away from the apparition site of Our Lady of Akita in the town of Yuzawa. The city of Akita, which experienced fire damage and flooding along with many parts of northern Japan, is a place of veneration for Catholics.

In 1973, the Virgin Mary was said to have predicted a number of future events – including natural disasters even more serious than Friday’s earthquake and tsunami – during three appearances to a Japanese religious sister, Sr. Agnes Sasagawa. The purported appearances of the Virgin Mary in Japan were reviewed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1988. During his time as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith prior to his election as Pope Benedict XVI, he let stand the local bishop’s judgment that the apparitions and the messages were acceptable for the faithful. The messages warned of chaos within the Church, and disasters which could afflict the world.

Note the following: "Reports from Akita following Friday's earthquake indicate that the city received significantly less damage than other parts of northern Japan, despite its proximity to the epicenter. However, residents did report power outages, burst pipes, and fires."

The point is that it is easy to claim there is no evidence when you dismiss all claims of evidence. Opponents to global warming do that all the time. Ovbiously, they must be doing something right, because it's perfectly right when you do it against religious faith.

[sabs]

For every 'evidence' there is the counter evidence of some horrible thing happening to someone who clearly didn't deserve it.

God's Plan feels like an insult when confronted with a 5 year old with terminal cancer.

Faith is faith, either you have it, or you don't. I don't, I respect other people who do, as long as they don't try to run my life by their faith.

You don't need a religion or faith to know:
1) Murder is bad, don't do it.. mmmkay
2) Stealing is also bad.
3) Assaulting children is bad.
4) Rape is bad.

Pretty much everyone who isn't a sociopath can agree on these things.
Some people need faith to understand the bad things in their lives, others don't. Atheists running around pointing at Faithful people and laughing is no better than Religious people pointing and saying you're going to hell. Faith should be personal, and private, and should stay out of public policy.

If you believe that the Government isn't smart enough to do Environment Protection, and we should let the "private sector' handle itself. Then don't turn around and try to impose prayer in school, or a ban on abortions, or what other stupid religious crap you want. If the Government isn't smart enough for public safety issues, its' sure as fuck not smart enough for social issues.

There is no evidence of god, that cannot be alternatively used as evidence of random luck. You can make the pronoucements of Nostradamus fit too, if you pick and choose your events very carefully with hindsight.

[Maj]

Look, my attempt isn't to turn my kid into a copy of my. I just want her to have the tools to critically look at herself and try to make a decision about what she wants to be or do.

It isn't just how to think but also how to relate that to other people. For example, I'm an atheist and I doubt that I could talk to my parents about it. I'm already the black sheep of the family for marrying a white girl and knocking her up before we got married. I don't mind telling them but as they help me take care of my kid, it's just best not to rock the boat.

So if my daughter does turn out to be an atheist, agnostic, buddhist, Thor devotee, then fine. But how does she relate this to others? How do you take this information and build relationshiops with family and friends that you love. This is even more complicated when the loved ones are fundies or close minded when it comes to belief. Sure, it's easy to say that you don't give a crap about what they think and just live your life. But that's really hard to do. I've found life is full of wins, loses, and most often compromises. SO interaction with people when your beliefs are at violent odds with each other is insanely difficult.

Yes, it's difficult to deal with people who have fundamentalist beliefs. But you exist in precisely the perfect situation to point out a variety of different (three!) belief systems and explain to your child that no matter what she might choose to believe, the important thing is that she's your daughter. You can compare two major religions and the accompanying customs side by side. You can show her how you've kept some, but not others, and explain why. She can choose her holidays. In my life, when I had problems with one side of the family versus the other, my answer was simply to say, "But I love <person X>, too," and while that didn't stop the family members from bickering, it stopped them from involving me.

I would argue - based on nothing more than personal experience, mind you - that most children who have conflicts with their parents/families over belief systems aren't actually struggling with what the details of those beliefs are at all. They are struggling with the the fact that one side values their beliefs more than they value the other person/people. On an individual level, coming in second to personal philosophy/religion, addiction, job, etc feels like shit.

If either set of her grandparents chooses to stop loving your daughter because of what they believe, it's on them - distasteful as that may be. And at that point, the important part is making sure she knows it's not her fault.

[DSMatticus]

Well, this has been an interesting thread covering many topics. I have to chip in on a few.

Pascal's wager is shit.
1) Believing in X causes good things if right, and nothing bad if wrong.
2) Not believing in X causes bad things if wrong, and nothing bad if right.
3) X must be entirely without evidence or any manner of being reasonably probabilistically determined.

Pascal's wager replaces X with Christianity, but X really is genuinely completely arbitrary. People have touched on this already (multiple conflicting religions, I believe someone mentioned infinite religions). But X can be anything about which there is no evidence and there is no determinable probability. This means there are an infinite number of things that are not Christianity which result in the exact same decision matrix.

Pascal's wager does not lead to a decision, it leads to an infinite number of decisions which are all bad (or at best, tied) on infinity minus one other decision matrices. And yes, some of those infinite decisions are even variations of "gods who are testing your ability to not have blind faith, and have therefore created a scientifically rational universe and will grant you eternal rewards for not having unfounded religious beliefs," so being atheist 'wins' some of those decision matrices. Pascal's wager literally asserts that you must be both Christian and Atheist. That is the very definition of a logical contradiction, and completely invalidates the whole scheme of Pascal's wager.

Pascal's wager is shit. Frank's interpretation is much more amusing and has more weight than the theistic take on it ever has.

Unicorns and God, and have you seen my teapot? I think I left it in orbit around Mars.
This argument isn't as valid as you think it is. The idea is as such...
1) There is no evidence of the existence of unicorns.
2) Believing in unicorns is ridiculous.
3) There is no evidence of the existence of god.
4) Believing in god must also be ridiculous.

This isn't quite right - it implies a link between 1 and 2 that appears to be true, but may not be. Instead, it may be ridiculous because there is actual, strong evidence that unicorns do NOT exist, so believing in unicorns requires ignoring that evidence. The solution to this problem? Add qualifiers - invisible, intangible, doesn't eat, doesn't shit, didn't evolve naturally but was instead spontaneously generated by magic. But each and every single one of those assertions ALSO contradicts our observations about the known universe. Believing in unicorns, of any variety, requires that it be done in spite of facts, not merely their absence.

Is the same true of God? Yes, some theistic interpretations require ignoring facts, and believing them is ridiculous. I hate to take a potshot here, but if you follow a version of Christianity based on the literal text of the bible, your beliefs contradict direct observations about the world we live in, and they are just as ridiculous as believing in unicorns. You have to put fingers in your ears and go 'lalala' to do it.

This isn't to say ALL Christianity is like that - there are interpretations of Christianity that are completely valid. But they all require you to disavow parts of the bible, or paint them as metaphors. (That slavery bit, you pretty much just have to say, "some jackass put that in when god wasn't looking.") There are defensible versions of Christianity - but you and I know bible literalism isn't one of them, so let's not pretend it is and let's not pretend I burst anyone's bubble by pointing this out. There are parts of the bible you will NEVER hear your preacher give sermons on. Those parts have been disavowed.

That said, there are theistic interpretations that are 100% unassailable. E.G.: "The spark." A divine entity set the big bang in motion (if we figure out what caused the big bang, move this entity a step back to that instead - repeat as necessary). He then went off and twiddled his thumbs for a very long time. He may or may not be watching. He may or may not care. There are no facts that can disprove this god's existence, nor will there ever be - so it isn't completely ridiculous to believe this. It doesn't require you to ignore existing facts. Believing in unicorns does. These are two different circumstances, and you can't easily equate them. Even though both "sound ridiculous," sounding ridiculous means exactly nothing. "Appeal to ridiculousness" is a logical fallacy. It probably has a fancier name, but it's a logical fallacy nonetheless.

Personal Note
I'm a functional atheist but not a 'strong' atheist. There is no point in believing in a religion without evidence. Afterall, there are infinitely many equally valid choices, so how do you rationally choose between infinite options with equal weight? But at the same time, making the assertion "god does not exist" is stupid, because that's an assertion that is equally without proof. Just because it "sounds like" a more rational choice than "bearded man in the sky" does not make it so.

You could call me agnostic, but everytime I try to do that it starts a pissy fit about the definition of agnostic, so I'll settle for functional atheist if it avoids a semantical debate.

[Username17]

That said, there are theistic interpretations that are 100% unassailable. E.G.: "The spark." A divine entity set the big bang in motion (if we figure out what caused the big bang, move this entity a step back to that instead - repeat as necessary).

This is nothing like unassailable. The processes that made the Big Bang happen are still happening. Get a voidy enough void ad matter forms inside it by simple entropy.

Any argument that there was a creator at any point is ridiculous, because it posits a universe whee things could not arise by natural processes and simply raises the question of who created the previously invoked creator. Natural processes are perfectly capable of building up from base particles and amorphous energy into complex physical things. The moment you posit that the universe was built down from something more complicated and powerful to base units you have to explain where the fuck that bigger thing came from. And then you're stuck defending an ever growing chain of more and more powerful architects out to infinity.

Physics works just fine if you assume a starting ground state of a universe with literally nothing in it. Deism does not. It still needs to explain where the fucking god came from. And the line of reasoning can't produce a better answer for the source of Zeus than Chronos.

-Username17

[Prak]

Welp, PR has managed to convince me of one thing, shockingly enough... that he has nothing to say worth reading.

Frank, could you go into a bit more depth on the "voidy enough void has matter arise through entropy"? I'm not studied in physics, or quantum mech. or anything like that, so when I use what little I do know in a debate, like, the law of conservation, I have nothing to back it up with, and basically say "Probably some critical mass of energy was reached and matter began to form. No I don't know how that works, the physics department is that way."

[Kaelik]

Sometimes Kaelik, it is near impossible to determine what you are responding to when you rable on with your straw man attempts and butchering of the English language.

When it is proved that I was not strawmanning, that would be the time for you to backpedal from your stupid whining, not redouble it.

Something is either true or false. Our knowledge is always incomplete. Therefore we have three states, one leaning towards true, one leaning towards false and one completely in the middle. Ideally this in a range and not a tri state system, but the Chinese notion of TRUE, FALSE, and UNKNOWN can be applied. We can still divide this further; UNKNOWN leaning on TRUE and UNKNOWN leaning on FALSE.

The agnostic is one who chooses that UNKNOWN.

There are four types of things we can say:

1) Something is true.
2) Something is false.
3) Something is unknown, and we should attempt to learn if it is 1) 2) or 4)
4) Something is meaningless.

Agnostics do not generally content that we should determine if something is 1) 2) or 4). Or if they do, they don't stay agnostic for long.

On the other hand, saying that God's existence if 4), is, as Frank said, atheism + fappery.

So if an agnostic wants to say anything other than "So we should try to find out" then they are wasting everyone's time.

I'm going to call you on that one. "No evidence has been found for God's existence or lack there of " is the agnostic position. The agnostic is rather agnostic about future evidence that he does not have access to. Only that evidence which he has can he use. To argue without evidence that evidence cannot be found is illlogical.

To even suggest that it is "functionally identical to athieism" is the height of binary logic arrogance.

Tzor, you have successfully continued to demonstrate that you are incapable of reading something not responding to you as being to someone besides you, and you are personally incapable of reading, and so instead choose to call actual men made of actual flesh and blood strawmen.

Now, watch closely as I directly quote the person I was replying to in my initial unicorn related post, with the post that directly preceded my post to him:

I don't think this is necessarily true. While it might be for some agnostics, there are others who assert that theistic knowledge is inherently unknowable, and that assertion of either existence or nonexistence is intrinsically misguided.

Now, are you going to apologize for repeatedly accusing me of strawmanning over and over when I was directly addressing the person at hand?

Or are you going to whine some more, and/or, retreat to the shadows, and attempt to escape from the shame of actually being completely fucking wrong 100% of the time in your responses to me, and wasting my time with your completely idiotic accusations that turned out to be really obviously false?

[DSMatticus]

@Frank, That's not what I meant to imply at all - I'm well aware that you don't HAVE to invoke god to lead to the creation of the universe. It makes perfect sense if you don't (well, not quite yet, the details have yet to be ironed out, but we're getting there, which is awesome). But there are interpretations of god which are completely coherent along with natural law. You can even come up with a theistic model where god is nothing more than the entity which defines natural law (approaching deism, if not already there, but that's not a hair that's meaningful to split). The universe doesn't need god, but it doesn't have to exlude him, either.

As for "where did God come from?" Well, physics already has processes that generate something from nothing. That idea that every X has a predecessing cause Y really is just a faulty human construct. It's a heuristic, based on our observations of a macroscopic universe that is only "usually true" in the real world of physics. By your own acknowledgement, this is essentially the beginning of the big bang - energy and matter appear spontaneously in voids, and occasionally they explode. Expand, really, but it's more fun to say explode. So we have at least one case and point where X has no predecessor, and there's no reason there can't be two. But this is a lame, boring argument.

The more relevant argument is as follows (I hate this argument, and I hate playing devil's advocate, which is a slightly ironic turn of phrase to use at the moment):
The physical world has clearly defined rules and expectations that we understand. Attempts to apply these rules and expectations to something that is by definition outside the physical world is not something that we can establish is valid. Why do gods have beginnings? Because entities in the world of physics have beginnings? God isn't a part of that world.

Either way, there are defenses against 'cause and effect.' I don't like either of them, but they're there. I certainly don't want to get caught defending them, so don't put me on the spot.

So let me make the more compelling case. No matter how great our understanding of physics gets, there's always going to be at least one question - "why the fuck does it work this way? Shouldn't there just be a ruleless nothing? Rather, a nothing so complete that the concept of nothing is itself meaningless because there is nothing by which to even define nothing as the absence of?" Certainly, physics is 100% internally consistent. But that doesn't explain why it works the way it does. Depressingly, just asking "and where did that come from?' over and over again works on both sides. On the side of science, you ask where those laws of physics come from. On the side of religion, you ask where god came from.

And we really can play that game if you want - you can rattle off high-level physics concepts, and I can ask, "why does it work that way?" until you get to the very principle axioms of physics, and then you just have to throw up your hands and say, 'it does.' And if that's what you have to invoke, there's no reason religion can't do that either to explain god.

The very idea that anything exists (or that the concept of existence even has meaning) is mind-boggling. Where did the rules by which the universe even functions come from? Sometimes, the fact that I exist pisses me off in that it makes no sense, whether you turn to science or religion. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful, but it's sort of annoying.

P.S., again, I am not a proponent of theistic viewpoints. This has been me playing devil's advocate, doing my best to represent viewpoints I don't actually hold. Except for the bit about existing making me angry. That bit's all me. But I still think it's more science than god's hand.

@Prak, now that's actually awesomely interesting. Matter is just energy in a particular form (e=mc^2 and all that). I'm not up-to-date on Hawking's latest book, where he claims to have explained more of the big bang's origins than ever before, buuut...

Assuming you have a universe with an incredibly high energy density and no matter, it's basically a bomb waiting to go off - and that bomb will create matter (first by creating particles and their anti-equivalents, which will collide and explode, and help make more matter, and etc, etc). We are that explosion. It's also not actually an explosion, just a really rapid expansion and outward propulsion.

I don't really understand where the energy comes from, though, but I know conservation of energy and quantum mechanics can get weird. I'm pretty sure it holds, but it doesn't hold in the way you expect it to, and you can (temporarily) get more energy out of nowhere, or lose it? Don't quote me on that. I'm probably wrong, and would love to be corrected if anyone knows more than I do.