Risk Analysis

When one does the "risk analysis" one must take into account the old adage sometimes refered to as Pascals Wager. While athiests discredit ro ignore it completely the fact is that God not only recognizes it but uses it to help many begin their journey.

The old adage is this.
If I believe in God and am wrong - then I have lost nothing
If I don't believe in God and am wrong - I lose much.
To the above I would add this.
If I believe in God, but in the "wrong way", - then, if he exists, I will likely be judged on my sincerity in seeking His Truth.

Athiests will say that believing, or practiceing, out of fear is not belief but hypocracy. Which to an extent I agree with.
However, look at what the Bible says about it, "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom". (Ps 111:10)
So if one begins his belief and his journey out of "self serving" fear, it is none the less a start. Then as one coninues the journey and grows in wisdom, fear is replaced by Love until fear vanishes altogether.
This then is the goal as set forth by Christ in the Gospels. The Goal of being eprfect in Love.

Athiests can call into doubt many "historical facts" in the Bible. They can point to inconsistancies in christian faiths. But they cannot deny the root core of Christ' teaching which is Love.
i am trying to use this as my goal and guide and ANY of the bible canons will be sufficient.
Of course we must not forget or deny the necessity of the Love and discipline offered to us By Christ through the magisterium of His Church.

 

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Argument from inconsistent revelations.

Since this has been posted in the comparative religion forum, I can only assume that you are willing to accept the teachings of other religions as being relevant to the discussion, in which case the above link becomes highly relevant.

We can ignore the part about the unlikeliness of God's existence and just concentrate on the part about mutually exclusive revelations so far as it relates to the usefulness of pascals wager as an argument to accept religion.

EDIT: By the way, I was watching some Heaven's Gate videos on youtube a couple of weeks ago (initiation tapes, exit statements etc) and one thing that struck me was the testimony about how many members had left the group but had later returned to it after realizing that life just wasn't fulfilling on the outside. As strange as some of the members were, they clearly felt a sense of divine purpose and belonging. What we can learn from this is that some people will even see divine revelation in the idea that the earth is about to be "recycled" and that we must all escape onto a spaceship trailing behind a comet by committing suicide. Since many of these people did in fact follow through with said course of action (and it was within a "cult" that didn't try to stop you from leaving if you wanted to) one can only conclude that a significant amount of faith was in play.

 

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What is the topic of this thread?
What is the question?

 

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Here is how I see it. Get a red letter version of the bible. A red letter version of the bible will have just the teachings of Jesus, in red letters, to help separare his teachings from the other teachings in the bible. This limited set of primary Christian teachings does not suggest any of the atrocities you mention.

When Christianity merged with Rome, Roman ways were added to Christianity, which went beyond the scope of the red letter teachings. These were beneficial to the needs of Rome. For example, the red letter version says, Blessed are the poor. Rome was not about being poor, but was much more about opulence; they gots its. Blessed are the meek. Rome was not about being warm and fuzzy, but more about the power of cold steel, etc.

If you look at Rome, compared to the red letter version, it was also about art, sculplture, philosophy, science, law, social classes, paganism, atheism, with these influences all impacting the red letter version. The atheist-christians played their own role in the atrocities being part of the group but not under the red letter teachings since god is dead, but the needs of day to day is right in front of us.

Although history has Rome disappearing in the dark ages, it never really ended, but merged into the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church. That was what was suppose to happen after the transgression.

The outward weakness of the red letter Christians, needed the strengthes of Rome to survive, less other violent religions do them in. These same religions won't bully Rome the same way, who will protect their own, until it was time. The atheists and Christians of today, were once on the same team as the holy roman empire. The atheists had more options for atrocity. Who presecutes who nowadays? The atheists are on the offensive and the red letter are on the defensive. Atrocity is offensive not defensive.

 

Pascal's "wager" depends upon the almost perfectly circular insistence that belief in Christianity is the only way to avoid a grave threat that's only visible to those who believe in Christianity.

If we don't already believe in Christianity, then we aren't likely to have any concern about the damnation that we supposedly face for not believing in Christianity.

Historically, I don't think that Pascal really intended his "wager" to be an argument that would convince atheists and non-Christians.

He was a mid-1600's French mathematician, physicist and intellectual who suffered some kind of psychological crisis in midlife that rendered him devoutly Christian in his last few years. (He died relatively young.)

The problem that faced him at that point was justifying his newly hightened religiosity to himself.

He agreed with the rather skeptical Paris deist circles that he socialized with that there wasn't really any convincing evidence for special religious revelation. Nevertheless, he still found himself attracted to a rather Protestant-style Catholic Jansenism for psychological reasons that had very little to do with evidence.

He'd been thinking about probabilities and the rationality of gambling strategies around that time, so he created what seemed to be a novel game-theoretical argument for why it was rational for him to believe in Christianity even without any credible evidenciary justification for that belief.

He convinced himself (or at least tried to) that if Christianity was true, then believing in it had an infinite pay-off while disbelief had an infinite cost. But if Christianity wasn't true, he figured that it didn't matter what he believed and that there would be no cost to believing.

This line of reasoning simply assumes that Christianity is the one and only religious option. The fact that the world offers lots of religious choices wasn't universally recognized in Europe in the 1650s, despite that date already being 150 years after the voyages of discovery.

But what if Christianity is false while another religion, Indian Saivism say, is actually the one true road to salvation? Would a shot-in-the-dark belief in Christianity result in Pascal receiving no payoff from the Christian illusion while his false belief prevents him from winning whatever payoff Saivism offers?

And there's another and perhaps more fundamental objection as well--

Intellectual integrity demands that we affirm truths because we honestly believe that they are true.

It's intellectual dishonesty to affirm that something is true with no other justification for the assertion than our calculation that making it is in our personal interest.

That's not very remote from lying.

 

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M*W: Thank you for saying that. It seems that everywhere I go, be it Sciforums, talking with family members, friends, and even strangers, I get lambasted for my personal opinions. I never bring it up to anyone first, but when I'm constantly confronted by christians who want to bless me, pray for me, lay hands on me or save my soul, I feel the need to profess my own non-belief to shut them up. Most of the time they are stunned and speechless. Sometimes they run from me like I'm carrying the plague. Other times they get belligerent and argumentative. I feel that it is necessary to continue expressing my opinions of non-belief when the opportunity arises. Otherwise, who else is going to do it? Maybe if these people heard it a few times, they might check into the rationality of it all. The worst case scenario is that if they study their religion more, they might begin to see the lies come through. The more polite ones will ask, "can I pray for you?" I simply say, "no thank you, I'm an atheist."

 

I posted this on another thread. It took a couple of complimentary paths. One relating to the Bible, another relating to the validity of the Church’s authority and finally a look at the fruits of each Church system.

First we must start with the acceptance of Christ, His life, death and resurrection.
So. If we accept Christ we need to ask some questions to arrive at a decision as to which church is correct.

First let’s deal with the Bible since that is a crux of teaching and the center of what we as Christians know of Jesus.
1) Do all Christians accept the Bible as the Word of God? - Yes
2) Do all Christian bibles have the same books in them? (the same canon) - No
3) Does it make sense that the “Holy Word of God “, used by Christians should have differing canons? - No
4) Then why the difference and which canon is correct? - This led me to an investigation of how the Bible as we use it today came about. The result was that the universally accepted Bible in the Catholic Church from around 400 AD to 1500 AD, 1100 years had 73 books in it. It was at the time of the Protestant Reformation that the reformers removed the seven OT books AND, it should be noted, Martin Luther wanted to toss several NT books as well.
Upshot? The Catholic Church compiled the Bible as we use it today. We accept these books as The Word of God because of the Authority of the Catholic Church. The Protestant denominations, who place such high regard on The Bible” and declare, as it says in revelation, that not one word is to be changed, started out by changing The Bible.

Now – How to deal with the issue of who is right among the Churches.
1) Can the Holy Spirit inspire or teach conflicting doctrine? - No
2) Did Christ establish a community/Church? - Yes
3) Did Christ establish multiple independent Churches? - No (Christ says “Church”)
4) Did Christ give this Church Authority? - Yes (Mt 16:18-19 and Mt 18:15-19) [indents] Note that these are the only 2 places in the Gospels where the term Church is used. [/indent]5) Did Christ Promise to be with His Church, to not leave us orphans and to Send the Paraclete? - Yes
6) Did Christ leave us a Church to guide us, or did He leave us a book? - A Church

So – Based on the above, we can see that, Christ established a Single, Authoritative Church, that hell will not overcome, and has the authority to Bind and Loose. Since Christ cannot lie, it follows that His Church will be in continuous and visible existence and not fall into apostasy as some claim, but will persevere. (Which is not to say individuals, even high ranking ones, will not fall into apostasy.) She will also act authoritatively in matters of faith and morals. The only church that fits that description is the Catholic Church. That same Church acted authoritatively in selecting the Books to be included in the canon of the Bible.
Therefore the correct church, for correct teachings on faith and morals must be the Catholic Church.

Now let’s look at the “Fruits” of “Catholicism” and “Protestantism”.
CatholicismCatholicism is built upon the Three legged stool of Scripture, Tradition (Oral teachings), and Magisterium. Each is critical to the Fullness of Truth and unity. We can also add Apostolic Succession – That is we have teachings not only from the Apostles but from those who were taught by the apostles and so on.
Catholicism has been messy from the beginning having to work constantly to define doctrine, answer questions and fight those who would teach a different Gospel. However the Church places a huge emphasis on Unity. Christ has One Mind. There is One Truth. There has been and will continue to be discussion, argument and within the Church. However, such problems are dealt with within the structure of the Church and decisions reached prayerfully in unity and always with reference to the Holy Bible as well as the many great writings of the Church fathers and Doctors. Once a decision is reached by the Church (always after much prayer, discussion and consultation) the faithful who might still disagree submit their will to the Will of Christ in The Church thus maintaining unity and fulfilling Christ’s command to “Tell it to The Church”, and reinforcing Paul’s teaching that it is The Church that is the “Pillar and Foundation of Truth”.

ProtestantismProtestantism in it’s most basic, submits that it is The Bible Alone, interpreted by the “Spirit Led individual”. That will lead one to Christ. However it became quickly evident that there were different “spirit led” interpretations flying around. Even the Reformers themselves could not come to agreement and since none was willing to submit their own “Spirit Led” wills to the others in for the sake of Truth and Unity, they each went their own way.
The result of this is many – many different and conflicting “Bible Based, and Spirit Led” beliefs among protestants and no way to distill them into one unified whole. Even the Old and established Protestant Churches are finding themselves splitting apart because they have no authority to tell the schismatic that they are wrong.

So – The fruits of Catholicism is Doctrinal Unity built upon Scripture, Tradition, and Teaching Authority. The Fruits of Protestantism is doctrinal chaos built upon the individual right of self interpretation.

You shall know them by their Fruits.

 

Hence, it then does not prove that there is "one" right. So if the evidence is weak, why reject it instead of examining its context?

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Rav,

I think Pascals Wager is not a proof of God per se. To me, it is more of an appeal. It tries to appeal to someone's sensibility by saying "what do you have to lose?"

A man by the name of Glenn Miller has a somewhat detailed method of discerning between different revelations which is probably much more than I could give here, so here it is http://christianthinktank.com/process1.html

 

It's not clear how Pascal's Wager makes any sense if divorced from the idea that only one religion (as in "religious tradition", such as either Roman Catholicism, Calvinism, Saivism, etc.) is the right one.

 

Quite right. Pascal's argument is aimed at atheists because he knows they do not want to find the idea of God reasonable. What he is therefore doing is to appeal to their sense of self interest. What if the atheist is wrong (that is, if you can find an atheist who is humble enough to admit he might be wrong)?

Before we continue this charade... do you believe in God so that you will get into heaven? Seriously, is that why you believe in God?

If the answer is no, then why do you think I would believe in God to get into heaven?

God plants in us the desire to be with him through all eternity. So yes, I believe because I want to be in heaven. I think you should believe in God for the same reason. If you are fighting God's will, it is up to you, not me, to figure out why.

 

Um, no. It doesn't work with atheists. And you're wrong on the emboldened part. It's not a question of "not wanting" to find the idea reasonable, it just that the idea isn't.

That's self-evidently incorrect.

 

"Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known." Blaise Pascal

 

Yeah blah blah blah.
Which isn't a reply to anything I wrote.

 

What do I have to lose by trying to force myself to believe (and adhere to the teachings of) some random religion knowing full well that even if I picked correctly, it's unlikely that I will reap any of the rewards that are offered anyway because my faith wasn't genuine? Seriously?

Contrary to popular opinion among theists, it takes a lot more than open-minded investigation of religious claims to become religious. It takes someone who is also willing to put more emphasis on the usefulness of emotion than rational thought when it comes to determining the truth. Religion is ultimately about what "feels" right. Committing suicide to escape the recycling of the earth "felt" right to members of the Heaven's Gate cult.

 

Let's see if I was wrong. One question. If God stood in front of you today would you kneel down and worship Him?

 

Three questions:
how would I know he was god?
why should I "worship" him? (I doubt I would).

And how does your question relate at all to my comment?

 

Fair enough - What would be the appropriate response?

WASSUP?

re-read my posts.

 

Or its English equivalent.

I did. Hence my question.