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Goodbye Jesus

My Christian Friend


Guest thenotchosenone

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Guest thenotchosenone

A friend of mine who is a Christian and debates god's existence with me from time to time finally let loose with pascals wager. The only thing i could counter with is, Okay even if God is real like in the bible he is a fucking asshole and i wouldn't worship him anyways, especially with most of my family and friends burning in hell. He couldn't think of anything to say. He even said you've got a point. But he retains his faith in God still. Why can't people let go i don't understand. He always says i dont have all the answers, you should talk with my pastor(which i would love to do by the way, just need some time off lol). Anyways fuck it im just annoyed

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You did get him to confess you had a point. That has to be worth something. Deconversion does not happen in an eye-blink. At least, it didn't for me. Some people don't want to deconvert. But I think the Pascal's wager is about the most insane for remaining Christian. If God has normal human qualities (which according to xians is rather doubtful) then he will be offended by people whose only motive to believe is to escape hell. However, if this god is the raving tyrant xians make him out to be, then he might well be motivated by such debased allegiance.

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One of the big problems I've noticed with arguments between theists and atheists is that each side holds to a different standard of proof, yet assumes that the other side is arguing to the same standard they hold themselves. Your friend may think that Pascal's wager is a good argument for believing in god, but it actually fails in multiple ways.

 

First off, to which deity does Pascal's wager apply? What if it applies to Allah, and upon his death your friend finds himself roasting in Islamic hell for all eternity for choosing the wrong god to believe in? What if it applies to Zeus, and he spends life in some dreary region of Hades?

 

On another tack, Pascal's wager is a fear-based argument. It's a bit like buying an insurance policy against hell: you might as well believe in god, because you might end up in hell if you don't! In my book, fear is not a good enough reason to believe in something. It might be a compelling reason, but it's not a good one - a good reason to believe in something is because it's true (real, genuine, what have you). Maybe your friend doesn't let his faith go because he's afraid of what might happen if he did.

 

Besides, what deity is worth following, if a primary motivation to following them is fear? I sure wouldn't want to follow a deity like that. (If I were a deity myself, I sure wouldn't want to *be* a deity like that.) Your answer about Biblegod being a tyrannical douchebag is one I'd probably offer myself too, after the others.

 

On a semi-related note, I don't think there's anything wrong with faith in something, if that faith is justified. Faith in things like the natural world, or your friends, or other things which provide evidence of their trustworthiness or factuality are justified. Faith in an invisible, unseen, unknown, unknowable deity that does not interact with humanity in any self-evident or obvious way is not.

 

Just some thoughts. Keep us posted about your friend; I'm always interested in exchanges between theists and atheists. (Have one starting up myself, with an online theist friend...)

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One of the philosophical tools you can throw back at him with Pascal's is ask him if you did take the bet, how would you know which god to choose? They all have equally horrifying afterlives for not choosing them. Also, you could ask how he is sure that a life lived for god (if god doesn't exist) outweighs giving up your freedom, etc.... assuming god doesn't the exist. Just turn the bet around on him.

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One of the philosophical tools you can throw back at him with Pascal's is ask him if you did take the bet, how would you know which god to choose? They all have equally horrifying afterlives for not choosing them. Also, you could ask how he is sure that a life lived for god (if god doesn't exist) outweighs giving up your freedom, etc.... assuming god doesn't the exist. Just turn the bet around on him.

 

Naaa, the Hindu gods are pretty amiable... they'll take anyone who did their best... :)

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Pascal's wager doesn't work. Any God who is prepared to curse you for non-belief is also prepared to lie to you. If he is ready to lie to you, then why believe the things he tells you are important to believe to avoid being cursed? If God is outside of normal ethics (which Pascal's wager assumes), then he should not be trusted to tell the truth about anything. C.S. Lewis (who was at heart a non-Christian Platonist) put it this way. "If it is right for God to do something that would be wrong for a human to do:

 

"This, for all practical (and speculative) purposes sponges God off the slate. The word good, as applied to him, becomes meaningless: like abracadabra. We have no motive for obeying Him. Not even fear. It is true that we have His threats and promises. But why should we believe them? If cruelty is from His point of view "good," telling lies may be "good" too. Even if they are true, what then? If His ideas of good are so very different from ours, what He calls "Heaven" might well be what we should call Hell, and vice versa. Finally, if reality at its very root is so meaningless to us—or, putting it the other way round, if we are such total imbeciles—what is the point of trying to think either about God or about anything else? The knot comes undone when you try to pull it tight."

 

-- C.S. Lewis

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A friend of mine who is a Christian and debates god's existence with me from time to time finally let loose with pascals wager. The only thing i could counter with is, Okay even if God is real like in the bible he is a fucking asshole and i wouldn't worship him anyways, especially with most of my family and friends burning in hell. He couldn't think of anything to say. He even said you've got a point. But he retains his faith in God still. Why can't people let go i don't understand. He always says i dont have all the answers, you should talk with my pastor(which i would love to do by the way, just need some time off lol). Anyways fuck it im just annoyed

 

I've yet to meet a Pastor who knows squat about squat... They're usually of the class of con men and used car salesmen (just with the conscience and morality removed)...

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But he retains his faith in God still. Why can't people let go i don't understand.

IMO, Pascal's wager is no different than a lottery ticket.

 

The facts are that when it comes to winning a lottery jackpot, on any given week 99.999% of the people who buy a ticket will be losers. Yet despite these facts, look at the millions of idiots who continue to buy lottery tickets, week after week after week. Even worse, the bigger the jackpot gets, the more idiots who play and the more tickets they buy! So why is this? Why do people continue to throw out their money knowing these odds? It's simple, the lottery has a very unique way of appealing to our emotions, just like religion does: in both cases the costs appear small, but the payoff appears huge. That's why when it comes to religion, even given the facts and evidence, people still "believe" because it's "free" (well not really, but that's a different story) and it's got a huge jackpot (heaven). And religion has an additional "incentive" that the lottery doesn't have.... in addition to the huge jackpot for winners, everyone is encouraged to play by penalizing them with an eternity of being brutally and sadistically tortured for staying out of the game. It's the perfect scam!

 

So when you ask "why can't people let go i don't understand" about religion, I ask that same question about why people play the lottery. The only good thing I can say about the lottery vs religion is at least we have evidence that the lottery is real and exists, and there actually is a jackpot! :HaHa:

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I've yet to meet a Pastor who knows squat about squat... They're usually of the class of con men and used car salesmen (just with the conscience and morality removed)...

:lmao::lmao:

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Well, you can't just turn a belief on and off. You can't choose to believe something either. You either believe it or you don't. Maybe over time he'll eventually not believe, but he's still believing because it's what he believes. That's all there is to it.

 

My personal take on things that if we're talking about the Christian god, He doesn't seem radically impressed with His creations attempts at worship anyway. There's no differences really in the lives between Theists and Atheists as far as external rounds of fortune or misfortune go. Then there is the 34,000 denominations of Christianity, all of which claim THEY have the true insight to God's mindset and the real "Way" to a good life and heaven.

 

As far as Pascal's Wager is concerned, I have an extremely slim chance of being "right" about this, even if I was a Christian. According to some denoms, because I accepted Jesus once as my Saviour, what I do or believe now is inconsequential. I'm getting into heaven anyway. Many others believe I'm Hellbound no matter what. God so far has not seen fit to clarify to His believers exactly how any of this works.

 

So either God doesn't care a whit, or He's just laughing at us all and our little worship attempts. So I'm not going to worry about it.

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Why can't people let go i don't understand. He always says i dont have all the answers, you should talk with my pastor(which i would love to do by the way, just need some time off lol). Anyways fuck it im just annoyed

 

I don't understand either, I can only guess that it simply comforts a lot of people, even people who know better.

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