The atheist thread

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris


You'd be surprised how many filosofizy professors believe in God. And whatever is your opinion of the discipline, many are actually brilliant.

Ah, the 'he thinks it's right and he's clever so it must be right'. Whatever happened to critical thinking amongst you philosophy types?

[Elok]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
Ah, the 'he thinks it's right and he's clever so it must be right'. Whatever happened to critical thinking amongst you philosophy types?

Ah, the 'annoy him with a strawman' tactic. I wouldn't advise it. OB is likely to reply with a barrage of terms like "ontological" and "poststructural" and such. And OB, I wasn't objecting to philosophers, they're relatively open-minded in my experience. With the exception of Bertrand Russell, et cetera...

[Cort Haus]

Go easy, please, PH. It's strident atheists like yourself that leaves those of us unbelievers in the moderate majority open to attack.

Elok - yes, I especially dread having to ignore posts full of verbal constipation such as "ontological" and "poststructural".

[ZEE]

haus what got you all in a twitch tonight?

[Sandman]

And OB, I wasn't objecting to philosophers, they're relatively open-minded in my experience. With the exception of Bertrand Russell, et cetera...

How is Bertand Russell close-minded? But don't reply if you're just going to hurl insults.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
The real question here is whether or not a logical tautology is significant. In the hands of accomplished philosophers, it probably is. After all, isn't math basically a huge tautology that gets its worth through practical use ?

Math is tautology that's useful because we've empirically determined that the real world obeys its rules.

[Kuciwalker]

More specifically, we've empirically determined that math is an extremely useful tool for calculating the predictions of the physical laws we've discovered. e.g. algebra and calculus are useful because they let us apply F = ma.

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris


IIRC correctly, Pascal defines God as a perfect being, so he can't really be an hypocrite.

Could be. In a sense it doesn't actually matter how Pascal defines God.

The main point of "Pascal's wager" was that the rewards for believing are infinite and so even if the probability is very low, the expectation (he was a mathematician after all) is infinite therefore you should believe.

My main complaint about that argument is that it only works if you only consider the "Christian God". If you now consider a Muslim God, who would punish you for believing in the Christian God, then applying the SAME reasoning leads you to NOT believe in the Christian God.

Basically, if you actually follow through with the logic of Pascal's wager you get stuck.


There are also problem with the math itself (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager#Measure_theory, for example) but that's besides the point.

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris


The real question here is whether or not a logical tautology is significant. In the hands of accomplished philosophers, it probably is.

I'm not sure what you're referring to.
Are you saying that Pascal's wager is a tautology?
Personally I think the reasoning is not sound and it's not a tautology.

After all, isn't math basically a huge tautology that gets its worth through practical use ?

Someone COULD make that argument but what's this got to do with that?

[Kuciwalker]

Pascal's wager is silly. The first time I came across it (though I don't think it was attributed to Pascal) I thought it was absurd.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
More specifically, we've empirically determined that math is an extremely useful tool for calculating the predictions of the physical laws we've discovered. e.g. algebra and calculus are useful because they let us apply F = ma.

Maybe, but it's not like there's reality, and then there are the ideal laws. You obviously can't have the one without the other.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison


Ah, the 'he thinks it's right and he's clever so it must be right'. Whatever happened to critical thinking amongst you philosophy types?

Wasn't saying they're right because they're clever, was responding to Elok's regret of not being enough intellectuals defending religion.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Lul Thyme


I'm not sure what you're referring to.
Are you saying that Pascal's wager is a tautology?
Personally I think the reasoning is not sound and it's not a tautology.

No, it's not a tautology, however your claim that there is a little possibility of God being an hypocrite can't stand if Pascal defines God as a perfect being.

This said, I'm sure you could find plenty of flaws in Pascal's wager. Never bothered with him personally, but judging from lectures, he was a deliberately ironic person.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
Maybe, but it's not like there's reality, and then there are the ideal laws. You obviously can't have the one without the other.

What? Reality doesn't depend on these tautologies in any meaningful sense; they just describe it pretty accurately.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
No, it's not a tautology, however your claim that there is a little possibility of God being an hypocrite can't stand if Pascal defines God as a perfect being.

There's the same small probability that an imperfect being that punishes Christians exists. And there's no reason to assume that a "perfect" (whatever that means) being would resemble the Christian God in any way.