/lit/ - Literature

I never understood this. What loss does one experience believing in god if no god exists? Not getting to feel big brained or enlightened? Feeling guilty for having sinned?

it also doesnt take into consideration that god could be real but will actually punish believers and reward atheists since the former are usually retarded hicks or incels looking for a purpose, whereas the latter are usually civil, happy, and productive

>>16907130
>whereas the latter are usually civil, happy, and productive
It’s the exact opposite, nice bait

>>16907103
>zero evidence of hell
lol

>>16907103
you lose nothing if you believe in god and he ends up not being real, you probably gain if anything

>>16907143
don't just say wise guy things like that without explanation

>>16907143
>a heckin piece of cloth
Do you see Jesus on your toast too?

I love how people arrogantly laugh Pascal's Wager off as if the guy was a crank who didn't understand probability.

What people don't understand is that Pascal was one of the principal *founders* of probability.

Almost no-one ever understood it better than him. It is his brain child!

>>16907234
And if an expert on physics told me that gravity didn't exist but it was actually Cthulhu's telekinetic powers tethering us to the Earth, you can bet I would be just as skeptical. Authority is not an argument on its own.

even if you subscribe to a vengeful god, do you really think you can trick an omniscient being with false faith? pascal's wager is one of the stupidest ideas ever uttered

>>16907259
There's a big difference between "Cthulhu's telekinetic powers" and the fundamental canon on which all Western civilization has been built for the last 2000 years. Oh, but I forgot, for the last 2000 years everyone was an idiot up until you showed up to set us all straight :-)

>>16907284
If you actually read Pascal, the Wager itself is a small part of the argument, the bulk of it is about what to do once you accept its implications. Knowing full well that you can't just trick an omniscient God (Pascal argues), what SHOULD you do?

He ultimately concludes that the best thing you can do if you're having trouble getting yourself to truly believe, is you should go through the motions, go to church, recite the prayers, etc etc., and over time repetition will become habit which will eventually become engrained in you so that you can start to rise above the degenerate scum that we all are

>>16907314
So if it’s just a habit ingrained in you then it’s real? But that just sounds like false faith with extra steps. What’s the actual difference between believing falsely only so you can get into heaven vs drilling religious practices into your head and making a habit out of them to get into heaven? Even if you made it a habit to go to church, pray, etc. that doesn’t mean you’re going to believe just from that. And like you and Pascal and everyone says: an omniscient God would no if your faith is founded in a desire to het into heaven instead of genuine faith, so even if you do all the rigamarole of practicing a religion God will still be able to tell that it’s false.

Also, and this is unrelated to you, Pascal’s Wager has a problem which is that it operates on these four outcomes when in reality that isn’t the case. Even if we only consider the major religions of the world as possibilities (Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism) that still exponentially increases the amount of possibilities, and we could even go on to include all religions, major or minor, dead or alive, whatever and now we’ve really exponentially increased our possibilities. But then, and this sounds like a retarded argument, but it’s still a possibility, we can even take into account the possibility that there are an infinite number of religions that we HAVEN’T thought of, that haven’t been made known to us (from, say, a god that chose not to make himself known). Taking this into account Pascal’s wager can have endless choices and outcomes and the argument that believing in God (that is, the Cristian God) is now no longer the choice that has the most amount of positive outcomes. But this argument would never work on a Christian who attempts to use Pascal’s wager because to them there is no possibility that another religion could be right, just as Pascal’s wager would never work on an Atheist because they wouldn’t find the sense in it.

>>16907292
>the last 2000 years everyone was an idiot up until you showed up to set us all straight
unironically truth

>>16907150
Of course actually holding a belief is a gain. You gain the ideas and attitudes that the belief promotes.

After reading the Bible, I'm more skeptical of Christianity than ever and have no intention to convert
The Buddhists were probably closer to the truth