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RE: What should replace Pascal's wager in my opinion.
August 28, 2012 at 11:35 pm
Or to put it even more simply: I don't know that there isn't a tiger behind the door to this room. Tigers are not generally known to roam the highways and byways of the Black Country but there might have been an escape from relatively-nearby Dudley Zoo or something; and though the house is locked up, the animal might have squeezed in through a window, being a cat and all. However, my lack of knowledge regarding a tiger behind the door isn't a good enough reason for me to be too scared ever to open the door to leave the room. Yes, there is that zillions-to-one chance that if I open the door I will become lunch for an overgrown tabby cat. However, the odds are rather in my favour that I ought to be able to stride straight through the door, wouldn't you say? After opening it first, of course. Or am I trapped in this room for, if not forever, then at least for the typical lifespan of the average tiger? You know, just in case?
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
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RE: What should replace Pascal's wager in my opinion.
August 29, 2012 at 12:32 am
I would have thought a good replacement to Pascal's wager is Occam's razor...
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"The lord doesn't work in mysterious ways, but in ways that are indistinguishable from his nonexistence."
-- George Yorgo Veenhuyzen quoted by John W. Loftus in The End of Christianity (p. 103).
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RE: What should replace Pascal's wager in my opinion.
August 29, 2012 at 12:37 am
It should definitely be in the sceptics' toolkit. Kept folded, of course, we don't want any nasty accidents.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
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RE: What should replace Pascal's wager in my opinion.
August 29, 2012 at 4:53 am
"Then, there are some people, they're not stupid, they're full of shit."
George Carlin
This whole notion seems like little more than an attempt to justify reversing the burden of proof for religion. Oh, but only if not believing matters. No. Simply, no. It is never the duty of the reasonable man to demonstrate that religious claims are unreasonable, it is always the duty of the religious to prove the reasonableness of their claims. Seriousness of consequence, as a pretext, is just special pleading that religion should get a pass where other claims do not. And let's be realistic, if there were one religion which could persuade a reasonable man, any reasonable man, to believe, the whole question would be moot; there would be only one religion. The problem is that religion, without prior bias, is not persuasive.
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