It's astonishing that we keep thinking that as knowledge advances and technology brings existence into clearer focus, religious ideas will fade under the bright light of understanding. We never considered the vast degree to which nutjobs would gaslight their gullible followers.

(August 12, 2021 at 11:37 am)Klorophyll Wrote: Sorry to bother you with what-if games. It's just that there is a potential risk of infinite loss if one plays this game dishonestly. Is it rational not to worry about the possibility of an infinite loss?

I'm prepared to take that risk, as I consider the possibility itself to be infinitesimal.

Quote:God's existence is a sufficient condition for the existence of an afterlife, as I repeatedly explained in this forum. It's not really difficult to understand why: a basic property of God is justice. A consequence of justice is that all people should be accountable for their acts, and hence there has to be another life where such a thing happens - this is really a trivial corollary of the assumption that God exists.

The problem with that: Infinite punishment for acts committed in a finite lifetime is infinitely evil, and a god that would behave in such a manner is simply not to be trusted.

Quote:And since we have very compelling arguments for God's existence, I am afraid an afterlife is more than just some idea someone dreamed up.

As I have already rejected the "very compelling arguments" as totally unconvincing, my position remains unchanged: I believe that the afterlife is mythical.

Quote:Do you have some way to rule out the existence of my invisible dragon?

As the dragon is a close personal friend of mine (Hi, Glori!) why would I want to? He's also not in the habit of threatening people, unless they block his view of the TV when he's trying to watch Casablanca. Better be careful, Klorophyll - he might throw a clawful of popcorn at you and yell "Down in front!"

Quote:You didn't bother to be precise and mention that everything you say is your personal opinion, not some argument you're going to defend objectively.

I never said I was going to defend any argument objectively. I was stating my opinions from the beginning.

Quote:I can't think of any excellent reason to not to be open to deductive or ontological arguments -like you are.

I've already deduced that religion is not for me, and I went through my ontological phase many decades ago. Waste of my time to reopen issues that are already resolved to my satisfaction.

It must be super risky to posit that the sun rises in the east, too, I guess.

Yes, Kloro…lol, I’m entirely certain that god neither authored or inspired magic book.

(August 12, 2021 at 11:37 am)Klorophyll Wrote: Sorry to bother you with what-if games. It's just that there is a potential risk of infinite loss if one plays this game dishonestly. Is it rational not to worry about the possibility of an infinite loss?

If by infinite loss you mean living in damnation for eternity if we are wrong about god, then consider this.  One doesn't have to be just right that god exists; that's short sighted.  You also have to pick the "right" god.  And how does one determine that?  If I grew up on Pakistan I would most likely be Sunni Muslim, mostly because the culture there reinforces it so strongly.  If I grew up in China I would likely practice Taoism or folk religion.  If you grew up in Mississippi I can almost guarantee you would be Baptist.  Whatever you are exposed to early in life is most likely what you will believe.  If you do decide to challenge your cultural beliefs and explore other religious modalities, you come to realize there is no objective evidence to support one over another.  It just comes down to what people want to believe or whatever beliefs they can accept as close enough to truth.  I have yet to find any religion deserving of that.

Quote:God's existence is a sufficient condition for the existence of an afterlife, as I repeatedly explained in this forum. It's not really difficult to understand why: a basic property of God is justice. A consequence of justice is that all people should be accountable for their acts, and hence there has to be another life where such a thing happens - this is really a trivial corollary of the assumption that God exists.

First you have to definitively establish the existence of god.  If that were to be accomplished, there are lot of things I would be willing to consider possible.  Although, again, you would still have some work cut out for you.  Different gods have different expectations of human beings.  So you would still have to objectively identify god and its nature/expectations.  Good luck with that.  Thousands of religions on earth and none of them can agree on that.

Quote:And since we have very compelling arguments for God's existence...

Since when?

Quote:Exactly. Do you have some way to rule out the existence of my invisible dragon? Until you do, just acknowledge this simple rule of thumb: any assertion you can't rule out is possible, any assertion.

You realize you just changed positions, right?  If you can't rule out the invisible dragon, then you can't rule out any version of "god" or just about any subjective claim someone makes.  The position atheists typically take is that no, we can't rule it out but without significant objective evidence,  we see no reason to accept it.  If you don't take that position then you also have to believe in Jesus, Yahweh, Zeus, Ahura Mazda and thousands of others.  Otherwise you aren't being logically consistent.  If that's fine with you then go ahead.  It's not fine with everyone, though.

(August 12, 2021 at 11:37 am)Klorophyll Wrote:

(August 10, 2021 at 9:57 pm)Astreja Wrote: Okay, then - I see no objective (not personal) evidence that such a thing as an afterlife exists, or even that such a thing could exist.  That in itself is more than enough to power my disbelief.  Life is much too short to play "what-if" games with every untestable hypothesis that someone dreams up.

Sorry to bother you with what-if games. It's just that there is a potential risk of infinite loss if one plays this game dishonestly. Is it rational not to worry about the possibility of an infinite loss?

This something I've put a fair amount of thought to, and have concluded that it is in fact rational to not worry about the possibility of a great or even infinite loss if the possibility isn't credible. When someone threatens you, the first consideration is not how horrible the threat is, but how likely it is to materialize. If a ruffian with a cudgle threatens to beat me unless I hand over my wallet, that's a credible threat. If they threaten me with nuclear annihilation, I'm not going to worry that they will carry out that threat, even though the threatened outcome would be thousands of times worse than getting beaten, because the threat is absurd. How could they have access to a nuke? Why would they use something like that just to get my wallet? Wouldn't the nuke get them too? It's a silly threat.

In the case of hell, someone is telling you that the creator of the universe has created a place of eternal torture which will be your fate after you die if you don't do certain things. How could a mere human possibly know this? Why would the creator of the universe care so much about a human on the edge of one galaxy following a list of rules that they would track them every minute and then make sure they suffer eternal torture? It's absurd and I'm rational enough not to worry about absurd threats.

Not to mention the number of absurd threats is potentially infinite and I couldn't worry about all of them if I tried.

(August 13, 2021 at 9:23 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: Not to mention the number of absurd threats is potentially infinite and I couldn't worry about all of them if I tried.

Have you ever heard about Pascal's Mugging? It's a thought experiment that shows the faulty thinking involved in Pascal's Wager-ish type stuff. For me, it was the final nail in the coffin for Pascal's Wager.

(August 12, 2021 at 5:57 pm)Spongebob Wrote: If by infinite loss you mean living in damnation for eternity if we are wrong about god, then consider this.  One doesn't have to be just right that god exists; that's short sighted.  You also have to pick the "right" god.  And how does one determine that?  If I grew up on Pakistan I would most likely be Sunni Muslim, mostly because the culture there reinforces it so strongly.  If I grew up in China I would likely practice Taoism or folk religion.  If you grew up in Mississippi I can almost guarantee you would be Baptist.  Whatever you are exposed to early in life is most likely what you will believe.  If you do decide to challenge your cultural beliefs and explore other religious modalities, you come to realize there is no objective evidence to support one over another.  It just comes down to what people want to believe or whatever beliefs they can accept as close enough to truth.  I have yet to find any religion deserving of that.

Appeal to religious diversity -invalid objection. One isn't punished by a just God for getting a wrong answer, but for dishonestly dimissing all answers, by pretending they are all of the same credibility. 

That there are conflicting accounts of God and how to worship him doesn't mean they are all false. And some claims about God are more compelling than others. Christianity and Judaism, for example, are a non-starter since the words of Moses/Jesus are lost, and the Q source is unavailable, even its existence is a matter of debate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_source

Mormonism for example is a subset of christianity, a subset of an invalid claim is a fortiori invalid. This leaves you with one possible abrahamic religion: Islam. There isn't much debate about the preservation of the Qur'an, unlike the Bible.

(August 12, 2021 at 5:57 pm)Spongebob Wrote: First you have to definitively establish the existence of god.  If that were to be accomplished, there are lot of things I would be willing to consider possible.  Although, again, you would still have some work cut out for you.  Different gods have different expectations of human beings.  So you would still have to objectively identify god and its nature/expectations.  Good luck with that.  Thousands of religions on earth and none of them can agree on that.

The existence of a first cause can be definitively established, you can find extensive literature about infinite regress and why there can't be an infinite chain of actual casuses. There are also arguments for why this first cause is personal (along the lines of : creating something instead of nothing entails that this cause decided to create it, and decision-making involves a personal agent). 

Actually, the difficulty is not to identify the "right" religion, but proving that this personal God must be just and omnibenevolent -there is nothing we can do about a malevolent God. To achieve that, one can appeal to the fine-tuning of the universe and the fact that it's governed by physical laws, making it (vastly) more probable than not that God doesn't leave things  - let alone people - without some kind of law or guidance.

(August 12, 2021 at 5:57 pm)Spongebob Wrote: You realize you just changed positions, right?  If you can't rule out the invisible dragon, then you can't rule out any version of "god" or just about any subjective claim someone makes. 

The difference is, I am not an atheist. If I accept some version of God (the theistic God as described in Islam), I don't need to check the rest of the possible versions, because any two religions are mutually exclusive.

Think of it like this : you have 50 closed doors in front of you, only one door contains some prize. Let's say you open 13 doors randomly and none of them contain the prize, but the 14th does. It's clear that there is no need to check to remaining 36 doors, but checking the 14 doors in the beginning was absolutely necessary...

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(August 12, 2021 at 1:36 pm)Astreja Wrote: I'm prepared to take that risk, as I consider the possibility itself to be infinitesimal.

Is this again your personal opinion, or do you have some objective way to assign probabilities to religious beliefs ???

(August 12, 2021 at 1:36 pm)Astreja Wrote: The problem with that:  Infinite punishment for acts committed in a finite lifetime is infinitely evil, and a god that would behave in such a manner is simply not to be trusted.

Completely false. The length of a commited act is disproportionate to the length of punishment. Murdering someone can take less than a few seconds, the punishment can be a life sentence, etc.

(August 12, 2021 at 1:36 pm)Astreja Wrote: I've already deduced that religion is not for me, and I went through my ontological phase many decades ago.  Waste of my time to reopen issues that are already resolved to my satisfaction.

Why did you rule out all the religious claims that you didn't bother to check? Unless you have some very good reason for dismissing each, your position is dishonest.

You do have to check them, all of them. The compelling threat hangs over your head in each case, if it’s a compelling threat in any one.

Yet another example of you immediately rejecting the very arguments you present. If you’re not worried about that bullshit, why should anyone else be?

You’re not concerned that some silly god is going to throw you into hell for being a Muslim just as I’m not concerned that your silly god will throw me into hell for being an atheist.

(August 13, 2021 at 9:47 am)vulcanlogician Wrote:

(August 13, 2021 at 9:23 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: Not to mention the number of absurd threats is potentially infinite and I couldn't worry about all of them if I tried.

Have you ever heard about Pascal's Mugging? It's a thought experiment that shows the faulty thinking involved in Pascal's Wager-ish type stuff. For me, it was the final nail in the coffin for Pascal's Wager.

Hell, even Pascal had doubts about the wager.

(August 13, 2021 at 9:23 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: This something I've put a fair amount of thought to, and have concluded that it is in fact rational to not worry about the possibility of a great or even infinite loss if the possibility isn't credible. When someone threatens you, the first consideration is not how horrible the threat is, but how likely it is to materialize. If a ruffian with a cudgle threatens to beat me unless I hand over my wallet, that's a credible threat. If they threaten me with nuclear annihilation, I'm not going to worry that they will carry out that threat, even though the threatened outcome would be thousands of times worse than getting beaten, because the threat is absurd. How could they have access to a nuke? Why would they use something like that just to get my wallet? Wouldn't the nuke get them too? It's a silly threat.

It actually depends on the person threatening you with nuclear annihilation, if that person is the President of the United States personally, you better run away as far as you can from your residence. There are many considerations when it comes to whether we should take a threat seriously, and people rarely consider them honestly.

(August 13, 2021 at 9:23 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: In the case of hell, someone is telling you that the creator of the universe has created a place of eternal torture which will be your fate after you die if you don't do certain things. How could a mere human possibly know this? 

Well, if you are assuming God exists, at least one human must have received some guidance from God. In the case of major religious experiences (Abaraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, etc.), the mechanism of receiving revelation and recognizing it's from God is only accessible to the recipient of the revelation. The question is of course whether one should accept their experience as true.

If you see the Sun rising from the west, you would believe that the Sun rises from the West, plain and simple -unless you have very good reasons to dimiss your personal experience as delusional. Similarly, Muhammad saw an angel instructing him to recite some message and broadcast a religion, Muhammad went on and did it. Was he justified to do so? Well, of course, to do otherwise would be to deny his senses. Are we justified to accept his experience? Since we don't have access to his personal experience, we evaluate the content of his revelations and see how improbable it is that he could come up with it from available knowledge.

(August 13, 2021 at 9:23 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: Why would the creator of the universe care so much about a human on the edge of one galaxy following a list of rules that they would track them every minute and then make sure they suffer eternal torture? It's absurd and I'm rational enough not to worry about absurd threats.

Oh. So the more rational course of action was, according to you, to neglect the human species because they are of tiny size compared to galaxies?................... What does that do to God's omnibenevolence..?

People keep objecting to eternal torture because they think it's inhuman to torture someone forever, all these objections disappear when some tragedy involve them personally, the mother of a murdered child won't have many objections to the murderer being tortured for eternity.

(August 13, 2021 at 4:03 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: You do have to check them, all of them.  The compelling threat hangs over your head in each case, if it’s a compelling threat in any one.

No, you don't. The compelling threats are mutually exclusive. Once you find the "right threat", you don't need to check the rest -all false automatically.