(July 23, 2012 at 4:30 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: Some problems I have with pascal's wager:
1) No religion accepts fake belief, so you cannot fake belief in a God.
2) There is different religions, so why appease one and not the other?
3) A True God would want you to be honest to yourself, so if you honestly don't believe in God, he would want you to remain honest with that.
4) Hell and God don't go together, if there is God, he is Merciful, if he is Merciful, then there is no hell. Simple as that.
Mystic,
I will share with you my views; however, I disdain the usual parsing of arguments where others lose all semblance of meaning. I will use your numbering to differentiate:
1) One could easily do this to get along with a social group; however, God would know the differnece, so what's the point?
2) You brought the point into focus with this point. If one were consistent, then one 'must' abide by 'every' religion. The problem for the individual is that religions establish a system that is singularly exclusive (most, talking Abrahamic religions here).
3) This is the point where you become a deist and I become an atheist. If there were a God I would expect that he/she valued truth and honsty. Religion has proved, regardless of religious flavor, that God does not value truth and honesty...has not, does not, will not...according to religion. As a deist you invoke god for what I simply say we don't know yet. Considering either case, religion be damned.
4) You seemed to have already figured out that the traditional attributes given to God don't reconcle with reality, religiously speaking. Not only is there no hell; there is no heaven.
