(October 2, 2013 at 7:55 am)themonkeyman Wrote: Hi Folks,Pascal's Wager tends to make skeptics out of reasonable people. Just like any other atrociously stupid idea.
I am in a bit of a Predicament, I read yesterday about the pascals wager and so I became a bit skeptic.
themonkeyman Wrote:Is this a correct view point - Would reading Exodus add more concrete to the Athiest Mixture or would it weaken it.My advice- don't read the Bible with an eye towards strengthening or weakening your faith. Just read it. It doesn't take long for any sense of mysticism to fade, and soon you realize you're reading a pretty pedestrian anthology of old legends and myths. Don't look for deep messages from god, and don't try to find inconsistencies and contradictions. Just read it. After a while the sense of awe or dread is gone and you're reading a book. That's all.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould