RE: Atheist or Agnostic?
April 4, 2015 at 6:06 pm
(This post was last modified: April 4, 2015 at 6:06 pm by Simon Moon.)
(April 4, 2015 at 4:29 pm)datc Wrote: Moreover, I agree that if for someone, the existence of no god is more plausible than the existence of any other god, then which god to choose to worship is a problem.
My favorite answer to PW is the "God of intellectual honesty wager".
So, lets suppose atheists are wrong and a god does exist.
But the god that exists is one that values intellectual honesty and critical thinking. This god is responsible for creating all religions and holy books, but as a test to weed out the credulous and gullible.
He purposely remains hidden, and does not provide any demonstrable evidence for his existence, in order to see how many of his creation are willing to fall for outrageous, unsupported theistic claims, and how many are unwilling to believe them.
Those of us that exercise our critical thinking skills and determine that the belief in any proposed gods is unjustified, and skepticism is the only rational route, are rewarded in the afterlife. And those that were gullible enough to believe any of the equally unsupported religions are punished. So the best wager is not to believe in any of them.
After all, there is no evidence for the nonexistence of this god, right, datc?
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
