Weekly "Ask an Atheist" Thread

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Whether you're an agnostic atheist here to ask a gnostic one some questions, a theist who's curious about the viewpoints of atheists, someone doubting, or just someone looking for sources, feel free to ask anything here. This is also an ideal place to tag moderators for thoughts regarding the sub or any questions in general.

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[u/taterbizkit]

I'm an atheist, and have been my whole life. I often say "I have no reason to take the idea of god seriously". So keep that in mind here. I'm interested in defending Pascal, not the Wager.

The Wager was published posthumously, extracted from a compilation of random private musings Pascal wrote down. There is no indication that he ever intended the argument to be taken seriously.

Of note: Pascal is aware that god would not be fooled by mere participation or a dog and pony show. He believed it was unlikely that a person who practiced life as a Christian would ever actually come to believe in it. Nevertheless, he said that the upside (heaven being totally awesome) still yields a positive expectation. He was clearly aware, though, that actual belief was a necessary condition for the wager to pay off.

That's the whole point of the wager -- no matter how vanishingly remote the possibility of the wager paying off might be, it would still have a positive expectation of value. Pascal was a gambler, and these statements were an attempt to put the proposition in terms a gambler would understand.

tl;dr: The argument is dumb. Pascal was not.

[u/EmuChance4523 → u/taterbizkit]

And his gamble was idiotic, so he was so.

Even if we take all the common flaws of the wager not taking into accounts other religions, the absurd faking thing and such, giving a possibility value to the most absurd concept as religion, etc

Even then, the wager is absurd, because it removes all value of life. The wager assumes that your life is only worth it with the afterlife assured, when in reality, your life is the most valuable thing you could ever have, and wasting it following a lie is literally condenming yourself to your own personal hell.

So, no, his ideas were still idiotic. He may have been intelligent for topics not related to religion, but the fact is that no religious person can make an intelligent assessment related to their religious beliefs, because that is directly contradictory to the religion, so unless they are abandoning it, they are constrained in the stupidity of such abuse.

[u/onomatamono → u/EmuChance4523]

He was anything but idiotic. You're tarring him with the brush of that one unpublished (by him) outline in a notebook. You can review his life's work and get back to us on the "idiotic" claim. I'm guessing you will revise that opinion.

[u/EmuChance4523 → u/onomatamono]

No. I don't think you even understood what I said, what I said is a fact.

On topics related to his religion, as any religious person that is not leaving their faith, he was idiotic.

This is a consequence of religion. Is not possibly for a believer to reason anything about their religion correctly, its a consequence of the indoctrination that is the root of the religion, and this absurdities of trying to say that they were intelligent in their religious claims is an absurdities based on the same manipulation.

They may have been a genius when outside of religious topics, and I am not going to discuss that. But nothing related to religion or theology is ever intelligent, is just the product of indoctrination, cognitive biases and motivated thinking.