Pascal's Wager is brilliant!

Nietzsche is dead. Remember what happened before he died? He went insane for no discernible reason at a relatively young age and spent 11 years in diapers.

I don’t think I’ve neglected philosophy…I’ve studied Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Socrates, Sartre and Cioran for years.

Now, in regards to Hell and it’s eternity, it’s indeed a terrible thought. In the Christian tradition, Jesus went to Hell to rescue people but many people didn’t want to be rescued. They are in Hell because they want to be there.

Yeah he’s dead. I get the joke, but I don’t see how they affect his points. I don’t see the insanity in his words, which I find truly astounding even to this day, even in his 40s he was a true genius, which is a term I’m so mean with I’d only definitely attribute to 2 thinkers in all history. Seems like an argumentum ad hominem fallacy to draw attention to his health and lifestyle.

Cioran! Awesome. But for all your study, you don’t seem to be applying it here is my point.

Doesn’t sound so bad if people want to be in Hell… - I guess an eternity of where I want to be seals the deal in favour of choosing atheism.

My point (and Pascal’s) is that we’re all going to die. So we may as well believe because of the potential of infinite benefits.

Nietzsche was also a pretty pathetic person and the opposite of his philosophy (read his letters, they reveal his true personality)

en.wikisource.org/wiki/Selected … _Nietzsche

I did apply my existentialist and nihilistic philosophy for about 5 years…at least. Until I had a supernatural experience that made me believe in the supernatural which led me home to the Catholic Church :slight_smile:

Are you English? It seems like your country is infested with atheism these days.

BTW, who would you describe as the other genius? I agree NIetzsche was a genius.

I’ll give you 2 more geniuses now besides Pascal.

Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas.

Yes, that’s the wager. My point is it’s based on false or at least questionable premises, and isn’t even a valid wager upon examination.

I’m sure he was. Ad hominem again?

Ooo I love these stories. What was this experience? I hope you will excuse my inevitable skepticism if you choose to divulge.

I feel safe already with the prejudice that even given the supernatural, the causal implication is never necessarily “therefore God”.

I am. Are you American? It seems like that country has been infested with theism for far longer a period than is dignified. But it is just opinion either way, isn’t it.

You won’t agree with this, and bear in mind I’m qualifying my judgment with “definite” attribution, but my criteria are that they continually present cases in ways I never thought of, no matter how deep I go. This is as opposed to measures like being the first person to be recorded thinking in certain terms, or the inventor of terminology or other things, which while legitimate don’t feel sufficient somehow. Other than Nietzsche I’ve only really found this in the contemporary thinker, Zizek. Even Pascal with all his highly laudible contributions in multiple fields outside his wager doesn’t have this x factor to my mind. Most thinkers frustrate or bore me with their oversights or lack of ingenuity at least occasionally, but not those two - who consistently deliver only inspiration.

Apologists? I’ve not familiarised myself at all with Augustine, and what I’ve come across of Aquinas is standard Confirmation Bias that everyone until the Enlightenment was habitually engaged in - the consequences for thinking outside the box were scary before then, and even after that for many, and even today still for far too many.

Freespirit,

I want to explain something to you in the simplest terms that I can.

If your (or anyone else’s) consent is being violated, even if it’s by reading my post here! You are in hell.

That is the “North Star” of life.

You can check it at any moment to get your bearings.

Augustine was one of the greatest philosophers and theologians in Western history. His classic book “Confessions” is easy to read. You may want to check it out.

I find Nietzche’s philosophy pretty uninspiring too. The whole “become what you are.” And then what after that? We die.

“Eternal return.” Blah.

If life all ends at death then human existence is ultimately pointless. Do you agree?

Nah.

Hell is a lot worse than that.

Ahh… the delights of not yet experiencing your own fruits.

Any decently observant person knows I’m telling you the truth.

Any non-pompous British twerp knows you’re not :slight_smile:

Freespirit,

You’re trying to sound smart about something you have no idea what you’re talking about.

The litmus test is ALWAYS and FOREVER, “is this violating my consent”

If you reject that litmus test…

You have some serious mental issues

I will certainly consider it.

Uninspiring? I said inspiring.

Not so much Eternal Return and the weirdly selected stuff they pick out to teach you in school, but even that is a better thought experiment than most and still worth plenty of consideration. “Become what you are” sounds fairly vaccuous without context.

I couldn’t agree less that human existence is ultimately pointless because we die.

Firstly I’ll draw your attention back to what I said about time 3 posts of mine ago. Secondly, I won’t be so glib as to say death is what gives life meaning, like many do - I don’t believe a time limit and any resulting fear or stress is the necessary ingredient to motivating you. Life is the necessary precondition to judge meaning, and death is null - it has no meaning nor anything, it cannot be imagined because it negates even imagination, it negates negation - well it doesn’t even do that. The best you can do is imagine before you’re born or try to see outside your vision: you’re going to come up short - by definition in all such cases. It’s not a concern, it’s the opposite of concern. Life, however? Life is all there is. In the present with no concrete spatio-temporal boundary you live eternally relative to everything you could possibly imagine about anything. Life is your source of and for everything, including both conceptions of purpose and pointlessness - you can try to create whatever you like from it, and only it. Conceptions of that which is beyond life are all in terms of life, whether you’re imagining God, afterlife, heaven, hell - it’s all taken from your experience of life and created into a story in terms of life, within life, while you’re alive. Death has nothing to do with it and by definition cannot. Human existence is the only possible point. You don’t need to project purpose through an external entity, you can own it, but either way purpose and pointlessness are yours to attribute however you will. Some ways of doing it are more consistent than others.

There’s no way that guy’s British, and you will notice my attentions are how they are for a reason.

Btw, what do you think of all the UFO sightings in the U.S.?

nytimes.com/2019/05/26/us/p … ilots.html

You’re moving goal posts in a way that is devoid of meaning and purpose …

Read this his post and know the whole truth.

That’s all you need to know.

Your quoting yourself now?

I’ve noticed a couple things in this thread.

First, you have avoided my reverse wager posts like the plague.

Second, you’re not man/woman enough to admit that in a world that violates anyone’s consent, that the leadership is wrong.

You don’t see the world/life with clear eyes, you’ve been radicalized.

Your mind is no different than a jihadist.

I have addressed your absurd reverse wager. There is no evidence for it. There is tons of evidence for the most important man who ever lived. Jesus Christ.

You’re not credible in any logical way. No offense.

if you could go ahead and read silhouette’s second post in this thread again, that would be great

Free Spirit,

What do you believe?

Evidence?

The reverse wager (unlike Pascal’s wager) is not up for discussion. It’s true BY DEFINITION!!

Good Atheists by definition have a MORE inherent goodness than good believers in god and/or karma.

This means that the BEST choice is to be an atheist.

I’m not absurd, you’re absurd, the wager is absurd.