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
Are you English? It seems like your country is infested with atheism these days.
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.
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?
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.
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.
It seems to me that according to your belief system God has already overrode their free will. If someone does not believe in this God of yours, they are vanquished to hell after death. An atheist, who for whatever reason, emotionally/psychologically/intellectually, just cannot fathom the existence of God, let us say for instance because of what he sees of man’s great inhumanity to man, or because he has experienced a sexual predator in the form of a catholic priest, or for whatever reason, is going to spend eternity in hell.
You would appear to give the atheist such a dirty name. Are they all immoral, inhumane people to you?
Are you incapable of seeing that just because one does not want to or cannot believe in God, one can live a good, exemplar life, perhaps even better than some of your so-called christian people? This or that atheist spends his or her life according to a strong moral code, caring about people in a compassionate way, then dies and spends eternity in hell.
You paint the picture of a very unloving, non-compassionate, totally illogical God, Free Spirit.
You might do far more good in the service of God if you painted him in a more “inclusive” “humane” landscape.
Yes, we do have huge flaws and one of them is Pride. I can certainly understand the atheists’ need to exclaim that they are good people when faced with someone who says they are not, they cannot be, simply because they do not believe in God and are going to hell.
Totally illogical to me. How much can this God of yours value goodness and meaningfulness and love and compassion and altruism when its creations are banished to hell forever. Who would ever want to believe in such a God?
