The concept of hell as a place of eternal punishment is refuted by the time factor. If you had a child who did some minor crime, would you have him beaten for twenty years? If not, then you are more moral than a God who would. The punishment must fit the crime. Nothing a human can do in this flyspeck of existence merits an eternity of heaven or hell–hence grace. As for the wager, a line from the Lord’s prayer goes “Do not put us to the test”.
The only way to influence skeptics and atheists is by setting a decent example of how to live.
And no one, except maybe for a masochist, chooses eternal torment.
The sinister idiocy of Pascal’s wager is twofold: The idea that we can choose our beliefs, the way that we can choose the color of a car, and the idea that there is some invisible entity who will punish us for eternity for having a wrong belief, even when we are not responsible for that belief.
I did remark earlier that pascal in his text tries to address my point, and seems to think that we can somehow brainwash ourselves into believing an unbelievable thing. I’ll give him credit for at least recognizing the problem.
To compare nonbelievers to people who shoot kindergarten kids does not do credit to you or your religion. It is, as your fellow theist noted, infantile. It’s actually much worse that that, but it’s a start.
I think it is important to notice what choice means with respect to free will.
If I have free will, I am free to choose what I have for breakfast, what job to take, what book to read. Etc.
It does not follow that I am free to choose a belief, at least not if I am rational. I do not choose beliefs, believes come to me. For example, I don’t choose to disbelieve in Santa Claus. I simply don’t believe in Santa Claus (this is not a choice on my part) because I see no evidence for the existence of such an entity, and a mountain of evidence militating against the existence of such an entity.
“But at least learn your inability to believe, since reason brings you to this, and yet you cannot believe. Endeavour then to convince yourself, not by increase of proofs of God, but by the abatement of your passions. You would like to attain faith, and do not know the way; you would like to cure yourself of unbelief and ask the remedy for it. Learn of those who have been bound like you, and who now stake all their possessions. These are people who know the way which you would follow, and who are cured of an ill of which you would be cured. Follow the way by which they began; by acting as if they believed, taking the holy water, having masses said, etc. Even this will naturally make you believe, and deaden your acuteness.”
So, you can use your free will to pray and go to Church. Gradually, you may come to believe.
Further, there is no evidence that Santa Claus is real. There’s tons of evidence that Jesus was. Comparing the two is like apples and oranges.
I’m sorry, you really think you can exist without existence existing? That everything you do doesn’t have some sort of condition that allows you to do it?
Yes, I already noted that Pascal addressed my objection — I noted it twice, in fact. I’m afraid I just don’t find his advice useful. Also, I would not like to “cure” myself of unbelief, whatever that means, exactly. If I am to be “cured” of unbelief, it is by the very thing that Pascal says we should not seek: evidence (or “proofs” as he wrongly calls it). And there is exactly as much evidence for Santa as for God: none. You write “Jesus,” but I am separating him from God. There is no contemporaneous evidence for the existence of Jesus, and possibly he did not exist at all, but there is no way to tell. If he did exist, he certainly was not divine. No one is divine,
Almost all scholars believe Jesus actually was a real historical person. And hundreds of people saw Him resurrected from the dead. That’s the only reason Christianity began to spread like wildfire in Jerusalem.
There’s a reason He is the most important person in history.
Lastly, millions of people have had personal experiences of God. The overwhelming evidence is that God is real.
“I do not know, nor have I heard of, any trained historian or archaeologist who has doubts about his existence,” he adds. With the weight of all this evidence, for Meyers “those who deny the existence of Jesus are like the deniers of climate change.”
Who are these hundreds of people who saw Jesus resurrected from the dead? Citation, please. Also the gospels were written decades after Jesus’s death. There are no contemporaneous accounts of his ministry. Why is that?
In fact, there is no record of anyone saying that they saw, with their own eyes, Jesus rise from the dead. If you have evidence otherwise, please present it.
I’m no biblical scholar, but so far as I can tell, Christianity was basically invented by St. Paul and ought rightly to be named Paulism.
Jesus, if he existed, was a Jew. There is no evidence from the gospels that he envisioned or advocated any church in his name and in fact he counseled people to pray in private and not make a big show of it. I am sure if he were to travel in a time machine to the present day he would be quite appalled at what Christianity became in his name, especially the evangelical variant, and would disavow the whole enterprise in toto. This is of course based on my views of the ministry of christ presented in the gospels, written by people who never even met Jesus, assuming he existed at all.
Now I ask you: please substantiate your claim that there were “hundreds” of eyewitnesses to Jesus’s supposed resurrection. Short answer: there were not. Please also address my point that there are no contemporaneous accounts of his ministry. Are you denying that? If so, present your evidence,
