CAA Flagship wrote:youngterrier wrote:
Pascal's Wager is bullshit so don't use it. What if you're wrong? What if Islam is the one true religion? Or Hinduism? Or any other religion?
There are plenty of religions that preach "believe what we believe or go to Hell," otherwise there wouldn't be that much incentive to follow that religion. There's no objective evidence to suggest Christianity over any other religion, so you have just about as much of an idea as a non-believer, and there's just as much chance as you going to Hell as us, minus one God
I have thought of the "What if I'm wrong?" idea for a long time. I look at what I go through with getting up early on Sundays and going to Mass, raising my kids in Catholicism, giving up something for Lent, and all the other things that a non-believer would not have to go through. And while sometimes it feels like a burden, I always feel good afterwards. To me, that makes everything I go through on earth, at the very least, a wash. And I have the belief, or at least hope, that I will have a good "life" after death. So I don't feel like I'm losing anything with my life on earth. While non-believers do not have to go through these worldly "burdens", they are taking a big risk on the afterlife.
In my mind, the different "religions" are man-made and none are perfect. But IF there is a God, wouldn't you think there would be some sort of outline provided so that we could live our lives as He would want? I believe the outline has been provided, and we are trying our best to interpret the details. But I believe many of the main points are universally understood, regardless of what religion one follows, or if they follow any at all. You can call this inherent nature, morality, or whatever you want.
By definition, everything in the world that happens can be naturally explained. Any interjection of the supernatural to explain anything is a logical falsehood and can be dismissed for a self evident naturalistic explanation. For instance, you can believe that God holds the Earth around the sun via gravity, but scientifically the God part is an unproven aspect. The same can be said of the religions. I can't really take any religion seriously that makes claims that can't be proven, and I outright reject any religion that makes claims that are contradictory to reality. For instance, the Bible claims that pi=3, the world is flat, the world is less 10,000 years old, homosexuality is unnatural, you can make cures to diseases by sacrificing birds, and other such claims that are quite frankly not true. If there's a god, he wouldn't give us the answers to reality in writing, and then have reality contradict that. Certainly there are those whom claim we don't know how God works, the texts were for a certain era, etc, but that's a very weak argument if you're arguing for a theistic God. Who's to decide which texts are to be taken literally and which to be taken metaphorically? Who's to decide what Old Testament laws, if any, to follow in the current context?
Real Science trumps "biblical science" any day of the week, we refuse to follow the laws that are set forth in the bible, and whenever that's pointed out, it immediately becomes a metaphor despite the 100s of years of tradition of which that viewpoint was accepted and put into practice. If God didn't want those misconceptions to be made, he wouldn't make his word so easily misinterpret-able. Once you've lost law and explanation, you basically just have the resurrection to hang your hat on, which is historically in doubt to say the least.
If God exists, there's absolutely no way religion of any kind is true, because to the objective viewer, every religion contradicts reality, science, morality, and rationality. You only say that you have truth because you believe it and have a presupposition to have that belief because it was how you were raised. If there is a God, the objective viewer could rationally believe in him. Science is God ladies and gentleman. Science is the most compatible process of interpreting reality and when put in practice it has solved more problems than any text or preaching ever did.
