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Thread: Arguments for the Existence of God

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    Moral Implications of Pascal's Wager

    There are deep moral implications to Pascal's Wager if the argument is taken to its logical conclusion. It promotes the idea that beliefs are more important than actions — or, more precisely, that apostasy is the only unforgivable sin.

    The central tenet of substitutionary atonement in Christianity means that you can spend your life murdering, raping, killing, waging genocide, etc., and as long as you accept Jesus Christ as lord and savior before you die, you are entitled to an eternity of pleasure in heaven.

    On the other hand, a non-believer who spends a good honest life helping others is damned to spend an eternity being tortured in hell despite his or her good deeds

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    Begging the question

    Pascal's wager commits the fallacy of begging the question, by assuming in its premises, certain characteristics about the very god the argument is intended to prove.

    Rather than the typical Christian god, what if we hypothesize the possibility of a god who rewards skeptical thinking unbelievers and punishes credulous believers? Such a god would be consistent with the fall-back response of theologians, "We cannot understand the ways of God," so it is conceivable that such a god would want to reward atheists. This god would not need to be malevolent, merely inactive. This also mirrors deism with regards to creation, and wanting to reward those who take a rational, logical, reasonable, and or skeptical approach to their beliefs.

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    Question The Teleologicial Argument for the Existence of God

    The argument from design, also known as the teleological argument, is an argument for the existence of a divine designer based on instances of order or purpose in nature. The argument has been used since ancient Greece and remains a popular argument. The intelligent design movement is based on this argument. The conclusion only states there is a designer but does not support any particular religion.
    Arguments for and against the validity of the argument have been advanced by many philosophers and apologists. David Hume was highly critical of the argument in his seminal book Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. William Paley introduced the Watchmaker analogy which is a popular wording of the argument.

    A typical argument from design is as follows:
    "Some natural systems, especially living systems, contain ingenious solutions for solving technical problems. Human inventors must solve the same physical problems in order to achieve similar results [...] Ingenious biological features were [...] engineered by our wise, benevolent, and powerful Creator. Nature has never been observed inventing these kinds of complex structures, each well-suited to its task, and there is not even a theoretical, realistic step-by-step evolutionary explanation for how they could have developed. Thus, in the same way that we infer a painter from a painting, or an engineer from an engine, we infer a Creator from a creation."
    There are three formal variants of the argument from design. They are used individually or together in informal statements of the argument.
    Deductive version:

    a1) Objects that are designed by humans are ordered*.
    a2) The order* in any object originates from an external source.
    a3) There is no other external source of order* other than a designer,
    a4) An object X (for instance, an eye or the whole universe) is ordered*.
    c1) X was designed.
    c2) Therefore a designer of object X exists.
    * or have purpose, complexity, beauty or any other characteristic property of design.

    Analogical (inductive) version:

    a5) Objects that are designed by humans are ordered*.
    a6) A certain object X (for instance, an eye or the whole universe) is also ordered*.
    a7) By analogy human objects are similar to object X, and the causes must be the same.
    c3) X was designed
    c4) Therefore a designer of object X exists.

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    Problems with the Teleological Argument - Usefulness and purpose is a human construction

    Ideas of usefulness originate in our minds and are independent of an object's origin. Water is useful for drinking and cleaning but it has existed longer than all life and will probably continue to exist after humans are extinct. Both designed and non-designed objects may be useful in a particular circumstance.

    Purpose is also human invention and we should distinguish the use of something for a purpose with the design for a purpose. We can say a watch's purpose is to tell time. However, they can be utilized as a paper weight, a pendulum, a fashion accessory, etc, in which case the purpose of a watch is changed by our minds. Natural objects are also used for a purpose, such as a cave for shelter but it does not follow that the cave was formed for that purpose.

    Many versions of the design argument assume the purpose of a particular object is for the benefit of humans, such as the Fine-tuning argument. Without supporting evidence that an object was designed with this in mind, the claim is arbitrary and anthropocentric.

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    Which argument for the existence of God do you find easier to understand?

    Could you ever be convinced by a single argument that a God exists?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Petros Agapetos View Post
    Which argument for the existence of God do you find easier to understand?

    Could you ever be convinced by a single argument that a God exists?
    They are all bullshit, I mean to be convinced that God exists using logical arguments. The same can be said for arguments for the non-existence of God despite some of them being an answer to the former.
    Last edited by Insuperable; 12-02-2016 at 09:12 AM.

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    Something I notice throughout all of this is that you have no real interest in knowing better. As with this or f.e. with the ontological argument, which you clearly don't understand.

    Quote Originally Posted by Petros Agapetos View Post
    Moral Implications of Pascal's Wager

    There are deep moral implications to Pascal's Wager if the argument is taken to its logical conclusion. It promotes the idea that beliefs are more important than actions — or, more precisely, that apostasy is the only unforgivable sin.

    The central tenet of substitutionary atonement in Christianity means that you can spend your life murdering, raping, killing, waging genocide, etc., and as long as you accept Jesus Christ as lord and savior before you die, you are entitled to an eternity of pleasure in heaven.

    On the other hand, a non-believer who spends a good honest life helping others is damned to spend an eternity being tortured in hell despite his or her good deeds
    No, you're not entitled to an eternal life just because you had faith in Christ, nor is this an accurate rendering of Pascal's Wager at all.

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    Veteran Member Petros Agapetos's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Herr Abubu View Post
    Something I notice throughout all of this is that you have no real interest in knowing better. As with this or f.e. with the ontological argument, which you clearly don't understand.

    No, you're not entitled to an eternal life just because you had faith in Christ, nor is this an accurate rendering of Pascal's Wager at all.
    Is there any Christian denomination you know that does not teach that Faith is a necessary precondition for being saved?
    What Christianity were you brought up with?

    There are many versions of the ontological argument, I have listed them on the first page. They reduce to absurdity on a closer look.
    I perfectly understand the argument. My question to you was do you find it believable? And if not, what then would convince you of God's existence (without just presupposing it or relying on faith). Faith is not a reliable pathway to truth. This is why we need reason and argument. If an argument won't convince you that a God exists, then I don't know what will, because the question of whether there is a God or not is a topic in Metaphysics, which is philosophy, and philosophy reaches conclusions about existent things through argument: that is reason and evidence. Do you prefer just being preached to instead? We need arguments both ways, whether for the existence, or for the non-existence of God.

    I think I understand Pascal's Wager better than you. Why don't you quit telling me what I do or do not understand and make sure you do.

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    Veteran Member Petros Agapetos's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jack Slivovitz View Post
    They are all bullshit, I mean to be convinced that God exists using logical arguments. The same can be said for arguments for the non-existence of God.
    Excuse me, did you just say, arguments for the existence of God are bullshit?
    If you don't like arguments, reason or evidence, then what do you accept in deciding there is a God or not?
    Then what reason or evidence would convince you there is a God, if you don't accept reason and evidence as reliable paths to truth.
    Faith is not a reliable path to truth. Faith is gullibility. It is the excuse that people give for believing something for which they have no sufficient reason or justification.
    Faith is the lack of certainty, the gap of believability... This is not an adequately reliable method of discerning truth from falsehood.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Petros Agapetos View Post
    Is there any Christian denomination you know that does not teach that Faith is a necessary precondition for being saved?
    Faith is a precondition, but faith without works is dead. No serious Christian "denomination" (as if denominations are legitimate within Christianity and the existence of them prove anything) believes faith alone is necessary for salvation.

    What Christianity were you brought up with?
    I wasn't brought up in it.

    There are many versions of the ontological argument, I have listed them on the first page. They reduce to absurdity on a closer look.
    They don't, because using the same form of an argument but replacing the content with something absurd doesn't make the original argument argument absurd, it simply means that the other argument is. 'Godness' has very different properties from 'unicornness'. It makes no sense to define a unicorn with the properties of God, that is maximal greatness. The argument becomes contradictory and absurd because one defines a mythical being, the unicorn, with properties of maximal greatness, which it clearly wouldn't have were it to exist. You could make this sort of pretentious reductio ad absurdum argument with any piece of logic.

    It's a ridiculous way of arguing. One could make the mistake of making this sort of argument if one doesn't understand the ontological argument well. A being with maximal greatness is only maximally great if it exists in reality and exists in reality by necessity. Such a maximally great being is God. I don't think it's a good argument, but you clearly don't understand it.

    I think I understand Pascal's Wager better than you. Why don't you quit telling me what I do or do not understand and make sure you do.
    No, you clearly don't, you imbecilic, arrogant little autistic piece of shit.

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