RE: A Note to Fellow Atheists About Spirituality
MY two cents on your post...when trying to drive home a point on sensitive issues like spirituality and beliefs, there is a a thin line we often believe we should not cross but end up crossing. Every man has what suits him, be it the belief in the existence of a supernatural power or the theory of evolution. Charles Babbage had this quote "If i choose to believe in God and life after death and you don't, if there's no God, we both lose, but if there's a God, you lose and I gain everything". I hope you understood it's meaning. As a scientist, I look at people who dispell the theory of God and say evolution is the real truth, the question is this: After all these years, why have we not witnessed an ape giving birth to a full fledged human being? afterall it's been hundreds of years and let us believe in the logic of evolution, it basically says ape---->man and man will someday evolve to an unknown higher species but yet another theory propagates devolution. Which should we believe? Evolution after homo sapiens or devolution? Science is confused without religion trust me and religion is unbalanced without science. But Atheism is a big gamble.
That's Pascal's wager. But let's turn it on its head. There are hundreds of faiths in supernatural beings; if one decides to believe in one system, how correct is one likely to be?
Your reasoning is flawed.
The concept you are discussing early in your statement is based on Pascal' wager, which basically reads like this: "It is better to believe in God and be wrong than to not believe in God and be right", and there is often a nice little chart that goes along with it, an example of which can be seen here:
The problem with this is that it is a false dichotomy, and an arrogant one at that. Rather than wording it as "god either exists or he does not exist", I would rephrase it as "the Christian god either exists or he does not exist". Under this reworded context it can be seen that the odds are actually not 50/50 as it first seemed. There are literally thousands of religions on this earth, and it is presumptuous to assume that only the Christian religion is the one worth considering.
If you think about how many other gods out there are "possible" based on how many religions there are (in hinduism alone there are something like 300 million), then you cannot actually say the odds are in your favor if you believe in god. There are so many to choose from that the odds are so much greater that you have chosen WRONG than anything else. And what if the real god or gods are jealous? What if they would resent you more for picking a fake god instead of not believing in any at all? There are too many possibilities.
I believe in science, and I cannot in good conscience believe or support the idea that any religion is a valid ideology because, the way I understand it, they conflict irreconcilably. Science isn't perfect of course, but filling in the gaps in our understanding with the explanation of god is, to me, irresponsible and lazy. So I reject it.
Like I said, it was my opinion and what I choose to believe as for the author of the quote, if it was Paschal, then the site that attributed the quote to Babbage needs to be sued or something...I stand by my Christian views because I have nothing to lose. I am not flawing your beliefs, only saying be more objective.
That's fine. You can believe whatever you want to believe. I'm not going to hate on you for it, although I do disagree with the logic behind it. Anyway, have a good one! Cheers. No hard feelings about what I said, I hope.
none at all