Why Dont You Blog?

Well, from the department of the ineducable idiocy, I have found a blog which I don’t for one second think is a legit creationist / theist blog. I refuse to accept that anyone can be as stupid as this person, yet still be able to breathe unaided. Seriously. Still, it has given me a chance to rant about a few topics which have been annoying me lately.

The blog in question is called “Atheist Stooges” and, from that name alone, you just know it is going to be full of juicy idiocy. In this instance, the idiocy is so bizare I can only assume (hope?) that this is a wind up. Can people honestly hold to ideas like this and still function in society?

The blog has an article called “Enter the excavation” which really does hit a new nadir of nonsense. The basic crux of what is a long, wordy and badly written, post is that because you can not pin down a point in time which some human invented Atheism it must be sent by demons. What wonderful logic. There are so many fallacies in the post it would take months to unravel them all. This tends to happen when you take a false premise and try to make conclusions based on it though.

The opening paragraph sets the tone:

Do you know that if you make an endeavor to find out when and by whom atheism was authored you will not be able to find such information from any source? Not even the most “educated” atheists - particularly those associated with the most elite universities throughout the world can truthfully inform you when and by whom atheism originated. They can enlighten you as to who were its main perpetuators in different cultures; but they cannot identify its founder and when it actually originated.

Popularity: 64% [?]

Popularity: 64% [?]

Pascal’s Wager floats around the Internet and USENET as a fairly common reason to “believe in God.” In a nutshell the argument from the wager runs that:

1. God either exists or does not exist. (In this context it is the Christian God being debated)
2. If you believe in God and he does not exist, you have lost nothing and gained nothing.
3. If you believe in God and he does exist, you have lost nothing and gained everything.
4. If you do not believe in God and he does exist, you have lost everything and gained nothing.

This is supposed to lead the thinker to the conclusion that the only sensible course of action is to “wager” God exists and believe. In some respects, this early example of Game theory (remarkably similar to the prisoners dilemma), is quite ingenious and serves as good grounding in logical thinking. Some of the people who trumpet this line of “logic” do so without knowing the source and may even have developed it themselves (aren’t they clever).

While Pascal’s Wager is superficially sound and appealing, it really does not hold up to scrutiny. While it may have been considered brilliant logic (although this is in doubt) in the seventeenth century, it certainly does not do so today.

The wager has some implicit assumptions which significantly undermine its logic. For example, the presupposition that God exists and is willing to punish non-believers is the basic assumption. If, for example, the God portrayed in Islam exists belief in the Christian God will ensure a life time damnation on a par with non-belief. Religions with mutually exclusive tenets cause all manner of problems for the “logic” of the wager

More importantly, it changes the nature of the belief. Even if (and it is a big if) the basic assumptions are correct and the Christian God exists or doesn’t exist, the idea that people who “believed” based on the wager would be rewarded as the faithful makes a mockery of the whole concept. Faith, surely, is not something which can stem from a logical argument?

There are lots of sites on the internet which will provide more detailed dissection of the logical flaws in Pascal’s Wager so I will stop now.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Popularity: 15% [?]