100% of all people before discovering electricity had the wrong belief about how thunders work. It's a terrible argument to base your probability of something being true on how many people believe in it.
I always found the idea of the 'Old Testament God' being vengeful and cruel and the 'New Testament God' being kimd and merciful weird. The Old Testament God only killed babies and ordered genocides, while the New Testament God sends most of humanity to eternal torture, which seems much worse.
Yeah. This guy says better rip out your own eye if you are tempted to look at a woman than have your soul forever damned, he is such a wholesome carebear.
I was Christian, and I concluded that my fellow Christians did not truly believe this down in the recesses of their limbic system. You cannot eat McDonald's and play video games thinking this is the fate of most people. I think many of us hoped that it was like a Trump threat that would get walked back a bit on judgement day.
Beliefs in annihilationism (finite time in hell, then oblivion) and universal salvation were hard to square with the text and not that common. But they grew more common as humanity became more digitally connected and the scope of the problem became clearer.
Isn't one assumption of Pascal's Wager that if you call yourself a Christian your actions and interactions while you are alive are no different than you actions and interactions if you don't call yourself a Christian? That is obviously not true. The cost of being a believer can be high. That changes the cost/benefit analysis.
Nice tone for this topic sir! I would say all these religions give you good pointers towards spiritual growth, but then of course there's the business side of this - bureaucracies to pay and ambitions and rivalries to accommodate. So income is required, these business run largely on fear. Sometimes also desires, as in the virgins thing.
Or guilt, at least in the case of western Christianism - in fact absolutely fundamental to catholic or protestant power, and, if you ask me, probably in large part the substrate on which woke grew - white people indulging in the joys of guilt. Was good business then, and still is now!
This sounds more like an argument for annihilationism (a Christian doctrine that, granted, has been a minority position in the church, but finds support from influential Christians ranging from Ignatius to Irenaeus to CS Lewis) rather than an argument against Christianity.
Maybe New Atheism is the one true religion and the way you avoid eternal punishment is by arguing online about inconsistency in the Bible all day? If God is this eternal all powerful being (which he has to be if there is heaven and hell) we really cannot apply human logic to him. So we really can’t make any assumptions based on logic about the behavior we should adopt (which is also part of Christian thought which emphasizes divine grace). So what takes down pascal's wager in my opinion is that based on logic you cannot assume that being an unbeliever reduces your chances of heaven
100% of all people before discovering electricity had the wrong belief about how thunders work. It's a terrible argument to base your probability of something being true on how many people believe in it.
I always found the idea of the 'Old Testament God' being vengeful and cruel and the 'New Testament God' being kimd and merciful weird. The Old Testament God only killed babies and ordered genocides, while the New Testament God sends most of humanity to eternal torture, which seems much worse.
Yeah. This guy says better rip out your own eye if you are tempted to look at a woman than have your soul forever damned, he is such a wholesome carebear.
I was Christian, and I concluded that my fellow Christians did not truly believe this down in the recesses of their limbic system. You cannot eat McDonald's and play video games thinking this is the fate of most people. I think many of us hoped that it was like a Trump threat that would get walked back a bit on judgement day.
Beliefs in annihilationism (finite time in hell, then oblivion) and universal salvation were hard to square with the text and not that common. But they grew more common as humanity became more digitally connected and the scope of the problem became clearer.
2% is surprisingly high.
There's this book that argues against a Christian theology of eternal torture:
https://www.amazon.com/That-All-Shall-Saved-Universal/dp/1665206012
That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation by David Bentley Hart
Isn't one assumption of Pascal's Wager that if you call yourself a Christian your actions and interactions while you are alive are no different than you actions and interactions if you don't call yourself a Christian? That is obviously not true. The cost of being a believer can be high. That changes the cost/benefit analysis.
Nice tone for this topic sir! I would say all these religions give you good pointers towards spiritual growth, but then of course there's the business side of this - bureaucracies to pay and ambitions and rivalries to accommodate. So income is required, these business run largely on fear. Sometimes also desires, as in the virgins thing.
Or guilt, at least in the case of western Christianism - in fact absolutely fundamental to catholic or protestant power, and, if you ask me, probably in large part the substrate on which woke grew - white people indulging in the joys of guilt. Was good business then, and still is now!
This sounds more like an argument for annihilationism (a Christian doctrine that, granted, has been a minority position in the church, but finds support from influential Christians ranging from Ignatius to Irenaeus to CS Lewis) rather than an argument against Christianity.
Maybe New Atheism is the one true religion and the way you avoid eternal punishment is by arguing online about inconsistency in the Bible all day? If God is this eternal all powerful being (which he has to be if there is heaven and hell) we really cannot apply human logic to him. So we really can’t make any assumptions based on logic about the behavior we should adopt (which is also part of Christian thought which emphasizes divine grace). So what takes down pascal's wager in my opinion is that based on logic you cannot assume that being an unbeliever reduces your chances of heaven