What are your thoughts on Atheism?

[Arkolon]

That's "winning the argument", which the atheists would do if no god actually exists. But, for the nth time now, the "win" is NOT about the argument. It is about the dichotomy WITHIN THE AFTERLIFE. HEAVEN is a PLUS ONE; HELL is a MINUS ONE. This should be capitalised, and I should probably sig it too, by now, because this is getting ridiculous now.

It's not about the dichotomy within the afterlife. As rational people we're looking at this from a viewpoint in LIFE. You're assuming the afterlife exists to make your point; it's wrong to make that assumption.

Then you aren't talking about Pascal's wager anymore.

[The Union of Tentacles and Grapes]

Here's your problem with your argument:

You're thinking within the constrains of there actually existing an afterlife. I take it you're religious?

No, I'm an open-minded agnostic atheist and a sceptic. This means I am sceptic of my atheism, as well, just as much as theism. I don't make special exceptions.

If you think in there being just an afterlife of course, your point is valid, but the question the wager asks is "what if there is a God?" Atheists just go "well what if there isn't?"

Then (0,0). Note that 1 + 0 = 1.

That's why the wager is a flimsy argument. It can be reversed to actually agree with atheism or any other belief just by rephrasing the question.

Err, no? How?

By replacing your special pleading extra christian god with a FSM. Are you really that blind?

[Esternial]

Atheists have made peace with there being no afterlife and being dead. If they go to heaven, they'd be okey with that too, even if their views were wrong.

There is no life after death when there is no afterlife. You need life to be conscious, and you need consciousness to think and reflect. Again, seriously, do you know how death works? Do you know what life is? How about an "afterlife"? Mm? Do you want to go to Google Translate and try again, or do you think you can manage this one now?

So, of all these possible expectations, atheism covers more than Christianity. It covers them being dead and them going to heaven. Pick atheism and you have a higher chance of getting what you expect (death) or heaven.

This isn't about getting "what you expect". This isn't about "winning" at all. It's about getting into heaven, full stop. That is what Pascal's wager is about, getting into the better afterlife, and it is not about some shallow argument-winning. If your idea of atheism is just to die to say "ha, there's no God" to all of those Christians still alive, you.. do understand how you can't do that, because, you know, you'd be dead?

Again, stop looking at all of this from your seat in the afterlife and try looking at it from a perspective in life, where all these options are possible outcomes.

Once again, as an atheist you'd be okey with there being no afterlife.

Your analysis is retrospectively whereas ours is predicatively, which is why they differ. I am not talking about argument winning, I'm talking about how many of these possible outcomes are covered within your belief system and how many of them are acceptable for you when you die. Atheism have accepted death with no afterlife. Heaven is okey with atheists too, since it's a positive outcome.

Atheists accept the neutral outcome in life. Whether or not there is an afterlife, they'll live their life accepting that death may be the end.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

Atheists have made peace with there being no afterlife and being dead. If they go to heaven, they'd be okey with that too, even if their views were wrong.

There is no life after death when there is no afterlife. You need life to be conscious, and you need consciousness to think and reflect. Again, seriously, do you know how death works? Do you know what life is? How about an "afterlife"? Mm? Do you want to go to Google Translate and try again, or do you think you can manage this one now?

So, of all these possible expectations, atheism covers more than Christianity. It covers them being dead and them going to heaven. Pick atheism and you have a higher chance of getting what you expect (death) or heaven.

This isn't about getting "what you expect". This isn't about "winning" at all. It's about getting into heaven, full stop. That is what Pascal's wager is about, getting into the better afterlife, and it is not about some shallow argument-winning. If your idea of atheism is just to die to say "ha, there's no God" to all of those Christians still alive, you.. do understand how you can't do that, because, you know, you'd be dead?

You're missing his point.

His point isn't that atheists think they can think after being dead. It is that they have made peace with themselves that they're not going to be alive or conscious anymore and they will just be a pile of compost in 10 years.

[Conscentia]

Arkolon did you actually read the entire rational wiki page I linked to?

[Esternial]

It's not about the dichotomy within the afterlife. As rational people we're looking at this from a viewpoint in LIFE. You're assuming the afterlife exists to make your point; it's wrong to make that assumption.

Then you aren't talking about Pascal's wager anymore.

Indeed, because it's antiquated and faulty, as I've pointed out a page or two ago.

There are so many concepts that are considered outdated nowadays, and Pascal's would be one of them.

[Zottistan]

This is absolute nonsense, since the Christian god is included in the category of "god that sends Christians to heaven, atheists to hell".

But then there exists another, and another, and another, but there is always one additional God, the Christian God (or the God whose existence we are trying to prove). It isn't so much an invitation to Christianity, more like a refutation of atheism.

And it's the same for every other god on the list. So it balances out at (0,0).

And no, because while each of these gods is equally likely to eachother, ignoring evidence to the contrary for the time being, the simple question of whether their is a god or not is still "yes" or "no". If I'm given a box and I don't know what's in it, despite the near infinite possibilities for what could be in it, there's a 50% chance it's empty.

[Arkolon]

No, I'm an open-minded agnostic atheist and a sceptic. This means I am sceptic of my atheism, as well, just as much as theism. I don't make special exceptions.


Then (0,0). Note that 1 + 0 = 1.


Err, no? How?

By replacing your special pleading extra christian god with a FSM. Are you really that blind?

I've taught kids before, and numbers like 100 or 1000 seem really, really big at first, so I'll forgive you if this is the first time you've ever come across the word "infinite" for the number of possible gods that are present in Pascal's wager.

[The Union of Tentacles and Grapes]

Arkolon did you actually read the entire rational wiki page I linked to?

Did you actually expect him to? He's hardcore apologist. +10 armour of fact deflection, with cognitive dissonance special feat.

[Conscentia]

Arkolon did you actually read the entire rational wiki page I linked to?

Did you actually expect him to? He's hardcore apologist. +10 armour of fact deflection, with cognitive dissonance special feat.

Arkolon's autiobio' says that Arkolon is female.

[The Union of Tentacles and Grapes]

Did you actually expect himher to? He'sShe's a hardcore apologist. +10 armour of fact deflection, with cognitive dissonance special feat.

Arkolon's autiobio' says that Arkolon is female.

Old lady on the internet is old, with an odd avatar.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

By replacing your special pleading extra christian god with a FSM. Are you really that blind?

I've taught kids before, and numbers like 100 or 1000 seem really, really big at first, so I'll forgive you if this is the first time you've ever come across the word "infinite" for the number of possible gods that are present in Pascal's wager.

Then you don't understand Pascal's Wager.

Pascal's Wager assumes that, rationally, if forced into a wager you've got a lot to lose from being an atheist and have a lot to gain by believing in a deity. However, it breaks when you either choose the "it doesn't exist" option even if the risk is great to lose or choosing to not participate.

It depends in forcing the argument to make you think he's right.

[Arkolon]

There is no life after death when there is no afterlife. You need life to be conscious, and you need consciousness to think and reflect. Again, seriously, do you know how death works? Do you know what life is? How about an "afterlife"? Mm? Do you want to go to Google Translate and try again, or do you think you can manage this one now?


This isn't about getting "what you expect". This isn't about "winning" at all. It's about getting into heaven, full stop. That is what Pascal's wager is about, getting into the better afterlife, and it is not about some shallow argument-winning. If your idea of atheism is just to die to say "ha, there's no God" to all of those Christians still alive, you.. do understand how you can't do that, because, you know, you'd be dead?

Again, stop looking at all of this from your seat in the afterlife and try looking at it from a perspective in life, where all these options are possible outcomes.

Once again, as an atheist you'd be okey with there being no afterlife.

This doesn't make (0,0) a (0,1). Again, you only get a +1 if you get into the better afterlife. Again, this isn't about winning the argument. If you wanted to make it about winning an argument, then obviously the atheists have infinitely more chance of a single God not existing compared to the infinite number that might. This is about getting the better afterlife, not the better argument.

Your analysis is retrospectively whereas ours is predicatively, which is why they differ. I am not talking about argument winning, I'm talking about how many of these possible outcomes are covered within your belief system and how many of them are acceptable for you when you die. Atheism have accepted death with no afterlife. Heaven is okey with atheists too, since it's a positive outcome.

This isn't about acceptability. You're the only one who ever made Pascal's wager about acceptability.

Atheists accept the neutral outcome in life. Whether or not there is an afterlife, they'll live their life accepting that death may be the end.

OK? What do you want me to say to this? My only question is, how does this suddenly, magically, entitle atheists to a +1? Because they were right? Because they knew it? Because the others were wrong? Of course not. That's argument-winning. Did the atheists get into heaven? No? Then they don't get a +1.

[Arkolon]

Arkolon did you actually read the entire rational wiki page I linked to?

How do you think I first came across Pascal's wager?

[The Archregimancy]

This is a genuine question, and not an attempt on my part to be snarky or sarcastic.

Where did the above model originate?

I'm genuinely curious since it's something I only became aware of relatively recently. I concede that the the fact that I didn't know about it until the last 5 years or so doesn't mean it hasn't been around for a while, which is one of the reasons I'm asking - but if it is relatively recent in origin, then I'm struck by the extent to which people in this forum increasingly offer what appears to be a fairly new philosophical model as incontestable fact.

A quick check of these forums suggests it wasn't necessarily the default position to take when the current forums came online. There are early threads from these forums (in 2009) discussing definitions of agnosticism without necessarily defaulting to discussion of that model. Towards the end of 2009, the model is becoming more common - though some committed atheists are still offering their own alternative models for discussion - and by 2010 it tends to be the default model in debate of the topic.

NationStates is not the world, of course, but this 2009 atheist blog post also suggests that the model is fairly new as these things go (the link to what it suggests is the original source of the categorisation is, alas, broken), and was still finding its feet as a go-to default definition in late 2009.

I genuinely welcome clarification.

The pictures are all relatively new. People made them in the last few years as descriptive tools. The axes have been around since the greeks, before christianity itself. Nowadays, people are using the word agnostic too often to fool themselves into thinking they aren't atheists. People decided they didn't feel like enabling that anymore.
theist = belief in a deity(s)
gnostic = knowledge of deity(s)
Atheist/theist is a description of belief in god claims, agnostic/gnostic is the strength of your claim to knowledge about the truth of those beliefs. So you can be a gnostic atheist, or an agnostic theist.

I think you missed my point, alas. I think you've also assumed that my knowledge level of these issues is considerably lower than it actually is; though you have inadvertently added weight to my hypothesis that the growth of this model over the last five years is tied into an ideological attempt to argue that there are more atheists out there than people who want to describe themselves as such.

Would anyone else care to make a more serious attempt? Perhaps with some actual citations helping to outline the historiography of the model in its recent form?

Again, this is not snarky sarcasm on my part; not is it an implicit criticism of the model. I'm genuinely interested in the growth of this model's popularity in recent years. I'd hoped that some people in this thread would actually know.

[Arkolon]

Then you aren't talking about Pascal's wager anymore.

Indeed, because it's antiquated and faulty, as I've pointed out a page or two ago.

There are so many concepts that are considered outdated nowadays, and Pascal's would be one of them.

So, in a conversation about Pascal's wager, you decide to stop talking about Pascal's wager, but you pit your own morphed "acceptability version" against Pascal's wager instead? I'm a little disappointed someone with as many posts as you does things like this.

[Conscentia]

Arkolon did you actually read the entire rational wiki page I linked to?

How do you think I first came across Pascal's wager?

I ask since you seem to ignore most of the criticisms presented by the page.

[Arkolon]

Arkolon's autiobio' says that Arkolon is female.

Old lady on the internet is old, with an odd avatar.

Seriously? It's Robert Nozick, for crying out loud!

Neither am I that old, either.

[Arkolon]

But then there exists another, and another, and another, but there is always one additional God, the Christian God (or the God whose existence we are trying to prove). It isn't so much an invitation to Christianity, more like a refutation of atheism.

And it's the same for every other god on the list. So it balances out at (0,0).

And no, because while each of these gods is equally likely to eachother, ignoring evidence to the contrary for the time being, the simple question of whether their is a god or not is still "yes" or "no". If I'm given a box and I don't know what's in it, despite the near infinite possibilities for what could be in it, there's a 50% chance it's empty.

You don't know prematurely that there is a 50% chance that it is empty. You're averaging out the possibilities (two, so two halves), but that doesn't make it necessarily a 50% chance it's empty.

[Arkolon]

How do you think I first came across Pascal's wager?

I ask since you seem to ignore most of the criticisms presented by the page.

The criticisms I have either tackled or acquiesced to already.

[Arkolon]

I've taught kids before, and numbers like 100 or 1000 seem really, really big at first, so I'll forgive you if this is the first time you've ever come across the word "infinite" for the number of possible gods that are present in Pascal's wager.

Then you don't understand Pascal's Wager.

Pascal's Wager assumes that, rationally, if forced into a wager you've got a lot to lose from being an atheist and have a lot to gain by believing in a deity. However, it breaks when you either choose the "it doesn't exist" option even if the risk is great to lose or choosing to not participate.

It depends in forcing the argument to make you think he's right.

"It doesn't exist" yields (0,0), so it hardly matters as an option to take at all.

[Dyakovo]

The pictures are all relatively new. People made them in the last few years as descriptive tools. The axes have been around since the greeks, before christianity itself. Nowadays, people are using the word agnostic too often to fool themselves into thinking they aren't atheists. People decided they didn't feel like enabling that anymore.
theist = belief in a deity(s)
gnostic = knowledge of deity(s)
Atheist/theist is a description of belief in god claims, agnostic/gnostic is the strength of your claim to knowledge about the truth of those beliefs. So you can be a gnostic atheist, or an agnostic theist.

I think you missed my point, alas. I think you've also assumed that my knowledge level of these issues is considerably lower than it actually is; though you have inadvertently added weight to my hypothesis that the growth of this model over the last five years is tied into an ideological attempt to argue that there are more atheists out there than people who want to describe themselves as such.

Would anyone else care to make a more serious attempt? Perhaps with some actual citations helping to outline the historiography of the model in its recent form?

Again, this is not snarky sarcasm on my part; not is it an implicit criticism of the model. I'm genuinely interested in the growth of this model's popularity in recent years. I'd hoped that some people in this thread would actually know.

My personal view is that your hypothesis is correct. I've always been an atheist, though I have not always identified as one. I used to identify as "agnostic".

[Conscentia]

You are an atheist.

This is a genuine question, and not an attempt on my part to be snarky or sarcastic.

Where did the above model originate?

I'm genuinely curious since it's something I only became aware of relatively recently. I concede that the the fact that I didn't know about it until the last 5 years or so doesn't mean it hasn't been around for a while, which is one of the reasons I'm asking - but if it is relatively recent in origin, then I'm struck by the extent to which people in this forum increasingly offer what appears to be a fairly new philosophical model as incontestable fact.

A quick check of these forums suggests it wasn't necessarily the default position to take when the current forums came online. There are early threads from these forums (in 2009) discussing definitions of agnosticism without necessarily defaulting to discussion of that model. Towards the end of 2009, the model is becoming more common - though some committed atheists are still offering their own alternative models for discussion - and by 2010 it tends to be the default model in debate of the topic.

NationStates is not the world, of course, but this 2009 atheist blog post also suggests that the model is fairly new as these things go (the link to what it suggests is the original source of the categorisation is, alas, broken), and was still finding its feet as a go-to default definition in late 2009.

I genuinely welcome clarification.

I never knew people ever thought otherwise.
The etymology of the terms suggests to me that the "model" has been the case since "agnostic" was coined.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

Then you don't understand Pascal's Wager.

Pascal's Wager assumes that, rationally, if forced into a wager you've got a lot to lose from being an atheist and have a lot to gain by believing in a deity. However, it breaks when you either choose the "it doesn't exist" option even if the risk is great to lose or choosing to not participate.

It depends in forcing the argument to make you think he's right.

"It doesn't exist" yields (0,0), so it hardly matters as an option to take at all.

"God is, or He is not"

A Game is being played... where heads or tails will turn up.

According to reason, you can defend neither of the propositions.

You must wager (it is not optional).

Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.

Wager, then, without hesitation that He is. (...) There is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite. And so our proposition is of infinite force, when there is the finite to stake in a game where there are equal risks of gain and of loss, and the infinite to gain.

But some cannot believe. They should then 'at least learn your inability to believe...' and 'Endeavour then to convince' themselves.

[Esternial]

This doesn't make (0,0) a (0,1). Again, you only get a +1 if you get into the better afterlife. Again, this isn't about winning the argument. If you wanted to make it about winning an argument, then obviously the atheists have infinitely more chance of a single God not existing compared to the infinite number that might. This is about getting the better afterlife, not the better argument.

That's where our view on this matter differ. You get a +1 if it's an outcome you can live with in life, because that's what counts when you're "betting your life" when choosing whether God exists or not. Can you live with the outcome: Yes or no?

This isn't about acceptability. You're the only one who ever made Pascal's wager about acceptability.

If sorry if expanding beyond the one philosophical idea you've looked up on wikipedia is too hard. Philosophy isn't about sticking to old ideas, it's about expanding your own. I don't readily munch down other people's ideas without critically thinking about it first.

Pascal was talking shit, then. He was talking about people betting their lives, which means you're making this choice when alive. The important question becomes whether one can live with the outcomes, not whether that outcome gets your a level up in Heaven or demotes you to Hell.

Just because he has a Wikipedia page doesn't mean his words are made of gold.

OK? What do you want me to say to this? My only question is, how does this suddenly, magically, entitle atheists to a +1? Because they were right? Because they knew it? Because the others were wrong? Of course not. That's argument-winning. Did the atheists get into heaven? No? Then they don't get a +1.

Because they live life accepting it. Let's say - hypothetically, if you can muster it - people have five minutes after dying before they vanish into nothingness. As an atheist, one has accepted this fate in life and wouldn't be surprised. They gain a + because their choice earlier in life encompassed this outcome and they're not disappointed. Would they go to heaven their ideology would be wrong, yes, but they'd be in heaven and have a good afterlife.