Do atheist worry about eternal damnation?

[Bressen]

There are ontological "proofs" by philosophers, but I don't believe there is such a thing as an ontological proof.

I don't know what that means but its all conjecture and no science, right?

Ontological arguments are often based in wordplay.

For example, Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God sets the precedent that God is ''that than which nothing greater can be conceived'', essentially making God this entity that is the greatest of the greats because if you can think of something that is greater than God, then you're thinking of God.

Then, it states that God is a premise that exists only within the mind. However, only existing within the mind is inferior to existing in both the mind (in intellectu) and in reality (in re), and thus this conception of God is not ''that than which nothing greater can be conceived" because you can conceive a God that exists in both reality and in the mind. Thus, this new God that exists in reality and in the mind is ''that than which nothing greater can be conceived", and therefore God exists.

In another form;

It is a conceptual truth (or, so to speak, true by definition) that God is a being than which none greater can be imagined (that is, the greatest possible being that can be imagined).

God exists as an idea in the mind.

A being that exists as an idea in the mind and in reality is, other things being equal, greater than a being that exists only as an idea in the mind.

Thus, if God exists only as an idea in the mind, then we can imagine something that is greater than God (that is, a greatest possible being that does exist).

But we cannot imagine something that is greater than God (for it is a contradiction to suppose that we can imagine a being greater than the greatest possible being that can be imagined.)

Therefore, God exists.

NOTE: Admittedly, off-topic, but I felt compelled to put my philosophy education to use.

[Salandriagado]

Hallucinations are not evidence.

Don't know if they're hallucinating or you are. I'm just saying you could be. Not entirely sure whether you are.

I don't need to be: it just needs to be the most likely explanation from a perspective lacking prior assumptions of the conclusions, which it is.

[Salandriagado]

It's still an argument ad populum. Just cause lots of people believe it doesn't mean it has any basis in reality

Yeah, but at some point, you have to admit that the majority of things we believe about the universe are believed because a bunch of experts told us they are true, and we trust that those experts hold each other accountable and don't have some kind of great conspiracy to lie to us.

I mean, I have never personally verified the scientific evidence for things like the Big Bang or the geological history of the Earth or the speed of light or the existence of atoms. I simply trust that the scientific establishment is telling the truth and is not engaged in some kind of massive plot to deceive the general public.

So yeah, sure, argumentum ad populum is technically a fallacy, but in reality we all have to rely on believing generally-accepted-opinion (or generally-accepted-expert-opinion) on many topics.

Well go on then, do it: all of the information is freely available online, and all of it you can check for yourself. Notice how neither of those is true of these hallucinations.

[Ashmoria]

I don't know what that means but its all conjecture and no science, right?

Ontological arguments are often based in wordplay.

For example, Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God sets the precedent that God is ''that than which nothing greater can be conceived'', essentially making God this entity that is the greatest of the greats because if you can think of something that is greater than God, then you're thinking of God.

Then, it states that God is a premise that exists only within the mind. However, only existing within the mind is inferior to existing in both the mind (in intellectu) and in reality (in re), and thus this conception of God is not ''that than which nothing greater can be conceived" because you can conceive a God that exists in both reality and in the mind. Thus, this new God that exists in reality and in the mind is ''that than which nothing greater can be conceived", and therefore God exists.

In another form;

It is a conceptual truth (or, so to speak, true by definition) that God is a being than which none greater can be imagined (that is, the greatest possible being that can be imagined).

God exists as an idea in the mind.

A being that exists as an idea in the mind and in reality is, other things being equal, greater than a being that exists only as an idea in the mind.

Thus, if God exists only as an idea in the mind, then we can imagine something that is greater than God (that is, a greatest possible being that does exist).

But we cannot imagine something that is greater than God (for it is a contradiction to suppose that we can imagine a being greater than the greatest possible being that can be imagined.)

Therefore, God exists.

NOTE: Admittedly, off-topic, but I felt compelled to put my philosophy education to use.

that's the kind of thing I was thinking it was. it can never prove anything but how clever the writer is.

[Bressen]

Ontological arguments are often based in wordplay.

For example, Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God sets the precedent that God is ''that than which nothing greater can be conceived'', essentially making God this entity that is the greatest of the greats because if you can think of something that is greater than God, then you're thinking of God.

Then, it states that God is a premise that exists only within the mind. However, only existing within the mind is inferior to existing in both the mind (in intellectu) and in reality (in re), and thus this conception of God is not ''that than which nothing greater can be conceived" because you can conceive a God that exists in both reality and in the mind. Thus, this new God that exists in reality and in the mind is ''that than which nothing greater can be conceived", and therefore God exists.

In another form;



NOTE: Admittedly, off-topic, but I felt compelled to put my philosophy education to use.

that's the kind of thing I was thinking it was. it can never prove anything but how clever the writer is.

Yeah, all it really does is demonstrate how intellectually flawed language can be, and the writer capitalises on that fact and proclaims it as a 'proof'.

Hell, even Anselm reveals himself to be an idiot after his friend Guanilo argued against it by substituting the idea of 'a perfect God' with the idea of 'a perfect island'. He followed the exact same premises that Anselm laid out, and lead to the conclusion that the island existed because it was perfect - but obviously, it didn't exist. Anselm basically went full tantrum and said ''my argument only applies to God''.

[Salandriagado]

Issue being that there is no "expert" opinion on whether or not God exists. Just opinion.

Actually there are entire organizations of dedicated experts on this issue who have spent their entire lives studying it. You simply refuse to believe them.

We don't believe "experts" in any field just because they've spent a lot of time studying stuff: we believe people who provide demonstrably correct results, then call those that succeed experts.

All of which we have copies only of editions that were edited long after they were published. The number is also irrelevant, because they all contain such flaws, and thus are all worthless as evidence.

Wrong. We have copies of the Bible from the 4th century, which was the same century when the collection of books we call "the Bible" was actually put together for the first time. So we have copies of, if not the first edition of the Bible, then certainly an edition published only a few decades after the first.

Otherwise known as three centuries too late. That compilation is one of the many phases of later editing that I referred to.

Again, which are either lost or edited much later, often by the same people that did the above editing. The number is also irrelevant, because they all contain such flaws, and thus are all worthless as evidence.

I take it you never heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls either, then?

I have heard of them. They're just as full of said flaws as the bible.

Really, this urban legend that "the Bible was heavily edited" just demonstrates atheist ignorance. No, we actually have ancient copies of the Bible, thank you very much.

You literally just linked to a vast amount of stuff that was edited out centuries after the fact, and now you're going to claim that it wasn't edited?

Hallucinations are not evidence.

You dismiss testimony of God's existence out of hand? Why? Doesn't that make your atheism just an exercise in circular logic? "I see no evidence that God exists because I refuse to believe anyone who claims that he has personally met God."

Occam's Razor: hallucinations is the simplest available explanation.

And if you're going to say "I actually don't take anyone's word as evidence for anything", you're lying. Have you personally verified every fact that you believe about the universe? Or do you trust various groups of experts to tell you the truth?

I don't take the word of anyone who doesn't have a proven track record in producing actual correct results for anything unless I can personally verify it, no.

That doesn't follow in the slightest. That's only true if you think that the sole purpose of ethics is to avoid ever taking responsibility for anything, which is frankly fucking disgusting.

So you're okay with ethics that says knowledge is bad and ignorance is good?

That isn't what the above says: it says that if and only if the only thing that you care about is avoiding responsibility, in which case, quite frankly, you don't have any functioning ethical code at all.

Because if knowledge implies guilt, and ignorance implies lack of guilt, then knowledge makes people immoral, and ignorance makes people moral. The more ignorant people are, the more ethical they are. So knowledge is bad and ignorance is good.

If you're fine with that, then sure, I have nothing further to say. But somehow I don't think most people would be okay with that sort of ethical system.

"Guilt" and "responsibility" are not the same thing. You're only guilty if you don't use that knowledge to help people.

There are ontological "proofs" by philosophers, but I don't believe there is such a thing as an ontological proof.

I don't know what that means but its all conjecture and no science, right?

Yes. Those proofs all amount to "if we assume X, Y, and Z, which are all remarkably close to just assuming that god exists, then we can prove that god exists".

[Ashmoria]

that's the kind of thing I was thinking it was. it can never prove anything but how clever the writer is.

Yeah, all it really does is demonstrate how intellectually flawed language can be, and the writer capitalises on that fact and proclaims it as a 'proof'.

Hell, even Anselm reveals himself to be an idiot after his friend Guanilo argued against it by substituting the idea of 'a perfect God' with the idea of 'a perfect island'. He followed the exact same premises that Anselm laid out, and lead to the conclusion that the island existed because it was perfect - but obviously, it didn't exist. Anselm basically went full tantrum and said ''my argument only applies to God''.

lol


that's kinda why I don't take philosophy seriously.

[Ifreann]

The issue I take with Pascal's wager is that it assumes a dichotomy between the existence of a Christian god and the nonexistence of any god. Christians are just as likely to be damned to hell as atheists for their faith, or lack thereof, when you bear in mind that it's possible that Islam is the true faith, or Judaism, or the infinite array of other faiths we have dreamed up, and even the ones we haven't.

Reminds me of something Ricky Gervais brings up a fair bit

I'm an atheist. I don't believe in about 2,700 gods. Christians don't believe in 2,699. So they're nearly as atheistic as me.

"I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - some dude on the interbutt

[Godular]

that's the kind of thing I was thinking it was. it can never prove anything but how clever the writer is.

Yeah, all it really does is demonstrate how intellectually flawed language can be, and the writer capitalises on that fact and proclaims it as a 'proof'.

Hell, even Anselm reveals himself to be an idiot after his friend Guanilo argued against it by substituting the idea of 'a perfect God' with the idea of 'a perfect island'. He followed the exact same premises that Anselm laid out, and lead to the conclusion that the island existed because it was perfect - but obviously, it didn't exist. Anselm basically went full tantrum and said ''my argument only applies to God''.

Hoo! That's some MC5-level philosophical stupid there.

[The Lunar Domain]

I'm not really a philosophical genius, but here's the way I look at it.

I have no reason to believe there is a god, because, amongst other reasons, I think a god that demanded your worship to get into their heaven should have some immediately apparent and unquestionably undeniable sort of evidence. I'm not talking the miracle of the Bible, or something - I'm talking something that absolutely no one past, present, or future could ever disprove.

That said, here's what I have to say. If there is a god, and they're going to damn me for not believing in them, in spite of me trying to live the life the best I can to improve not only my own life, but the lives of others, just because I have reasonable justifications for questioning their existence, then I'll be happily damned. I think good ol' Thomas Paine put it nicely (yes, I know he was a Deist, but I think it's at least fifty percent likely that, had he the scientific information we have today in front of him, he would have been atheist):

"Thomas [the Apostle] did not believe the resurrection; and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I; and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other person, as for Thomas."

[Constantinopolis]

Wrong. We have copies of the Bible from the 4th century, which was the same century when the collection of books we call "the Bible" was actually put together for the first time. So we have copies of, if not the first edition of the Bible, then certainly an edition published only a few decades after the first.

Otherwise known as three centuries too late. That compilation is one of the many phases of later editing that I referred to.

What do you mean, "three centuries too late"? The Bible as we know it was only finished in the 4th century. You would like a copy of the Bible from 300 years before people decided to assemble those books together in something called "the Bible"?

There are older copies of individual books, of course, but no older copies of the Bible, because the thing we call "the Bible" is a collection of books that was assembled in the 4th century.

Really, this urban legend that "the Bible was heavily edited" just demonstrates atheist ignorance. No, we actually have ancient copies of the Bible, thank you very much.

You literally just linked to a vast amount of stuff that was edited out centuries after the fact, and now you're going to claim that it wasn't edited?

Are you seriously claiming that you KNOW a book was edited before the earliest known copy of that book? You do realize this is by definition an unprovable claim, right? By definition, we don't know what a book looked like before its earliest known copy, or whether it was edited or not. That's what "earliest known copy" means.

What we know about the Bible is that there are extremely few differences between its earliest known copy and the version we have today.

What may or may not have happened before the earliest known copy, is obviously unknown.

You dismiss testimony of God's existence out of hand? Why? Doesn't that make your atheism just an exercise in circular logic? "I see no evidence that God exists because I refuse to believe anyone who claims that he has personally met God."

Occam's Razor: hallucinations is the simplest available explanation.

There is nothing that makes this explanation "simpler" than the explanation that God exists.

"Occam's Razor", as used in online religion debates, is a worthless catchphrase that doesn't actually mean anything. You basically just pick the explanation you like and declare it to be the "simplest" for no real reason.

I have no reason to believe there is a god, because, amongst other reasons, I think a god that demanded your worship to get into their heaven should have some immediately apparent and unquestionably undeniable sort of evidence. I'm not talking the miracle of the Bible, or something - I'm talking something that absolutely no one past, present, or future could ever disprove.

Why? God is under no obligation to prove Himself to you, especially after He was proven Himself to thousands of other people and you atheists refused to believe them because God didn't prove Himself to you personally.

If I were any kind of deity, I'd find modern human atheists to be incredibly obnoxious spoiled children who complain that I can't possibly be a good entity unless I give them everything they want all the time with no strings attached.

Humans have no right to make any demands of deities - any more than ants have a right to make demands of humans. In ancient times, everyone understood this, including the atheists. Zeus was a massive dick to humans, yet no one refused to worship him because he was a dick. When they refused to worship him, it was for other reasons. No one complained that the gods were not good enough. I'm honestly not sure what happened to make modern atheists so entitled.

[Constantinopolis]

Sorry it took so long, got carried away with those other conversations, but this is a really basic fact. And I already provided the first citation before.

Citation 1: Orthodox Christians do not believe that all non-Christians go to Hell (or that all Christians go to Heaven, for that matter).
Citation 2: Catholics don't believe that either.

So that's two thirds of Christians right there.

And with this, I must bid everyone goodnight. Until next time!

Am I looking at the right bit of the second one? The language is all rather obtuse to me.

818 "However, one cannot charge with the sin of the separation those who at present are born into these communities [that resulted from such separation] and in them are brought up in the faith of Christ, and the Catholic Church accepts them with respect and affection as brothers .... All who have been justified by faith in Baptism are incorporated into Christ; they therefore have a right to be called Christians, and with good reason are accepted as brothers in the Lord by the children of the Catholic Church.

That's the part about non-Catholic Christians, yes. But then there is also this part about non-Christians:

847 "Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation."

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

If you're an atheist, why would you worry about a tenet of something you don't believe in?

[The Holy Therns]

If you're an atheist, why would you worry about a tenet of something you don't believe in?

Because, like, WHAT IF, man?

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

If you're an atheist, why would you worry about a tenet of something you don't believe in?

Because, like, WHAT IF, man?

Like, alright, man.

[Neanderthaland]

I don't know what that means but its all conjecture and no science, right?

Ontological arguments are often based in wordplay.

For example, Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God sets the precedent that God is ''that than which nothing greater can be conceived'', essentially making God this entity that is the greatest of the greats because if you can think of something that is greater than God, then you're thinking of God.

Then, it states that God is a premise that exists only within the mind. However, only existing within the mind is inferior to existing in both the mind (in intellectu) and in reality (in re), and thus this conception of God is not ''that than which nothing greater can be conceived" because you can conceive a God that exists in both reality and in the mind. Thus, this new God that exists in reality and in the mind is ''that than which nothing greater can be conceived", and therefore God exists.

In another form;

It is a conceptual truth (or, so to speak, true by definition) that God is a being than which none greater can be imagined (that is, the greatest possible being that can be imagined).

God exists as an idea in the mind.

A being that exists as an idea in the mind and in reality is, other things being equal, greater than a being that exists only as an idea in the mind.

Thus, if God exists only as an idea in the mind, then we can imagine something that is greater than God (that is, a greatest possible being that does exist).

But we cannot imagine something that is greater than God (for it is a contradiction to suppose that we can imagine a being greater than the greatest possible being that can be imagined.)

Therefore, God exists.

NOTE: Admittedly, off-topic, but I felt compelled to put my philosophy education to use.

My favorite refutation is to substitute "God" with "Mai Waifu"

[36 Camera Perspective]

that's the kind of thing I was thinking it was. it can never prove anything but how clever the writer is.

Yeah, all it really does is demonstrate how intellectually flawed language can be, and the writer capitalises on that fact and proclaims it as a 'proof'.

Hell, even Anselm reveals himself to be an idiot after his friend Guanilo argued against it by substituting the idea of 'a perfect God' with the idea of 'a perfect island'. He followed the exact same premises that Anselm laid out, and lead to the conclusion that the island existed because it was perfect - but obviously, it didn't exist. Anselm basically went full tantrum and said ''my argument only applies to God''.

Guanilo was the idiot.

That wasn't Anselm's argument. He responded by saying that an island can't be maximally great because islands are contingent entities, whereas a maximally great being exists by necessity, not contingently. Kant's rebuttal to Anselm is far more cogent (existence is a predicate of characteristics, not a characteristic an entity can have)

Yeah, all it really does is demonstrate how intellectually flawed language can be, and the writer capitalises on that fact and proclaims it as a 'proof'.

Hell, even Anselm reveals himself to be an idiot after his friend Guanilo argued against it by substituting the idea of 'a perfect God' with the idea of 'a perfect island'. He followed the exact same premises that Anselm laid out, and lead to the conclusion that the island existed because it was perfect - but obviously, it didn't exist. Anselm basically went full tantrum and said ''my argument only applies to God''.

lol


that's kinda why I don't take philosophy seriously.

Don't let an erroneous summarization of Anselm steer you away from philosophy.

[Constantinopolis]

He who does not take philosophy seriously must necessarily admit that he doesn't really know what is good and what is evil, or what he should be doing with his life. Because those are all philosophical questions.

[Godular]

He who does not take philosophy seriously must necessarily admit that he doesn't really know what is good and what is evil, or what he should be doing with his life. Because those are all philosophical questions.

Good and evil are subjective value judgements. Though, admittedly everything is, in the end.

[Dai Heiwa]

Atheists should worry, for those mislead by Iblis and deny the teachings of Prophet (saw) are reserved the foulest and lowest place in His Jahannam. Jazakallah.

[Angelhead]

Do Christians worry about unfavorable judgement from the crocodile god Anubis? It's honestly kind of a silly question.

[Ximea]

Do Christians worry about unfavorable judgement from the crocodile god Anubis? It's honestly kind of a silly question.

I thought Ammut was the crocodile god.

Heretic.

[Phrenics]

This does it...

Or this

[The Batorys]

After reading about Pascal's wager, do atheist worry about eternal damnation, or the possibility of it occurring (according to the bible)?

Personally, fear of eternal damnation is not my reason for belief in the bible however how can people be so dismissive of infinite loss compared to finite gains? Even though you may not accept the bible, does it not worry you slightly?

Because it's not as simple as a 50/50 coin flip.

There are any number of sects that could be correct or incorrect, and often one being correct means that others cannot be. Often their beliefs are mutually exclusive. Believing in one will mean eternal punishment if another is correct.

[Socialist Tera]

Why would an atheist care about something which does not exist in their eyes? I am Jewish but I understand why atheists believe what they do, I do hate it when Atheists try to tell me what I can and can't believe in though.