Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “figure”, shows the barmaid arguing again about the beliefs of the Divine Duo, and once again we see their defining trope: hypocrisy. As for how to live a moral life without religion, you should all know how to do that now. Secular humanism is one alternative, and dozens of atheists manage to live upright and moral lives.
I love to ask believers how they know they have the “right” religion. Some say it doesn’t matter, few are willing to admit that they simply inherited their faith and have come to believe what they learned from their parents, and there are a few chowderheads like the Discovery Institute’s Michael Egnor who thinks they just know:
I will speak here from the Christian perspective as it is the one with which I am the most familiar. The Christian has faith that he has access to truth because he believes that he has been created by a wise and loving God who guarantees this access to truth to him. Indeed this is a radical faith — we can be certain of nothing — but faith in God provides us with a coherent warrant to trust our capacity for reason. Christians have faith, and their faith makes a sensible and grounded belief in reason possible.
Do you understand that? (I don’t.) It seems to say that faith in God (he doesn’t say how this is acquired) gives us trust in reason, and that reason confirms that Christianity is the “right” faith.
That’s the first bit of humor for the day (have a look at the rest of the egnorance in that piece), and here’s the second. (Don’t forget to subscribe to Jesus and Mo if you have some dosh—$1, $2, or $4 per month—to spare.)
That’s the biggest flaw in Pascal’s Wager, too. I’ve occasionally had people try using Pascal on me, at which point I ask if that means I should abandon the Greek Pantheon in favor of the Norse Pantheon. It leaves them nonplussed, to say the least.
So many of the arguments for God have a completely unjustified and unjustifiable last step which leaps directly from “therefore God” to “therefore the Christian god”. Sometimes, it’s an even bigger leap. For example, the Kalam cosmological argument starts off like this:
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
which is a valid logical argument, except that I think both premises are questionable. However Christians (it’s always Christians) will then leap to
4. and that cause is God who sent his only son to save us from our sins and the Bible is all true.
I seem to recall Pascal did a study on this and decided on the best religion to meet the demands of his wager.
Apparently we are to be Catholics
Quelle suprise
Pascal’s wager doesn’t support Norse religion. It requires a religion with an afterlife based on belief. It isn’t specific to Christianity, but it does require a religion where belief is important, which is not true of most pagan religions (except for getting success in the present life by favor of the gods).
Norse, definitely, as a Northern European by descent Thor and Odin etc are favourites.
When it comes down to ‘the gods of our people’/’the gods of our ancestors’ vs. ‘the gods that feel right’, I have a gut preference for the gods that feel right, which, for me, is the Greek pantheon. The characteristics of humanity which the Greeks chose to deify (wisdom, wine, the arts) resonate with me more than the characteristics that the Norse, various Semitic tribes, or or other demographics chose. (It doesn’t mean that they physically exist on top of Mount Olympus, any more than any of the other gods exist.They just feel right.)
In any case, most monotheism in the West and MENA over the last millennium is just the result of colonialism and cultural misappropriation; various institutions (Empires and Caliphates alike) took Asian religions and then forced them on most of Europe, which then spread them over the world.
(Please please please try both sets of arguments on religionists. It’s fun to watch them stammer. The first works best on the ‘You come to truth through faith; you come to faith through what feels right’ crowd; the second works on New Right nationalists and New Left anti-colonialists alike.)
It is incoherent. Like so many others, I think he just wants to believe. Living without god is what humans have effectively done for thousands of years — they made up the rules. It’s like living without Santa Claus.
Egnor is not giving Christianity enough credit. That faith gives it’s Catholic believers access to the truth of Papal infallibility AND it’s Protestant believers access to the truth of sola scriptura AND it’s Mormon believers access to the truth of the book of Mormon, AND it’s Orthodox believers…
Really, it’s quite amazing all the different truths Christian faith gives access to.
True that!… and those….and those …and ooh! look! Another way to control the sheeple…
I see that Mr. Egnor, like Baron Münchhausen, is able to pull himself (and the horse(shit) on which he sits) from the muck of uncertainty by his own hair.
The crux of the delusion:
“…but faith in God provides us with a coherent warrant to trust our capacity for reason.”
This provides themselves permission to delude themselves. Permission to believe that they are special, so special that the universe was created just for them and their eternal souls. These are some sick puppies. GROG
It was once said that despite the fatal start from the genocide of the indigenous people in the USA, atheists and theists managed to get along when it was, for example, the construction of a bridge. That’s why the USA was spinning somehow. Nails are said to be indifferent to who nails them. Today the US is more divided than theologians once dreamed. Politics and power are a terrible drug for many.
I cannot find the excitement of myself for religious and atheistic topics. Personally, I prefer to think I grew out of it.