Theist : “Your denial of God, then is because, I have NOT provide objective evidence concerning the existence of a divine creator is actually true. But my belief is as strong as your disbelief, both cannot be right; do you admit this?â€
Atheist : “Most certainly†“Either you are mistaken or I amâ€.
Theist : “Very wellâ€, If you are right, there is no danger for me in threatening you with God’s displeasure for your disbeliefâ€.
Atheist : “Noâ€, “You shall be in no danger.â€
Theist : “If I am rightâ€, “Do you not think that you will suffer the punishment for your disbelief, and I shall receive a reward, for being away from your opinions?â€
Atheist : “Quite possiblyâ€
Theist : “Will you tell meâ€, “which of us is the wiser, granting the possibility of both the situations?â€
for a more in-depth look, read this http://www.al-islam.org/short/halila/
NO, God gave all human intellects but some
failed to grasp the mysteries.
“No imagination can fathom the reality of His attributes and no mind can grasp the mode of His entity. He is such a One that division or splitting into parts of His entity cannot even be imagine. The creation of universe caused Him no mental exertion. He has been existing since the eternity when there was no space devide into galaxies and no universe ( and no time also);
He destine matter and energy to be dissolve into time. He so arranged and consolidated these factors – matter, time and space that the intensity of their diverse and opposing properties was reduced….., to have their existence relative to and dependent upon time, thus giving matter time, and therefore,space a continuum that one cannot exist without the other two.â€
“He made every part of universe and everything in it dependent upon others, so that none could exist without the other ; time cannot exist without space or matter, similarly space cannot exist without time and matter and matter cannot exist without space and time and this triple alliance or triangle or interdependence is the general relativity.â€
†Remember that His Being is so far beyond range, and grasp of human knowledge, experience, reason, and visualisation that imagination cannot conceive Him and profound thinking cannot understand Him; however deep human mind may try to probe the secrets of God-head it cannot apprehend them and however keen and sincere may be the desire of human heart to grasp realities of His Attributes it cannot envisage them, He has so ordained that every attempt and endeavour to understand the Divine Nature has failed and will always fail. And man is force to realise that the Being of God and His Might, Glory and Power cannot be understood by him with the limited mental capacity that nature has granted him and with equally limited knowledge at his disposal.â€
for a more in-depth look, read this http://www.al-islam.org/nahjul/index.htm
begin with sermon number 1
There is also one more book where You can find out more,
http://www.al-islam.org/mufaddal/3.htm
some more, extracts,
“He said, “O Mufaddal! The waverers failed to grasp the mysteries and causes underlying the genesis of the creatures, and their intellects remain unaware of the faultless ingenuity subsisting underneath the creation of the varied species of the sea and the land, the level and the rough.â€
“If abiogenesis (spontaneous creation without specific design) can be admitted under such conditions of regularity, then purposeful generation and definitely balanced creation can be the result of error ad perplexity, since these two are opposed to abiogenesis.
Such a statement is highly absurd that order and rectitude should come about without a Creator, and disorder and impropriety of design and fate should suppose a Creator. He is unaware who says this, because anything produced without design will never be exact and proportioned, while disorder and contrariness cannot co-exist with orderly design. God is far above what they say.â€
“In their misguided blindness and bewilderment they are like the blind people groping right and left in a well-furnished, well-built house with fine carpets, luscious articles of food and drink, various kinds of clothing and other necessities of essential use, all adequately supplied in proper quantity and placed with perfect decorum and ingenious design. In their blindness they fail to see the building and its furnishing. They move about from one room to ,another, advancing and retreating. If by chance, any one of them finds anything in its place to supply a need, and not knowing the purpose for which it is set there and unaware of the underlying ingenuity, he might begin to reprimand the architect of the building in his offensive rage, whereas, as a matter of fact, the fault lies with his own inability to see.â€
“This analogy holds good in the case of the sect who deny the creative factor and the argument in favour of Divine Design. Failing to appreciate the merit of their provision, the perfection of creation and the beauty of design, they start wandering in the wide world, bewildered by their inability to grasp with their brains the underlying causes and principles.â€
“They became disbelievers, and because of a deficiency of their knowledge and puerility of intellect, began quibbling inimically with Truth, so much so that they denied creativeness and claimed that all this universe was meaningless and vain, without any ingenious design on the part of a Designer or Creator – a purposeless non-entity without balance or poise.â€
@jam
That’s nothing more than Pascal’s Wager. It only works if there was only one religion, hence why you say “Theist” instead of “Muslim”, “Christian”, “Jew”, “Buddhist”, etc. Since there are multiple religions, and given that there is no proof that of the existence of any, all of us have roughly an equal chance to suffer for eternity. Therefore the best option would be to believe in the religion with the worse hell in order to avoid it.
Of course, we can look at this from an economic point of view. Time is man’s most valuable resource since it is his most limited resource. If we assume that on average a theist spends 1 hour with daily rituals from age 5 to 75 (average life expectancy as well as the average age when most children start to understand what a god is) that gives us a total of ~25568 hours (counting leap years) spent worshiping.
25568 hours equals ~1065 days or a little under 3 years. Thus you have traded about 3 years of your life for the unverified promise of eternal life.
With 3 years of life, I could become a professional pianist, learn a new language, read thousands of books, travel the world, and do so many other things. Or I could give up all those life experiences for a non-guaranteed promise for eternal life. I think 3 years of my life is more valuable than that.
What if…. God gave us all critical minds! and the test is: all of the people who choose not to use this gift will be punished with eternal fire… that’d be a turn up for the books on the day of judgement ;)
Yes your are right! you can go play piano, its cool, but do you know the future? Do you know when you will kick the bucket? May be after the piano one can end up in hospital, what? aids,cancer, brain damage etc? what? poor soul so young? while the theist 80 years old arab with billions of dollars, still dreaming buying the gold piano? and wants to travel the world? 80years-3years-3-3…..etc. This old theist is not wise, he can kick the bucked anytime? but he says an 18 years old atheist kicked the bucked. If you -3 and another 3 years, still I lived long and a rich life, the the poor 18 year soul. I feel sorry for him. Glory to God!
You never know!
(There’s no moderation on your comments, sometimes the blog automatically holds comments before they get posted to stop spam, I generally try to approve them as fast as possible if they’re not spam)
“No imagination can fathom the reality of His attributes and no mind can grasp the mode of His entity.”
How can you apply such attributes to a being and then say that his attributes are unknowable?
It’s a conundrum – just like saying, “There are no absolutes.”
How can you be sure that god is unknowable and mysterious? You speak with such certainty only to say that you are uncertain in how god is and why he does the things that he does. This ambivalence is insanity.
Of course your response will be “faith” because that’s the only response you can muster. Faith means nothing more than coming up with the answer to an equation without actually looking at the numbers first.
Jam, you seem to have missed both my direction and my point. I was evaluating the promise of an afterlife with simple economic reasoning. I quantified the amount of resources (time) needed to satisfy the condition for an afterlife (this is assuming one lives a moral life, but that’s part of the time cost anyway.) I then compared it to the opportunity cost, i.e. what else you could have used that time for (happiness in this life.) My point was that the large trade off of time for a “promise” of an afterlife was irrational because of its large opportunity cost.
I used economic reasoning instead of, say “atheistic” reasoning just because I figured you have heard all the atheist reasons before. So since you have criticized my comment, I will criticize yours.
Jam: “but do you know the future?”
I’m going to guess that you are just as human as I am. As humans, our perception is stuck in the sliver of time called the “present” and are forever advancing towards the “future” at a steady pace. Thanks to our brain chemistry, we can make images of the “past” in order to make predictions of the “future.” But since we lack the capability to move about the time-dimension at freewill, we can never perceive the future with 100% accuracy. In short, I do not know the future. But likewise, neither do you.
Jam: (rambling, followed by a short concern for my soul)
I don’t know exactly what you were trying to say, and I’m not going to bother. I am a (volunteer) TA and I read enough incoherent papers a day. I’m guessing you are questioning what I would do after becoming an expert pianist. As stated before, you missed the point of my examples. All of those are things that I find to increase my overall happiness. There is no “what after” for those. To follow the piano analogy, I play the piano (poorly) because it makes me happy, not because I expect to get a reward from a greater good. Hearing my clumsy fingers is reward enough.
I’ll also ask you why you marked me as a “poor soul.” At what point did you feel the need to mark me as a “poor soul”? Rereading my original post, I do drop an “atheist” hint by questioning the afterlife and I am posting on a atheist blog after all, but I never stated outright that I am atheist. The only logical conclusion for you dubbing a “poor soul” is because I am not agreeing with you and you want to take the moral high ground in order to talk down to me as if I was child.
I’m going to disregard the rest of your comment because I’ve already answered it throughout this one. Note, at no time did I attack your person. I dislike your use of logical fallacies, your grammar and sentence structures, and your belief in a god. But I hold no opinion pertaining to you as a person.
Since I feel it’s improper to debate on the comments section of a blog (I do not know Ian personally, I just read his blog from time to time), if you want to continue this argument feel free to email me at .
Ben, I do apologize if you felt this way.
This was not meant for you as a person, rather a general statement.
The following post may sound harsh to you, if so, please let me know, and I will stop blogging on this blog.
You did not read the book?
Jafar al-Sadiq was born (702-765 AD) and
Blaise Pascal was born (1623-1662)
How can Sadiq who was born more than 900 years before Pascal go and copy Pascal?
Are you in the business of conjecture or lying ….. etc?
If it is ignorance, it is unexcusable! If it is intentional, it is devilish!
My suggestion, , life is too short, besides why not take up the challenge from the quran…. and find out.
17:88 Say: If whole of mankind and jinn should combine together to bring the like of this Quran, they could not bring the like of it, though some of them were aiders of others.
52:33 Or do they say: He has forged it. Nay! they do not believe.
52:34 Then let them bring an announcement like it if they are truthful.
This challenge is more than1356 years old, still not challenged.
If you are truthful, have a go at it.
Jam, you initially presented Pascal’s Wager pretty much verbatim in its native form. If, as you claim, you were quoting Jafar al-Sadiq you did not specify that. So, if anyone is being disingenuous, it’s you. But, we’re willing to accept any mistakes as such and avoid the ad hominem attacks, please do the same.
That being said, the logic of Pascal’s (or Jafar’s) Wager is flawed because it presupposes an afterlife. Not only that, it presupposes a SPECIFIC afterlife: one in which there is either eternal reward or eternal punishment. Since there has never been a single shred of evidence in all of the history of mankind to the existance of any god (yours isn’t the only one, you know) or even an afterlife, that’s a fairly large leap to make in an assumption. You must first, at least, prove the possibility of an afterlife/god/hell/heaven before you can argue if it’s worth wagering on. BTW, you can’t make that proof by using the books of the religions. You’ll need to provide real proof, not just some book that says the book itself is true. More on that later.
But, for the purposes of this argument only, I’ll grant you this one assumption that there is some form of higher power and/or an afterlife. While I am “five 9s” sure there isn’t, I’m open to the possibility given even the smallest verifiable evidence of my being wrong. Were one of the gods to stand in front of me, I wouldn’t attempt to solipistically wish them out of existance. But, their stepping up and showing themselves is a minimal first step to get me to believe. However, given that one assumption as true, you still need to prove that your specific version of the afterlife is the true one. For example, the mythology of Judaism, on which Islam is based, doesn’t consistently specify what happens in the afterlife. There is ample suggestion of reward and punishment, but they mostly occur in THIS life, not the afterlife. There are some books that mention a place of punishment (“Hell”), but those don’t count as they’re are considered apocryphal. As to other religions, some suggest a bifurcated afterlife, some suggest there isn’t one and others suggest that regardless of what you do in this life you’ll be either rewarded or punished for all eternity. There’s not only wide variation in beliefs in how to get to the afterlife, but what’s going to happen once you’re there! Suppose, for example, those who believe everyone’s punished or tortured for all eternity are the right ones? Doesn’t make more sense, therefore, to live this life to the fullest as it’s the only chance you’re going to have for joy??
So, aside from the “fact” that you were extremely fortunate enough to have been born to parents who just happen to follow the one true religion (lucky you!), what other proof do you have that Islam IS the one true religion? Have you investigated other religions thoroughly to ensure that they’re all wrong and Islam is 100% correct or did you limit your studies just to Islam? Can you tell me the difference, for example, between an Episcopalian Christian and a Protestant Christian as easily as you can tell me the difference between a Sunni, Shiite, Sufi, or Baha’ism Muslim? Can you even tell the differences between the Muslims? If not, you don’t know enough about their religion to be able to say for sure they’re not the ones on the right path. Why are the shepherds that made up Islam so much more in tune with “god” than those that made up Christ or Dionysis or Baccus or Mithra? (Props to those who see what I did there.) Hell, how can you even be sure that your own interpretation of the Qu’ran is correct when so many of your brethern disagree? Forget my own “soul”, what are YOU going to do if you die and it turns out the Christians or even the Sufi were right all along? Their god is going to be pretty pissed you worked your life to turn his people away from him and you’ll be swimming in the pit right alongside me. You’ll not only have wasted your life bowing and scraping to a god who wasn’t there, you’ll have wasted your eternal afterlife as well.
So, on to the logic…since a) there are so many disparate versions of god and what happens in the afterlife b) no one has any knowledge whatsoever of what happens when you die and c) you can’t know the mind of god to know if you’re on the right path…the logical conclusion is that everyone’s talking out of their assholes when it comes to religion. If there were a god who was so concerned that we didn’t get punished for all eternity, it’s only logical to assume that he would make damn sure that his wishes were clearly understood and not subject to such radical misinterpretation. I know, your response is “you can’t know the mind of god”. A fair assessment, but how do you follow a god who is going to send you to a firey pit for all eternity for not following rules that aren’t clearly laid out? How do I know for sure god doesn’t want me to cut my beard? How do I know for sure he’s okay with this temporary marriage or not? How do I know for sure Jesus WAS just a prohpet and not god’s son? Sure each religion claims to have clearly laid out rules, but considering the large scisms between groups of Islam, Christian and even Jewish followers, that argument is easily countered. Heck, you can’t even be sure that you’re getting 72 virgins or 72 raisins because the translations could go either way. Thus we come back to: which is the right path? Since there’s no way to determine the right path, the logical conclusion has to be that no matter which path you pick the likelyhood of picking the right one approaches nil very quickly. Given the thousands of religions and thousands of variations within those religions, your chances of picking the right six lottery numbers are an order of magnitude better than picking the right path to the afterlife.
Now that we’ve established there isn’t much chance of picking the right path that will lead to a pleasant afterlife, and that there’s absolutely no evidence of such an afterlife existing at all anyway, the question becomes: do I risk ruining the one chance I have at life for the extremely slim chance of eternal happiness? To quote Mr. Burns, “No, I think I’d be happier WITH the dollar.”
As you can see, your assumption isn’t so much “is there an afterlife?”, but that you’ve picked the right path to a pleasant one. Once you’ve grasped the subtle but dramatic difference between those two assumptions, you’ll finally grok where your logic has failed. You’ll then grasp that the specifics of the texts aren’t what’s important, just their central message: “Be Excellent To Each Other”. Ironically, not one religion follows that simple truism.
Now, for your follow-up: you’ll notice I didn’t quote anyone else in my response (well, aside from Bill, Ted and Mr. Burns. But, those were for dramatic effect. And, well, they’re fictionaly.). I would appreciate it if you would do the same. You will in no way ever be able to prove to me or anyone else with a brain that Islam or Christianity or Judaism or Thorism or Zeusism or Whateverism is correct by quoting the “holy texts” of those religions. If it were as simple as that, then I tell you that I am god and I am inerrant. See, the text says I am god, and my word is inerrant. Since my word is inerrant and I wrote the text, the text is therefore inerrant. Since the text is inerrant, I am god. See how easy it is for anyone to be god by just a simple application of circular logic? Please avoid trying to refute my argument with it.
You guys wrote too much stuff for third parties to read/follow….
Jam: I also got it from the start that you were using pascal’s wager, its nice but too childish for my taste.
If there is really a god, and if supposedly is a know-it-all, he/she (which ever his sex might be, just to be politically correct) will know that anyone trying to con him with pascal’s is full of bullshit, hence will also end up in hell with me for being atheist.
Either way, I like Epicurus’ wager better:
Is god willing to prevent evil, but no able?
Then he is not omnipotent
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able, and willing?
Then whence cometh evil
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him god!!!
Jun 02, 2008 @ 17:15:29
Theist : “Your denial of God, then is because, I have NOT provide objective evidence concerning the existence of a divine creator is actually true. But my belief is as strong as your disbelief, both cannot be right; do you admit this?â€
Atheist : “Most certainly†“Either you are mistaken or I amâ€.
Theist : “Very wellâ€, If you are right, there is no danger for me in threatening you with God’s displeasure for your disbeliefâ€.
Atheist : “Noâ€, “You shall be in no danger.â€
Theist : “If I am rightâ€, “Do you not think that you will suffer the punishment for your disbelief, and I shall receive a reward, for being away from your opinions?â€
Atheist : “Quite possiblyâ€
Theist : “Will you tell meâ€, “which of us is the wiser, granting the possibility of both the situations?â€
for a more in-depth look, read this http://www.al-islam.org/short/halila/
well wisher
Jun 02, 2008 @ 17:46:38
Atheist: “If you are correct than God has created me in a flawed way, for I think critically and do not believe that which cannot be proven.”
Jun 02, 2008 @ 18:03:19
NO, God gave all human intellects but some
failed to grasp the mysteries.
“No imagination can fathom the reality of His attributes and no mind can grasp the mode of His entity. He is such a One that division or splitting into parts of His entity cannot even be imagine. The creation of universe caused Him no mental exertion. He has been existing since the eternity when there was no space devide into galaxies and no universe ( and no time also);
He destine matter and energy to be dissolve into time. He so arranged and consolidated these factors – matter, time and space that the intensity of their diverse and opposing properties was reduced….., to have their existence relative to and dependent upon time, thus giving matter time, and therefore,space a continuum that one cannot exist without the other two.â€
“He made every part of universe and everything in it dependent upon others, so that none could exist without the other ; time cannot exist without space or matter, similarly space cannot exist without time and matter and matter cannot exist without space and time and this triple alliance or triangle or interdependence is the general relativity.â€
†Remember that His Being is so far beyond range, and grasp of human knowledge, experience, reason, and visualisation that imagination cannot conceive Him and profound thinking cannot understand Him; however deep human mind may try to probe the secrets of God-head it cannot apprehend them and however keen and sincere may be the desire of human heart to grasp realities of His Attributes it cannot envisage them, He has so ordained that every attempt and endeavour to understand the Divine Nature has failed and will always fail. And man is force to realise that the Being of God and His Might, Glory and Power cannot be understood by him with the limited mental capacity that nature has granted him and with equally limited knowledge at his disposal.â€
for a more in-depth look, read this http://www.al-islam.org/nahjul/index.htm
begin with sermon number 1
There is also one more book where You can find out more,
http://www.al-islam.org/mufaddal/3.htm
some more, extracts,
“He said, “O Mufaddal! The waverers failed to grasp the mysteries and causes underlying the genesis of the creatures, and their intellects remain unaware of the faultless ingenuity subsisting underneath the creation of the varied species of the sea and the land, the level and the rough.â€
“If abiogenesis (spontaneous creation without specific design) can be admitted under such conditions of regularity, then purposeful generation and definitely balanced creation can be the result of error ad perplexity, since these two are opposed to abiogenesis.
Such a statement is highly absurd that order and rectitude should come about without a Creator, and disorder and impropriety of design and fate should suppose a Creator. He is unaware who says this, because anything produced without design will never be exact and proportioned, while disorder and contrariness cannot co-exist with orderly design. God is far above what they say.â€
“In their misguided blindness and bewilderment they are like the blind people groping right and left in a well-furnished, well-built house with fine carpets, luscious articles of food and drink, various kinds of clothing and other necessities of essential use, all adequately supplied in proper quantity and placed with perfect decorum and ingenious design. In their blindness they fail to see the building and its furnishing. They move about from one room to ,another, advancing and retreating. If by chance, any one of them finds anything in its place to supply a need, and not knowing the purpose for which it is set there and unaware of the underlying ingenuity, he might begin to reprimand the architect of the building in his offensive rage, whereas, as a matter of fact, the fault lies with his own inability to see.â€
“This analogy holds good in the case of the sect who deny the creative factor and the argument in favour of Divine Design. Failing to appreciate the merit of their provision, the perfection of creation and the beauty of design, they start wandering in the wide world, bewildered by their inability to grasp with their brains the underlying causes and principles.â€
“They became disbelievers, and because of a deficiency of their knowledge and puerility of intellect, began quibbling inimically with Truth, so much so that they denied creativeness and claimed that all this universe was meaningless and vain, without any ingenious design on the part of a Designer or Creator – a purposeless non-entity without balance or poise.â€
best wishes
Jun 02, 2008 @ 19:26:49
@jam
That’s nothing more than Pascal’s Wager. It only works if there was only one religion, hence why you say “Theist” instead of “Muslim”, “Christian”, “Jew”, “Buddhist”, etc. Since there are multiple religions, and given that there is no proof that of the existence of any, all of us have roughly an equal chance to suffer for eternity. Therefore the best option would be to believe in the religion with the worse hell in order to avoid it.
Of course, we can look at this from an economic point of view. Time is man’s most valuable resource since it is his most limited resource. If we assume that on average a theist spends 1 hour with daily rituals from age 5 to 75 (average life expectancy as well as the average age when most children start to understand what a god is) that gives us a total of ~25568 hours (counting leap years) spent worshiping.
25568 hours equals ~1065 days or a little under 3 years. Thus you have traded about 3 years of your life for the unverified promise of eternal life.
With 3 years of life, I could become a professional pianist, learn a new language, read thousands of books, travel the world, and do so many other things. Or I could give up all those life experiences for a non-guaranteed promise for eternal life. I think 3 years of my life is more valuable than that.
Jun 15, 2011 @ 05:41:53
What if…. God gave us all critical minds! and the test is: all of the people who choose not to use this gift will be punished with eternal fire… that’d be a turn up for the books on the day of judgement ;)
Jun 02, 2008 @ 20:58:30
Yes your are right! you can go play piano, its cool, but do you know the future? Do you know when you will kick the bucket? May be after the piano one can end up in hospital, what? aids,cancer, brain damage etc? what? poor soul so young? while the theist 80 years old arab with billions of dollars, still dreaming buying the gold piano? and wants to travel the world? 80years-3years-3-3…..etc. This old theist is not wise, he can kick the bucked anytime? but he says an 18 years old atheist kicked the bucked. If you -3 and another 3 years, still I lived long and a rich life, the the poor 18 year soul. I feel sorry for him. Glory to God!
You never know!
Why does it take so long moderating my comments?
well wisher
Jun 02, 2008 @ 23:31:46
(There’s no moderation on your comments, sometimes the blog automatically holds comments before they get posted to stop spam, I generally try to approve them as fast as possible if they’re not spam)
Jun 02, 2008 @ 23:36:59
“No imagination can fathom the reality of His attributes and no mind can grasp the mode of His entity.”
How can you apply such attributes to a being and then say that his attributes are unknowable?
It’s a conundrum – just like saying, “There are no absolutes.”
How can you be sure that god is unknowable and mysterious? You speak with such certainty only to say that you are uncertain in how god is and why he does the things that he does. This ambivalence is insanity.
Of course your response will be “faith” because that’s the only response you can muster. Faith means nothing more than coming up with the answer to an equation without actually looking at the numbers first.
Jun 03, 2008 @ 15:02:18
Jam, you seem to have missed both my direction and my point. I was evaluating the promise of an afterlife with simple economic reasoning. I quantified the amount of resources (time) needed to satisfy the condition for an afterlife (this is assuming one lives a moral life, but that’s part of the time cost anyway.) I then compared it to the opportunity cost, i.e. what else you could have used that time for (happiness in this life.) My point was that the large trade off of time for a “promise” of an afterlife was irrational because of its large opportunity cost.
I used economic reasoning instead of, say “atheistic” reasoning just because I figured you have heard all the atheist reasons before. So since you have criticized my comment, I will criticize yours.
Jam: “but do you know the future?”
I’m going to guess that you are just as human as I am. As humans, our perception is stuck in the sliver of time called the “present” and are forever advancing towards the “future” at a steady pace. Thanks to our brain chemistry, we can make images of the “past” in order to make predictions of the “future.” But since we lack the capability to move about the time-dimension at freewill, we can never perceive the future with 100% accuracy. In short, I do not know the future. But likewise, neither do you.
Jam: (rambling, followed by a short concern for my soul)
I don’t know exactly what you were trying to say, and I’m not going to bother. I am a (volunteer) TA and I read enough incoherent papers a day. I’m guessing you are questioning what I would do after becoming an expert pianist. As stated before, you missed the point of my examples. All of those are things that I find to increase my overall happiness. There is no “what after” for those. To follow the piano analogy, I play the piano (poorly) because it makes me happy, not because I expect to get a reward from a greater good. Hearing my clumsy fingers is reward enough.
I’ll also ask you why you marked me as a “poor soul.” At what point did you feel the need to mark me as a “poor soul”? Rereading my original post, I do drop an “atheist” hint by questioning the afterlife and I am posting on a atheist blog after all, but I never stated outright that I am atheist. The only logical conclusion for you dubbing a “poor soul” is because I am not agreeing with you and you want to take the moral high ground in order to talk down to me as if I was child.
I’m going to disregard the rest of your comment because I’ve already answered it throughout this one. Note, at no time did I attack your person. I dislike your use of logical fallacies, your grammar and sentence structures, and your belief in a god. But I hold no opinion pertaining to you as a person.
Since I feel it’s improper to debate on the comments section of a blog (I do not know Ian personally, I just read his blog from time to time), if you want to continue this argument feel free to email me at .
Jun 03, 2008 @ 20:20:19
Ben, I do apologize if you felt this way.
This was not meant for you as a person, rather a general statement.
The following post may sound harsh to you, if so, please let me know, and I will stop blogging on this blog.
You did not read the book?
Jafar al-Sadiq was born (702-765 AD) and
Blaise Pascal was born (1623-1662)
How can Sadiq who was born more than 900 years before Pascal go and copy Pascal?
Are you in the business of conjecture or lying ….. etc?
If it is ignorance, it is unexcusable! If it is intentional, it is devilish!
My suggestion, , life is too short, besides why not take up the challenge from the quran…. and find out.
17:88 Say: If whole of mankind and jinn should combine together to bring the like of this Quran, they could not bring the like of it, though some of them were aiders of others.
52:33 Or do they say: He has forged it. Nay! they do not believe.
52:34 Then let them bring an announcement like it if they are truthful.
This challenge is more than1356 years old, still not challenged.
If you are truthful, have a go at it.
well wisher
Jun 04, 2008 @ 10:55:12
Jam, you initially presented Pascal’s Wager pretty much verbatim in its native form. If, as you claim, you were quoting Jafar al-Sadiq you did not specify that. So, if anyone is being disingenuous, it’s you. But, we’re willing to accept any mistakes as such and avoid the ad hominem attacks, please do the same.
That being said, the logic of Pascal’s (or Jafar’s) Wager is flawed because it presupposes an afterlife. Not only that, it presupposes a SPECIFIC afterlife: one in which there is either eternal reward or eternal punishment. Since there has never been a single shred of evidence in all of the history of mankind to the existance of any god (yours isn’t the only one, you know) or even an afterlife, that’s a fairly large leap to make in an assumption. You must first, at least, prove the possibility of an afterlife/god/hell/heaven before you can argue if it’s worth wagering on. BTW, you can’t make that proof by using the books of the religions. You’ll need to provide real proof, not just some book that says the book itself is true. More on that later.
But, for the purposes of this argument only, I’ll grant you this one assumption that there is some form of higher power and/or an afterlife. While I am “five 9s” sure there isn’t, I’m open to the possibility given even the smallest verifiable evidence of my being wrong. Were one of the gods to stand in front of me, I wouldn’t attempt to solipistically wish them out of existance. But, their stepping up and showing themselves is a minimal first step to get me to believe. However, given that one assumption as true, you still need to prove that your specific version of the afterlife is the true one. For example, the mythology of Judaism, on which Islam is based, doesn’t consistently specify what happens in the afterlife. There is ample suggestion of reward and punishment, but they mostly occur in THIS life, not the afterlife. There are some books that mention a place of punishment (“Hell”), but those don’t count as they’re are considered apocryphal. As to other religions, some suggest a bifurcated afterlife, some suggest there isn’t one and others suggest that regardless of what you do in this life you’ll be either rewarded or punished for all eternity. There’s not only wide variation in beliefs in how to get to the afterlife, but what’s going to happen once you’re there! Suppose, for example, those who believe everyone’s punished or tortured for all eternity are the right ones? Doesn’t make more sense, therefore, to live this life to the fullest as it’s the only chance you’re going to have for joy??
So, aside from the “fact” that you were extremely fortunate enough to have been born to parents who just happen to follow the one true religion (lucky you!), what other proof do you have that Islam IS the one true religion? Have you investigated other religions thoroughly to ensure that they’re all wrong and Islam is 100% correct or did you limit your studies just to Islam? Can you tell me the difference, for example, between an Episcopalian Christian and a Protestant Christian as easily as you can tell me the difference between a Sunni, Shiite, Sufi, or Baha’ism Muslim? Can you even tell the differences between the Muslims? If not, you don’t know enough about their religion to be able to say for sure they’re not the ones on the right path. Why are the shepherds that made up Islam so much more in tune with “god” than those that made up Christ or Dionysis or Baccus or Mithra? (Props to those who see what I did there.) Hell, how can you even be sure that your own interpretation of the Qu’ran is correct when so many of your brethern disagree? Forget my own “soul”, what are YOU going to do if you die and it turns out the Christians or even the Sufi were right all along? Their god is going to be pretty pissed you worked your life to turn his people away from him and you’ll be swimming in the pit right alongside me. You’ll not only have wasted your life bowing and scraping to a god who wasn’t there, you’ll have wasted your eternal afterlife as well.
So, on to the logic…since a) there are so many disparate versions of god and what happens in the afterlife b) no one has any knowledge whatsoever of what happens when you die and c) you can’t know the mind of god to know if you’re on the right path…the logical conclusion is that everyone’s talking out of their assholes when it comes to religion. If there were a god who was so concerned that we didn’t get punished for all eternity, it’s only logical to assume that he would make damn sure that his wishes were clearly understood and not subject to such radical misinterpretation. I know, your response is “you can’t know the mind of god”. A fair assessment, but how do you follow a god who is going to send you to a firey pit for all eternity for not following rules that aren’t clearly laid out? How do I know for sure god doesn’t want me to cut my beard? How do I know for sure he’s okay with this temporary marriage or not? How do I know for sure Jesus WAS just a prohpet and not god’s son? Sure each religion claims to have clearly laid out rules, but considering the large scisms between groups of Islam, Christian and even Jewish followers, that argument is easily countered. Heck, you can’t even be sure that you’re getting 72 virgins or 72 raisins because the translations could go either way. Thus we come back to: which is the right path? Since there’s no way to determine the right path, the logical conclusion has to be that no matter which path you pick the likelyhood of picking the right one approaches nil very quickly. Given the thousands of religions and thousands of variations within those religions, your chances of picking the right six lottery numbers are an order of magnitude better than picking the right path to the afterlife.
Now that we’ve established there isn’t much chance of picking the right path that will lead to a pleasant afterlife, and that there’s absolutely no evidence of such an afterlife existing at all anyway, the question becomes: do I risk ruining the one chance I have at life for the extremely slim chance of eternal happiness? To quote Mr. Burns, “No, I think I’d be happier WITH the dollar.”
As you can see, your assumption isn’t so much “is there an afterlife?”, but that you’ve picked the right path to a pleasant one. Once you’ve grasped the subtle but dramatic difference between those two assumptions, you’ll finally grok where your logic has failed. You’ll then grasp that the specifics of the texts aren’t what’s important, just their central message: “Be Excellent To Each Other”. Ironically, not one religion follows that simple truism.
Now, for your follow-up: you’ll notice I didn’t quote anyone else in my response (well, aside from Bill, Ted and Mr. Burns. But, those were for dramatic effect. And, well, they’re fictionaly.). I would appreciate it if you would do the same. You will in no way ever be able to prove to me or anyone else with a brain that Islam or Christianity or Judaism or Thorism or Zeusism or Whateverism is correct by quoting the “holy texts” of those religions. If it were as simple as that, then I tell you that I am god and I am inerrant. See, the text says I am god, and my word is inerrant. Since my word is inerrant and I wrote the text, the text is therefore inerrant. Since the text is inerrant, I am god. See how easy it is for anyone to be god by just a simple application of circular logic? Please avoid trying to refute my argument with it.
Jun 15, 2008 @ 18:37:00
You guys wrote too much stuff for third parties to read/follow….
Jam: I also got it from the start that you were using pascal’s wager, its nice but too childish for my taste.
If there is really a god, and if supposedly is a know-it-all, he/she (which ever his sex might be, just to be politically correct) will know that anyone trying to con him with pascal’s is full of bullshit, hence will also end up in hell with me for being atheist.
Either way, I like Epicurus’ wager better:
Is god willing to prevent evil, but no able?
Then he is not omnipotent
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able, and willing?
Then whence cometh evil
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him god!!!
Jun 16, 2008 @ 15:10:11
I wouldn’t wait for a reply from Jam. I accepted his challenge and showed him the error of his ways. He’s living happily as an atheist now.
Oct 18, 2010 @ 11:07:19
ur athiest…ur mensooo…loosers…
Oct 18, 2010 @ 11:10:35
what the fuck did you just say?
Oct 18, 2010 @ 11:33:00
What the fuck happened here?
Oct 18, 2010 @ 12:25:48
I guess someone couldn’t figure out how to use the “quote” button.
Oct 18, 2010 @ 16:58:28
Don’t worry about it.
Oct 08, 2014 @ 04:13:13
A link back to the original, which is also (now?) in colour: http://www.tmcm.com/tmcm/god-fearing-atheist/