Pascal's Wager Revisited

Originally posted by JS357
It depends on the individual. I believe the reasons for an individual to act morally within a society can vary, from self-interest reward/punishment to duty, and a successful society will find a way to motivate its members in terms of their reasons, to act in accordance with its moral standards.

So surely almost all those reasons would change significantly if God exists?

Originally posted by JS357
... and a successful society will find a way to motivate its members in terms of their reasons, to act in accordance with its moral standards.

What type of morality are we talking about here? Standards set by society, or the concept relating to well being? They are not the same thing.

Originally posted by JS357
What do you (anyone) think of this idea:

We should live the same way, regardless of whether God exists, and regardless of whether we believe God exists. This is because what is moral is moral regardless of whether God exists and regardless of whether we believe God exists. Some say that faith is essential to salvation. Be that as it may be, faith does not change something that we should do into something we should not do.

Well what way would that be?
Do we each get to say what is good and bad?
Do we each get to take what we want when we want it?
Do we each get to set our own standards on what is acceptable and not?
Would there be anything to bind unlike minded people outside of force?

Personally I think the only reason we have not tore each other up already is
because of God's mercy and influence on our lives, those that belong to Him
and on those that do not.

I see God and His Word as a plumb line that show right and wrong, up and
down for human life. Without it, I don't think there would be a "right" and
a "wrong" except where it could be forced upon others.

Look around do you see any government anywhere that isn't slowly taking
more and more control over everyone's lives? It is our nature to do this,
and it doesn't always end well.

Originally posted by KellyJay
Personally I think the only reason we have not tore each other up already is
because of God's mercy and influence on our lives, those that belong to Him
and on those that do not.

I see God and His Word as a plumb line that show right and wrong, up and
down for human life. Without it, I don't think there would be a "right" and
a "wrong" except where i ...[text shortened]... ore control over everyone's lives? It is our nature to do this,
and it doesn't always end well.

And the sad part is that you probably think most of that is true.

I am not sure whether to be insulted by your claim that I am only good because of Gods influence on me.

I know for a fact that you do not actually use His Word as a plumb line. What you do, is you have a plumb line, and you use that to interpret His Word to fit it.

As for governments, why are they slowly taking more and more control over everyone's lives if God's mercy and influence is there? You are contradicting yourself. You cannot say 'we would be worse if ...' and then later 'see, we are actually worse - I have proved it!'.

And I dispute your claim that every government is slowly taking more and more control over everyone's lives. Try to stop watching Fox News.

Originally posted by twhitehead
And the sad part is that you probably think most of that is true.

I am not sure whether to be insulted by your claim that I am only good because of Gods influence on me.

I know for a fact that you do not actually use His Word as a plumb line. What you do, is you have a plumb line, and you use that to interpret His Word to fit it.

As for governme ...[text shortened]... ent is slowly taking more and more control over everyone's lives. Try to stop watching Fox News.

Fox News is fair and balanced, they report we decide. It is the commentary on the news that is mostly conservative. I watch it because I am a Holy Bible believing conservative Christian. 😏

Originally posted by RJHinds
Fox News is fair and balanced

Muhaaaahahahahahahahhahaaahhahaha...

*chortle*

*cough*

Erm, no.

Fox is Fair(tm) and Balanced(c 2004 Rupert Murdoch). Fox has, indeed wants, nothing to do with the real meaning of those words.

Originally posted by twhitehead
So surely almost all those reasons would change significantly if God exists?

It is possible for nonbeliever to have different reasons to act morally would change if God exists or more to the point if they believe God exists. For example they might have a sense of duty replaced by a fear of punishment. I suppose it is also possible that the acts they perform could change. My comments are more an exhortation that a factual claim. The exhortatory nature of moral claims is part of moral/ethical theory. I am exhorting you to have a moral code that will not depend on belief or disbelief that God exists.

Originally posted by KellyJay
Well what way would that be?
Do we each get to say what is good and bad?
Do we each get to take what we want when we want it?
Do we each get to set our own standards on what is acceptable and not?
Would there be anything to bind unlike minded people outside of force?

Personally I think the only reason we have not tore each other up already is
becaus ...[text shortened]... ore control over everyone's lives? It is our nature to do this,
and it doesn't always end well.

As I just said to TW:

My comments are more an exhortation that a factual claim. The exhortatory nature of moral claims is part of moral/ethical theory. I am exhorting you to have a moral code that will not depend on belief or disbelief that God exists.

I think any God worthy of the name would want that.

Originally posted by JS357
I am exhorting you to have a moral code that will not depend on belief or disbelief that God exists.

Why? Do you have any reason for that?

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Pascal's Wager Revisited

Criticism (Page 5)

Criticism of Pascal's Wager began in his own day, and came from both atheists, who question the 'benefits' of a deity whose 'realm' is beyond reason, and the religiously orthodox, who primarily take issue with the wager's deistic and agnostic language. It is criticized for not pr ...[text shortened]... said "I bet"[15]... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager#Criticism (to be continued)

Pascal's Wager Revisited

Arguments for: 1) The argument from beauty (also the aesthetic argument) is an argument for the existence of a realm of immaterial Ideas or, most commonly, for the existence of God.

History of the Argument

The argument from beauty has two aspects. The first is connected with the independent existence of what philosophers term a 'universal', see Universal (metaphysics) and also Problem of universals. Plato argued that particular examples of, say a circle, all fall short of the perfect exemplar of a circle that exists outside the realm of the senses as an eternal Idea. Beauty for Plato is a particularly important type of universal. Perfect beauty exists only in the eternal Form of beauty, see Platonic epistemology. For Plato the argument for a timeless idea of beauty does not involve so much whether the gods exist (Plato was not a monotheist) but rather whether there is an immaterial realm independent and superior to the imperfect world of sense. Later Greek thinkers such as Plotinus (ca. 204/5–270 CE) expanded Plato’s argument to support the existence of a totally transcendent "One", containing no parts. Plotinus identified this "One" with the concept of 'Good' and the principle of 'Beauty'. Christianity adopted this Neo-Platonic conception and saw it as a strong argument for the existence of a supreme God. In the early fifth century, for example, Augustine of Hippo discusses the many beautiful things in nature and asks "Who made these beautiful changeable things, if not one who is beautiful and unchangeable?"[1] This second aspect is what most people today understand as the argument from beauty.

Richard Swinburne

A contemporary British philosopher of religion, Richard Swinburne, known for philosophical arguments about the existence of God, advocates a variation of the argument from beauty:

"God has reason to make a basically beautiful world, although also reason to leave some of the beauty or ugliness of the world within the power of creatures to determine; but he would seem to have overriding reason not to make a basically ugly world beyond the powers of creatures to improve. Hence, if there is a God there is more reason to expect a basically beautiful world than a basically ugly one. A priori, however, there is no particular reason for expecting a basically beautiful rather than a basically ugly world. In consequence, if the world is beautiful, that fact would be evidence for God's existence. For, in this case, if we let k be 'there is an orderly physical universe', e be 'there is a beautiful universe', and h be 'there is a God', P(e/h.k) will be greater than P(e/k)... Few, however, would deny that our universe (apart from its animal and human inhabitants, and aspects subject to their immediate control) has that beauty. Poets and painters and ordinary men down the centuries have long admired the beauty of the orderly procession of the heavenly bodies, the scattering of the galaxies through the heavens (in some ways random, in some ways orderly), and the rocks, sea, and wind interacting on earth, 'The spacious firmament on high, and all the blue ethereal sky', the water lapping against 'the old eternal rocks', and the plants of the jungle and of temperate climates, contrasting with the desert and the Arctic wastes. Who in his senses would deny that here is beauty in abundance? If we confine ourselves to the argument from the beauty of the inanimate and plant worlds, the argument surely works." [2]

Art as a Route To God

The most frequent invocation of the argument from beauty today involves the aesthetic experience one obtains from great literature, music or art. In the concert hall or museum one can easily feel carried away from the mundane. For many people this feeling of transcendence approaches the religious in intensity. It is a commonplace to regard concert halls and museums as the cathedrals of the modern age because they seem to translate beauty into meaning and transcendence.

Dostoevsky was a proponent of the transcendent nature of beauty. His enigmatic statement: "Beauty will save the world" is frequently cited.[3] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his Nobel Prize lecture reflected upon this phrase:

And so perhaps that old trinity of Truth and Good and Beauty is not just the formal outworn formula it used to seem to us during our heady, materialistic youth. If the crests of these three trees join together, as the investigators and explorers used to affirm, and if the too obvious, too straight branches of Truth and Good are crushed or amputated and cannot reach the light—yet perhaps the whimsical, unpredictable, unexpected branches of Beauty will make their way through and soar up to that very place and in this way perform the work of all three. And in that case it was not a slip of the tongue for Dostoyevsky to say that "Beauty will save the world" but a prophecy. After all, he was given the gift of seeing much, he was extraordinarily illumined. And consequently perhaps art, literature, can in actual fact help the world of today.[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_beauty (to be continued)

Posted in reply to FMF on page 5 and included here as a preview of for and against arguments still to be presented:

"1) That Blaise Pascal was seeker of absolute truth; 2) That if he was here today his investigative threads and posts wouldn't be viewed as the work product of a troll; 3) That he died at an incredibly young age [39] by 2015 actuarial standards; 4) That any and all "shortcomings" of his wager will become apparent as we explore the "Criticisms; Arguments for: Beauty, Christological, Consciousness, Cosmological (kalām· contingency), Degree, Desire, Experience, Fine-tuned universe, Love, Miracles, Morality, Ontological, Proper basis, Reason, Teleological (natural law watchmaker), Transcendental." As well as Arguments against: 747 gambit, Atheist's Wager, Evil, Free will, Hell, Inconsistent revelations, Nonbelief, Noncognitivism, Occam's razor, Omnipotence paradox, Poor design and Russell's teapot" if warranted by the level of objective interest.

The sole focus of this thread is the final question at the end of the original post which Pascal himself apparently never asked: "What if there is a Sovereign God responsible for creation of the universe as well as the creation of human life [beings with both a temporal body and an eternal soul] Who doesn't give a damn about reconciling fallen mankind unto Himself?"

Originally posted by JS357
The exhortatory nature of moral claims is part of moral/ethical theory.

I totally disagree.

Can you at least clarify what sort of morals we are discussing here? There are two basic meanings for the word which often get confused. ( I don't think either meaning has an exhortatory nature ).

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Pascal's Wager Revisited

Why do you continue the copious copy / pastes when you have already admitted you have no interest in discussing Pascals Wager and the whole purpose of the OP was to discuss something else you tagged on to the end of your OP, which you are yet to actually discuss at all?

Originally posted by twhitehead
Why? Do you have any reason for that?

Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg%27s_stages_of_moral_development

While Kohlberg's ideas are subject to criticism and revision (hallmarks of science) they tell me something about (some) theistic morality that I find troubling.

It is that some theistic morality is stuck at the reward/punishment level of moral development, and some theistic morality amounts to doing whatever a stern master says without thinking about consequences for individuals or for humanity as a whole.

I propose that this can be avoided by detaching moral values from the existence of God. This is not to say I am promoting atheism.

It can be analogous to the following. When I was young, I did not know right from wrong. My parents used reward and punishment when needed, including leading me to seek their approval. Then later, in their absence, I faced new situations and had to rely on what I had learned. I could call them, of course.

Later than that, they were gone.

It made no difference. I was operating at a higher level of moral development.

That's what I mean.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Why do you continue the copious copy / pastes when you have already admitted you have no interest in discussing Pascals Wager and the whole purpose of the OP was to discuss something else you tagged on to the end of your OP, which you are yet to actually discuss at all?

Originally posted in reply to twhitehead on page 5 by Grampy Bobby
Without Blaise Pascal and his wager, you and I wouldn't be having this conversation. Please remain objective. Thanks.
____________________________

Ask any focused/objective question on this exploratory topic you wish, twhitehead. If I'm qualified to answer it, I will.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I totally disagree.

Can you at least clarify what sort of morals we are discussing here? There are two basic meanings for the word which often get confused. ( I don't think either meaning has an exhortatory nature ).

You don't think moral/ethical theory includes the idea that moral claims are best explained as exhortations? It is a fact, as a search on exhortation moral theory will show.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotivism

I'm not asking for your agreement with the theory.