I can only add to this discussion my own personal thoughts and beliefs, which as usual are far from the norm, but it's taken me a long time to get comfortable within my own domain.

A lady asked me on an airplane one time what is my religion. Without any thought, I replied, "I'm a Zen Christian. I believe that we should treat others better than we would have them treat us. And I believe our purpose on Earth is enlightenment. Our greatest gift is the ability to learn. As long as we're exploring every possibility, improving on what we've learned and always learning something new, then we are using that great gift to be the best we can be."

My wife always seems surprised that I believe in God. Not her God, or the Christian or Moslem or any other "God," but in something greater than ourselves. The ancient Hebrews had no word for God. If you can know God, he's not God, but an image created in our own likeness. I cannot get through a day without marvelling over how perfect it all is. A flower or a child. The beautiful sky or the perfection of the ecosystem in the ocean reef behind the glass in my aquarium. How it all works so simply and yet so complex. Maybe it really is just an accident, the one place in the Universe that it happened, or some force greater than we can know had a hand in it all. I don't know, and frankly don't care at all. I can accept it, either way. I can believe in a greater power with no hesitation at all. I have all the proof I need. It's all around me, everyday. Proof enough. Were there any more proof, then perhaps it wouldn't be the same. There certainly would be less wonder in it all, for me. I would then have no more choice in what to believe, but would have to conform, which may not be what God, if He does exist, planned for us, anyway. He gave us the ability to make a choice, and so we use that ability.

Faith in something is just that, faith. If you can prove it, it doesn't require faith. It is no longer something that requires faith.

I smile when people argue Creationism vs Evolution. The people who wrote the Bible seemed to have gotten pretty close to explaining how it all happened, given their limited scientific knowledge at the time. Pretty good guesses. That's all it was, just a very smart group of people trying to answer the question, how did we get here? That anyone would believe that it was the word of God, to me, is absurd. Divinely inspired? Of course. Our minds are so special that to think there can't be a higher power guiding us is also absurd. There may be, nor may be not. It doesn't matter, really. We just are. That may have been His purpose in the first place. If He does exist or ever existed. We can't know this beyond doubt, for if we could, there would be no God. If we know Him, then he's not God, I think.

There is a balance to it all. There is evil, so we can know good. There is right and there is wrong and we have to make the choice, which is why we have a mind. By definition, God is perfect and there is perfection all around us. We are imperfect, but have the capability of improvement. We are not God, and are incapable of knowing Him, for we have not the ability to achieve perfection. I have my proof that something higher exists, and it's all I need. Others need more, some need much less. If God exists, he exists within each and every one of us.

The question is unanswerable, as it should be. There is no answer, which is the answer for me. I can live with it. If there really were an answer, absolute fact for which I cannot deny, then perhaps it is an answer with which I cannot live. This is why I cannot accept the arguments of either side. If there is an absolute, an answer to the question, then there would be nothing left which I cannot know. There would be really no reason for me to continue to learn, because enlightenment is a journey not a goal. As long as there is something beyond which I cannot know, then my journey will only end with the end of my life.

I offer this only because this third viewpoint is rarely heard. Even more rarely heard by either side, as it can cause them to have to think about it, which is the antithesis of faith. It's a circular argument that God must enjoy, because laughter may be His greatest of all gifts to us.

Best wishes to you all. Peace.

CJ

I was going to write a response detailing what Occam's Razor really was about, but Excession already did a superb job there. I'll add a little bit though... Occam's Razor is a probabilistic tool. When two theories fit the facts equally well, but one requires less assumptions, it's much more likely the theory with less assumptions is the better theory. So the atheist version is this:

The first thing in existence could not have been the result of a cause. The two major theories are God has always existed and created the universe, or that the universe has always existed. Adding the God entity doesn't explain anything else and contains more assumptions than the latter. Therefore, it's more likely the universe has always existed (or didn't require a cause to exist).

By saying "God did it" you are not explaining anything. In fact, you are further complicating matters. Assuming God does exist for the purpose of this discussion, we still have no idea how he works. How does he create something? What processes occur there and how do we know? If a God exists, he works through ways that none of us can understand and perhaps never will. So to add "God did it" to arguments only makes the arguments unnecessarily complicated.

That is wonderful writing. Perhaps the best ever on this forum. It really speaks for me. It is a fun, healthy, enlightened way to look at life. I, too, am a Zen Christian and I know many others, usually hippies.

As gamblers, the best bet has to be that there is a God. As Cactus Jack sez, there is no conflict or competition between religions except that invented by people.

The difference between a poker room and a church? Folks are praying in both places but in a poker room, they really mean it.

This thread is badass, I'm always impressed when typically 'best not discussed' ideas/beliefs are handled so maturely.

Well played, nh guys.

Molina

Okay, so I can't be bothered to heavily summarise some of the criticisms of Pascals Wager, but they can be found here,



The points that I find most relevant are that the Wager relies upon a christian God that rewards solely faith and not deeds, and that it would properly +EV to believe in each and every religious God.

I guess, if one favoured the chistian God alone within Pascals Wager then that implies a tendency to favour that single God, over others which, to me, denotes some kind of christian faith and negates the need for Pascal's Wager.

So, can the Wager be merely seen as a some kind of faux-rationalisation of a chistian God that to a certain extent, one already wants to believe in. Unless you decide to believe in all possible Gods, which, it would follow, includes Satan.

Discuss, because I'm just thinking aloud here.

Molina