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One frequent, and flawed, argument Christians often employ in an attempt to make faith sound reasonable is Pascal’s Wager.

If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is….
…”God is, or He is not.” But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager? According to reason, you can do neither the one thing nor the other; according to reason, you can defend neither of the propositions.
Do not, then, reprove for error those who have made a choice; for you know nothing about it. “No, but I blame them for having made, not this choice, but a choice; for again both he who chooses heads and he who chooses tails are equally at fault, they are both in the wrong. The true course is not to wager at all.”
Yes; but you must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked. Which will you choose then? Let us see. Since you must choose, let us see which interests you least. You have two things to lose, the true and the good; and two things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and misery. Your reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other, since you must of necessity choose. This is one point settled. But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.
“That is very fine. Yes, I must wager; but I may perhaps wager too much.” Let us see. Since there is an equal risk of gain and of loss, if you had only to gain two lives, instead of one, you might still wager. But if there were three lives to gain, you would have to play (since you are under the necessity of playing), and you would be imprudent, when you are forced to play, not to chance your life to gain three at a game where there is an equal risk of loss and gain. But there is an eternity of life and happiness. And this being so, if there were an infinity of chances, of which one only would be for you, you would still be right in wagering one to win two, and you would act stupidly, being obliged to play, by refusing to stake one life against three at a game in which out of an infinity of chances there is one for you, if there were an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain. But there is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite.

I seriously doubt the majority of those who try to use this argument to counter atheism have ever read Pascal’s Pensées since they rarely if ever quote him properly not do they seem aware of the larger philosophical argument he was making.

It also presumes that faith can be engaged and disengaged at will and still be rewarded by god as genuine faith. Faith assumed simply as a choice and not embraced passionately, “with all your heart and mind”, is not acceptable to the majority of Christian religions. “I might as well believe” is not considered a true conversion and does not earn redemption according to most denominations, if not all. So in that context the faith that results from Pascal’s Wager would not be accepted by most Christians as “true faith” and would be a waste of time and effort.

For fun, the next time a Christian tries to pass Pascal’s Wager off as a credible argument for belief in god, respond with Richard Dawkin’s version of the wager…

Suppose we grant that there is indeed some small chance that God exists. Nevertheless, it could be said that you will lead a better, fuller life if you bet on his not existing, than if you bet on his existing and therefore squander your precious time on worshipping him, sacrificing to him, fighting and dying for him, etc.”

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Obviously Robertson failed to fact-check his sources before making his most recent ignorant claim.

Dear Pat Robertson, I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I’m all over that action. But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I’m no welcher. The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished. Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth — glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle. Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake. Haven’t you seen “Crossroads”? Or “Damn Yankees”? If I had a thing going with Haiti, there’d be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox — that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. Nothing against it — I’m just saying: Not how I roll. You’re doing great work, Pat, and I don’t want to clip your wings — just, come on, you’re making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad. Keep blaming God. That’s working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract. Best, Satan

(Source-StarTribune.com) (Tip o’ the hat to robertniles on Twitter for the link)

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Oh yeah, that's what happened.

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What good does believing there’s a perfect god somewhere do? It doesn’t seem to make us any better people than we could be without belief? What benefit has believing that there’s a supreme being out there somewhere watching every little thing you do and condemning you for much of it? “Supreme” can be understood as both absolute and above all others. The problem with that is no religion can prove beyond doubt that their particular god and way of believing in that god are the only possible right and true belief and way of believing. Reality shows us that theists cannot agree sufficiently about the characteristics and behaviors of their particular vision of god among themselves, which pretty much dooms any attempt to devise a supreme guide.

We don’t need gods. We don’t need to feel guilt and shame over many of the things religious belief has managed to persuade us we must. Belief systems from 2000 years and more in the past are routinely ignored in practically every other field of human inquiry except religious belief. That makes no sense. We do need to face our problems, acknowledge that we created them and we have to correct them ourselves without waiting around for divine intervention. We do need to acknowledge our limitations and strive to do the best we can with our abilities. We do need to grasp the fact that it’s up to us to figure out if we are harming this planet and figure out how to fix it if we are. We need to face the reality of life, and too many religious dogmas aren’t helping. They’re hindering our attempts to understand and learn.

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All across the world wide web are comments from theists of every stripe denouncing science as an attempt by the ungodly to disprove their god or gods. In their never-quenched thirst to be seen as persecuted victims of a world-gone-wild (without taking any responsibility for it, even though they brag about the universality of their beliefs), they try to convince the uncritical and uncertain that science is determined to prove gods do not exist. They make it sound like a holy quest, though we know only believers can enjoy those. Religious believers refuse to acknowledge that the best evidence against the possible existence of any particular god is the gross lack of any evidence for one. We have yet to discover any credible, physical evidence that can only be explained by the existence of a certain god and that god’s intervention in our natural world. Science isn’t trying to disprove god, science simply hasn’t found any evidence that irrefutably proves there is one.

Even if we could somehow learn to a 99% certainty that the universe began this way or that, that knowledge will not kill off the idea of god.

Science will never make an absolute declaration that it knows how the universe came into being. Definitive, absolute proof doesn’t exist. Science is not religion. It can only draw tentative conclusions from what evidence we can collect. Scientific conclusions are only as valid as the data. As we come across more information, science has to adjust its conclusions. Religions pretend to know absolute truths, yet they require us to accept these truths on faith.
If science were to state that all the evidence leads us to believe that the universe started in this or that manner, there will always be room to squeeze in religious belief. We’ve already seen in history how religions adapt to current reality in an effort to stay relevant and retain their power over people. In all probability science can’t and won’t put an end to superstitious belief. With our complex brains otherwise intelligent people believe in luck and fate. Beliefs can exist beside knowledge without being eradicated by that knowledge. No matter how smart we become about reality, superstition will survive. There are many theories as to why humans develop and believe in superstitions, but history leads me to accept that every human has them. Religious belief will no doubt change subtlety, as it has before, to accommodate secular knowledge, but it will unfortunately be with us for a long time yet. It is, after all, just another superstitious belief.

Already there are Christian groups that have managed to incorporate scientific conclusions into their dogma. They accept the Big Bang as the best explanation for the beginning of the universe that can currently be drawn from available evidence and still credit their god with having set it all in motion. They give reverence to the Bible, but as an allegorical work rather than literal truth. Scientology is another example of a religion that has incorporated some science into their otherwise wildly fantastical belief system.

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I keep seeing reports from researchers in neuroscience that suggest we humans might be “hard-wired” for belief in gods. Recently another such report raised interest on the internet.

A belief in God is deeply embedded in the human brain, which is programmed for religious experiences, according to a United States study.

Scientists searching for the neural “God spot”, which is supposed to control religious belief, believe several areas of the brain form the biological foundations of religious belief.

The researchers said their findings supported the idea that the brain had evolved to be sensitive to any form of belief that improved the chances of survival, which could explain why a belief in God and the supernatural became so widespread in human evolutionary history.

“Religious belief and behaviour are a hallmark of human life, with no accepted animal equivalent, and found in all cultures,” said Professor Jordan Grafman, from the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, near Washington.

“Our results are unique in demonstrating that specific components of religious belief are mediated by well-known brain networks and they support contemporary psychological theories that ground religious belief within evolutionary-adaptive cognitive functions.”

Scientists are divided on whether religious belief has a biological basis.Some evolutionary theorists have suggested that Darwinian natural selection may have put a premium on individuals if they were able to use religious belief to survive hardships that may have overwhelmed those with no religious convictions.

Others have suggested that religious belief is a side effect of a wider trait in the human brain to search for coherent beliefs about the outside world. Religion and belief in God, they argue, are just a manifestation of this intrinsic, biological phenomenon that makes the human brain so intelligent and adaptable. (Source-NZHerald)

I’m with the latter group, those who are willing to accept that we might be “hard-wired” for wonder and the desire to find explanations, but considering the plethora of gods worshiped throughout human history I see no reason to suppose nature imbues us with religious belief. When our attempts to understand nature and reality are thwarted by a lack of technology or an inability to comprehend natural processes, humans are quick to suppose any number of superstitious and supernatural explanations that try to account for our lack of concrete knowledge.

Science may as well search for the part of our brain that makes humans so unsatisfied with relative answers. Our desire to find absolute answers to life’s questions is as much a cause for imagining gods as any other. The belief in gods doesn’t answer any of our current answers about the origin of the universe or life on Earth, nor does it provide guidance for many of the modern issues facing society. All it does is act as a salve, a balm for the unknown. It’s a band-aid that covers over the gaps in our understanding and does nothing to actually heal those gaps.

The predisposition that gods exist lead researchers to conclude we are “hard-wired” for supernatural belief. Looking at the evidence without that precondition in place allows us to see this human characteristic in more general terms which I consider closer to reality. If we are “hard-wired” as they suggest, it’s a propensity for questioning and wonder. That propensity can be beneficial when it motivates us to study nature and reality and draw conclusions from the evidence. It can be abused when it’s perverted into accepting the unproven and untestable as a reasonable answer to our questions about the universe and life.

Are we “hard-wired” for god? No, I see no research that substantiates that presumption. Are we coded by evolution and genetics to question and wonder about what lies beyond our current body of knowledge? I see no reason to suppose we aren’t. The gods is an inadequate answer to the questions we have regarding reality and the physical universe, answers we may indeed be “programmed” by nature and evolution to seek.

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photo courtesy www.greatblogabout.org

For the first time ever God has been secretly photographed at work.

The photographer, who asked not to be named, said that in the picture, taken recently God only knows where, shows The Almighty turning back the hands of time.

The Angel Gabriel, the photographer who asked not to be named (mentioned above), said that the Lord of Hosts frequently turns back the hands of time when he detects mankind getting, as the Good Lord likes to put it, “too big for his britches”.

The Alpha and the Omega didn’t say what calamity he has in store for mankind this time around, but Gabe says that we can all take comfort in knowing that it will be hundreds of times worse than locusts, famine, floods or any of the other methods used in the past. “It’s a new century and God’s kid just had a birthday, so he’s in a really good mood. He could go nuclear this time, if you know what I mean. He likes to make his point clearly, you know.”

What we found most surprising was that “I am” is a guy in his 50s, balding and wearing a boring suit.

Let’s face it, this isn’t anyone’s idea of a decent god.

Where are all the manifestations of The Power and The Glory?  I thought no man could look upon you and survive, or without going blind (or is that just because of that other thing?).

It’s kind of hard to prostrate myself in fear and self-loathing at the feet of a guy who looks like he’d try to sell me life insurance.

All I can say, God, is I’m really disappointed. I was expecting so much more.

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<Spoiler Alert for my TiVo friends>
The merry little band of explorers and killer robots unite to find Earth.

They find Earth! Yay! Many, many minutes of hugging and high-5s (both traditions apparently alive and well centuries from now…like the way we still curtsy). “It’s Earth, it’s Earth”, we’re all saved. Our religion has been fulfilled as was predicted. Yeah, Earth.”

Then they fly down (no beaming?) and find out Earth was destroyed a couple of thousand years earlier due to nuclear warfare. The whole planet is a radioactive landfill. Crap! Much wailing and gnashing of teeth. People try to kill themselves, people kill themselves, and the rest just go nuts. Their hope is gone. The ugly, undeniable truth of the matter is that their quest is finished and has been shown to be a farce.

Worse, their religion has been totally and irrefutably shown to be a sham. They have to face a reality that disproves their previous belief system completely and finally. Which is where I started thinking about what real people in our real world would do if something happened that once and for all ended all speculation that gods could exist. What if some natural artifact was discovered that undeniably discredits theism worldwide? That’s what the folks on Battle Star Gallactica had to deal with. The president even burns the little Bible-like book they had for their religion.

Another thought: what if god did appear one day in the sky, visible from any place on Earth, unexplainable by any natural means, and it turned out this god was completely different than any human has been able to imagine? How deep would be the shock to their system (and let’s admit it, many of ours as well). Many would become suicidal and homicidal, not because that’s a typical atheistic reaction, but because these people believe that non-believers are free to do anything and they don’t have any morals other than those they endured by force of their former belief. I think atheists underestimate the number of truly nasty people out there we’ve been spared from seeing due solely to their belief in a punishing god. Once that limiting force is removed they’ll act out all their repressions.

For once, thought-provoking television. And they said it could never happen.

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Elijah Muhammad’s Teaching

from Message to the Black Man (1965);

One God but Polytheistic – 25,000 years. Bible and Quran written by 24 scientists – one scientist was appointed to be God. p.108

The black race created the heavens and the earth and created themselves. p.42.

The black race gave birth to a God named Yakub. p.110. He lived only 150 years. p.116

Yakub, a black scientist, created the white race 6,000 years ago. p.9

6,000 years ago the black race gave birth to Allah, He is the mightiest God since creation born after Yakub. p.111.

Orthodox Islam must bow to Black Islam (God’s choice) p.50. Arabs misunderstand the Holy Quran when they don’t accept me [Elijah Muhammad] as a prophet. p.250.

Moses used dynamite with a fuse to kill 300 of his followers. p.120. –An amazing miracle; dynamite was not invented for 2400 years!

Jesus is not God. p.9, 140

Black [Christian] preachers’ mouths are controlled by devils; there are a great hindrance to the truth of our people. p.18,47,84,89,96

Elijah Muhammad says the Bible is 2/3 pro-phecy. p.89. He says prophecies are a small percentage of the Bible on p.90.

The mountains were created by bombs from spaceships circling the earth. p.90

Wallace D. Fard is God [Allah]. p.1, 11, 27, 46, 52, 141, 155, 172, 237, 294.

(Source)

The source could well be too biased to be giving accurate, in context, quotes.  So I want to see it in context.  But I can say that any group that could accept those beliefs is out there, out where the Jim Jones’ and the David Koresh’s hang out.  Go ahead, drink the kool-aid.  I’m sure the human race will be better for it.

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