Attention dotoree!

[UNFFwildcard]

Hardly. Pascal himself suggested the possibility of obtaining faith through practicing the rituals of the Christian faith. Acquired faith is not fake faith..

And herein lies the problem. Please tell me on what grounds one would choose to practice the rituals of Christianity over the rituals of the thousands of other religions without some prior notion that Christianity was somehow more valid.

Regress still further, and why would one make the presumption that the practice of any religious ritual/practice, related or not to Christianity, would lead to some form of enlightenment?

The issue here is that a predisposition to faith is a pre-requisite for pascals wager to have any impact, and thus it is revealed as a circular argument whose only function is to bolster the faith of the previously credulous.

Pascal addressed this issue by supplementing his gambit with arguments for the validity of the CHristian faith. On the broader scale, as I've said elsewhere, one religion could be chosen (or, at least, the list narrowed down) by reasoning between them on various logical grounds. There is no need to draw pieces of paper from a hat.

Is enlightenment necessary to satisfy the gambit? I don't see how enlightenment is relevant.

 

[borrofburi]

I'll have to counter-disagree here, though. I think "lying to oneself" is actually bit of a linguistic paradox. Wouldn't it be impossible in reality? Isn't there something else at play? Reinforcing beliefs, confirmation bias, other psychological mechanisms?

Would someone who was, shall we say, consciously atheist ever be able to pull this off?

I highly doubt it, but is there a way to determine that?

I suppose that as you say that when someone starts believing the not-true thing they say to themselves, then they're no longer lying...

The mormons used to always say "the more you tell your testimony the more you'll believe it". I chuckled, because at the time I had just read research that essentially said the more you tell yourself ANYTHING the more you believe it. Unfortunately I can't remember what the research was... I can only remember sitting their in mormon church listening to the bishop tell everyone to come up and give their testimonies so they'll believe in mormonism even more, and musing about the myriad ways in which mormonism has adopted subtle brainwashing and self-reinforcing techniques that act as an insanely powerful shield against reality.


I don't know if I'd be able to pull off making myself believe... It'd be awfully hard to squelch the knowledge I have now, and generally my "evidence or it didn't happen" way of critical thinking... But on the other hand part of me thinks I could become a sort of semi-nebulous theistic-evolutionist christian, if I was super motivated to create the habit of not questioning things like the existence of god...

 

[borrofburi]

Pascal addressed this issue by supplementing his gambit with arguments for the validity of the CHristian faith. On the broader scale, as I've said elsewhere, one religion could be chosen (or, at least, the list narrowed down) by reasoning between them on various logical grounds. There is no need to draw pieces of paper from a hat.

So uh.... doesn't this necessarily admit, then, that pascal's wager is not an argument for christianity? Also you didn't answer me:

Regardless of all that, I, as is very common, (completely coincidentally) fully agree with Squawk: why would I fake myself into believeing christianity? Why not become a mormon, a jehovah's witness, a muslim, a buddhist, a taoist, part of the cult of athena, maybe worship the FSM (though I don't really like the whole beer thing...), or any of the infinity of gods that have not yet been named or created (or have yet to reveal themselves)?

I am reminded of this very large list: http://208.116.9.205/10/content/25595/1.jpg
Why pick specifically jehova? Why specifically pick yahweh? (yes I know there are some inaccuracies in that list, but the question holds)

 

[Krazyskooter]

Dotoree is Muslim now? or am I missing something?

 

[Andiferous]

That, and there are serious ethical problems with telling someone to, "say it until you believe it!" style rhetoric, seems awfully Orwellian.

And seems kind of typical of all human beings - lumped in there with the less glamorous hypocrisy and arrogance.

I believe the ban has been lifted; hopefully dotoree will return. Here's a bump if so.

 

[UNFFwildcard]

I apologize for not responding. A family death has taken my attention away from here. I am bumping this thread to express my interest in continuing sometime in the future.
I wonder whether Dotoree will return.

 

[Squawk]

Pascal addressed this issue by supplementing his gambit with arguments for the validity of the CHristian faith.

That pretty much makes my point for me, so I'll let it lie.

 

[Gnug215]

I apologize for not responding. A family death has taken my attention away from here. I am bumping this thread to express my interest in continuing sometime in the future.
I wonder whether Dotoree will return.

I'm sorry to hear that. I was beginning to think you'd forgotten about us, but thanks for the heads up.

 

[scalyblue]

I apologize for not responding. A family death has taken my attention away from here. I am bumping this thread to express my interest in continuing sometime in the future.
I wonder whether Dotoree will return.

Def tend to family before this discussion, I'm sure that the thread's not going anywhere!

 

[Prolescum]

I apologize for not responding. A family death has taken my attention away from here. I am bumping this thread to express my interest in continuing sometime in the future.
I wonder whether Dotoree will return.

Def tend to family before this discussion, I'm sure that the thread's not going anywhere!

I think the order for Dotoree is:

Family
Law suits
Employment
LoR

But I may have left one out, and there's no way I'm wading through Dotoree's archives of bumpf for a lame gag.