Evolution vs Creationism, Why are we having this silly debat

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Pascal's wager is childish.

There are more than two possibilities. There are more than either of us can imagine. There may even be salvation metrics that punish you for going along with local superstition blindly. Then factor in a billion + salvation schemes that might have been revealed to some random slob somewhere and another 100 billion + that might have not been revealed. If the gods are capricious they can invent any scheme they want and then just not tell you the rules for "salvation", assuming that is even the end goal.

Put odds on that. Good luck.

Pascal's wager reads: "Assuming christianity is true, it's better to believe than not to believe". Uh, yeah.

Comparing evolution to creationism is like comparing NASA to a kid with a bottle rocket.

No, it doesn't.

It's literally: X is true. X is incompatible with Y. Therefore Y is not true.

Saying "X is true" has nothing to do with any agent, whether it is God, man, robot, or whatever. We can argue that there are reasons to put less confidence in the statement "X is true" than Russell does, but that doesn't mean that Russell's kind of argument is invalid, it just means that there are skeptical considerations. The concern comes down to ad hoc-ness and whether these undercut other issues. So, with skeptical arguments, we undermine any ability to determine God's goodness with confidence, or to ourselves know what is good in a particular instance.


Occam's razor is what makes the statement the starting point.

I believe you are mistaken here. Perchance you have heard of the "dreaming" of the vast majority of Indigenous Australian Religions? Or Yatiri of the Aymara?

Being that I am probably best able to explain the religions of the Civilized Andes, given that I, perhaps pompously, consider myself a novice self-taught Andeanist, I shall work with these in my argument. Please bear with me and feel free to ask questions if you are unfamiliar with any of the terminology I use.

At the great ancient ritual center of Chavín de Huantar, the most important civilization of the Early Horizon, we clearly see exquisite reliefs and even some ancient painted textiles depicting a practice similar to shamanism: The ingestion of hallucinogenic drugs to obtain a closer connection with the supernatural forces that the Chavín believed governed the world. If this is not a "spiritual experience", I do not know what is.

If you wish to know more about Civilized Andean religions and spirituality, feel free to contact me. I think we both have the potential for enlightenment on theological issues.

quote="Awesomelyglorious" Occam's razor is what makes the statement the starting point.[/quote]
normally, I would be happy to see someone using a tool developed by the theologian William of Ockham. Quoting Wikipedia' Ockham's theology stated "“only faith gives us access to theological truths. The ways of God are not open to reason, for God has freely chosen to create a world and establish a way of salvation within it apart from any necessary laws that human logic or rationality can uncover.” [11] Ockham's theism was based solely on private revelation and faith (he supported some sort of Non-overlapping magisteria). He believed that only science was a matter of discovery and saw God as the only ontological necessity" Mostly, I would agree with Ockham. Spiritual experiences are privately revealed and are therefore not subject to scientific testing. That is why they require faith which is a part of spirituality.
That to the side, Russell's supposed proof of the non-existence of God requires many assumptions about what God can do, what He chooses to do, what is good, and what is moral. Russell makes those assumptions and then observes to see if their implications are evident. when Russell does not see those implications, he then asserts that this means that there is no God. Russell ignores the fact that what God sees as good and moral is beyond Russell's understanding. For example, Russell describes children who die despite the fact that their parents pray for them. It is very shallow. I do not see how Occam's Razor sets up or even helps Russell's argument. I also do not see how statistics are involved.
Russell's most absurd section of "Why I am Not a Christian" deals with marital relationships. He seems to be saying that Christian morals prevent good marriage. Russell is clearly ignorant of Biblical commands that, for example, a husband must love his wife as Christ loved the church. The best evidence I have read on divorce and marriage is that following Biblical commands leads to the best relationships.

Last edited by ProfessorP on 24 Jan 2012, 11:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

While your simplification misses the point of Pascal's wager I would agree that multiple scanarios are logically possible. It is logically possible that there is a god who punishes people who seek him. Nonetheless, the wager remains a good bet as long as it is more likely that God rewards those who seek Him than that he punishes those who seek him. Billions of people have said that they were rewarded by God for seeking Him. While some say that seeking God made them feel bad, I do not know of any who say that God punished them for seeking him. Please keep in mind that if there is no god, then no one is better or worse off for anything they do.

Last edited by ProfessorP on 24 Jan 2012, 12:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The Catholic Church supports and believes in the theory of Evolution so here is a small set of quotes from the Vatican and a few links, the Vatican's chief astronomer, Fr. George Coyne, issued a statement on 18 November 2005 saying that "Intelligent design isn't science even though it pretends to be. If you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science." Cardinal Paul Poupard added that "the faithful have the obligation to listen to that which secular modern science has to offer, just as we ask that knowledge of the faith be taken in consideration as an expert voice in humanity." He also warned of the permanent lesson we have learned from the Galileo affair, and that "we also know the dangers of a religion that severs its links with reason and becomes prey to fundamentalism." Fiorenzo Facchini, professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Bologna, called intelligent design unscientific, and wrote in the January 16–17, 2006 edition L'Osservatore Romano: "But it is not correct from a methodological point of view to stray from the field of science while pretending to do science.... It only creates confusion between the scientific plane and those that are philosophical or religious." Kenneth R. Miller is another prominent Catholic scientist widely known for vehemently opposing Young Earth Creationism and Intelligent Design.

http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP961022.HTM
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articl ... c0060.html
http://books.google.com/books?id=hYLKdt ... gn&f=false

so for Catholics, the largest denomination of Christianity, to deny Evolution goes against the official stance the Church has

no religion comes without a very real cost both to the individual and modern society,

so i would argue that even that aspect doesnt hold true.

my problem with Pascal's Wager is that if you are only believing in God on the chance that he MIGHT exist, you arent a true believer so IF your God exists and he is "All Powerful" and "All Knowing" he will know that you are not a true believer so in addition to lying to yourself your now lying to God.

you can reverse Pascal's Wager assuming Hinudism is true, its better to believe in Shiva and Brahma and all the other Hindu gods than not believe, you can use it with any religion just like life, Christians saying that life is ALL the proof they need of God(s) existence can be used for ANY religion since they almost all deal with the origin of man.

personally IF the Christian God exists i would want to go to Hell because in Heaven i would be surrounded by people i generallly hate, very few religious people i like because most are sanctimonious holier-than-thou a**es, and ALL world's Free-Thinkers and Intellectuals are going to Hell OBVIOUSLY thats the place to be. i die, wake up in hell as im looking round i will think "huh, its not too bad down here." lol i told my mom to save me a spot by the fire, my mom is only a Christian because of Pascal's Wager she would rather believe than not believe on the chance that God might be real

Private thoughts are themselves possible to subject to scientific testing, which creates part of the problem. Another part of the problem is that LOTS OF DIFFERENT revelations occur. So, either we have to dismiss them all, accept them all, or accept some subset, and the latter two are very hard to do.

I wouldn't care where the tools come from, honestly.


If "what God sees as good and moral is beyond Russell's understanding", then what God sees as good and moral does not agree with what we see as good and moral.

The problem with efforts like this was pointed out by lay theologian CS Lewis:
"And so what? This, for all practical (and speculative) purposes sponges God off the slate. The word good, as applied to him, becomes meaningless: like abracadabra. We have no motive for obeying Him. Not even fear. It is true that we have His threats and promises. But why should we believe them? If cruelty is from His point of view “good,” telling lies may be “good” too. Even if they are true, what then? If His ideas of good are so very different from ours, what He calls “Heaven” might well be what we should call Hell, and vice versa. Finally, if reality at its very root is so meaningless to us—or, putting it the other way round, if we are such total imbeciles—what is the point of trying to think either about God or about anything else? The knot comes undone when you try to pull it tight."


I did a word search in the document for "marriage", but all I came up with was this:
"Supposing that in this world that we live in today an inexperienced girl is married to a syphilitic man; in that case the Catholic Church says, "This is an indissoluble sacrament. You must endure celibacy or stay together. And if you stay together, you must not use birth control to prevent the birth of syphilitic children." Nobody whose natural sympathies have not been warped by dogma, or whose moral nature was not absolutely dead to all sense of suffering, could maintain that it is right and proper that that state of things should continue. "

Does he use another word for the matter?

The problem brought forward is the problem of multiple religions. You failed to grasp the point of criticism. If there is Yahweh, and there is Allah, and Allah only rewards Allah worshipers, and Yahweh only rewards Yahweh worshipers, then you now have three possibilities, and if you pick the wrong faith, you get no reward. Just keep on multiplying this, as most religions have special rewards and reject the direction other faiths try to lead people.

I agree that Pascal's wager may be applied to other religions which require that the you accept God.
I am really sorry to read about your experience with other Christians. Unfortunately, I know too many people who have had bad experiences with Christians. All I can do is apologize for those bad experiences and ask you to remember that the Christians who offended you are just weak (probably victimized) people themselves. I try not to act "holier than though" or to otherwise be a bad representative. Of course, with my Aspergers, I am sure that many people just walk away saying "He calls himself a Christian, but he is totally insensitive to other people."
BTW, I consider myself to be a free thinker. It is just that my free thinking has lead me to Christ!
Anyway, I hope that you will forgive us. Even secular psychologists often say that forgiving other people is a very good thing to do.

I last read Russell's book over 15 years ago when I discussed it with a former Christian who had become an atheist. My memory is that he has about a chapter on relationships and that he referred to a pastor or minister who had abused his wife who had borne many children.
Thanks for looking this up.

No free thinker can accept the existence of any "divine being" while still retaining sanity.

If you you really were someone who wants to find things out for himself, you wouldn't be bothering with the bible which is chock full of contradictions and outright lies AS WELL AS passages supporting slavery and murder.

Studies of Christians who state that they have had spiritual experiences indicate that the vast majority are sane.
Please cite passages from the New Testament which are contradictory or lies.
NT does not support (or reject) slavery. It tells Christian masters to treat their slaves well and Christian slaves to sork for their masters as working for the Lord. I believe that this is consistent with the apol itical nature of the NT. It is not calling for political revolution. It is instead telling people how to behave given the existing government.
I believe that for Christians, the OT should be used as allegory. I believe that the OT is all literally true, but the meanings for Christians require interpretation in light of Jesus Christ.

So assuming "God" singular (for some reason), assuming he rewards people and assuming you have the correct scheme to get the reward from him, her, it or them.....

It's just word salad at that point. They line the words up in that order to make the already brainwashed feel better about their choices. It has nothing to do with being reasonable.