Powerful Argument to bring Atheist to Spiritual Line

The way to control the sins of the atheists
There is a powerful argument to bring the atheist to the line of spiritual knowledge so that the social evils can be controlled since atheists are also part of the society. Such powerful concept is 50-50 probability. I have not shown the existence of the hell, where the sin is punished in this universe. But, the atheist also has not shown the absence of hell in this infinite space. In this state of situation, there is 50-50 probability of existence and non-existence of God. The hell may exist because the atheist has not taken Me to the boundary of the universe and established the absence of hell. I also could not show the existence of the hell in this space and hence, the hell may not exist. In such case, the wisdom advises to believe the existence of hell to be on safe side. Some people say that there is fire and some others say that there is no fire in the path ahead and the walker is blind. If the blind walker is wise, he will take the probability of existence of fire from the 50-50 probability and go back.

By going back, nothing is lost even if the fire is absent. By going forward, the leg may burn if the fire exists. Similarly, based on this concept of 50-50 probability, if the sins are not done, there is no loss even if the hell is absent. Moreover, in the absence of sin, there will be no stress and one can live with full mental peace and confidence, which are the foundation for happiness. If the sins are done and the hell is present, the punishment is terrible in the hell in addition to the tension in this world. By this concept, you can control the sin in the pravrutti at least in the case of an atheist. This 50-50 probability about God also initiates the atheists to do intensive analysis regarding God and hence, the nivrutti is also attained. In this way, you can maintain the balance and purity of the society without any sin even though atheist exists in the society.
www.universal-spirituality.org
Universal Spirituality for World Peace

 

A clunky restatement of Pascal's Wager.
Where is the devotion created from a belief based on "just in case"?

Thoroughly empty to me.

 

There are too many flaws in that to address! Just to point out a couple of obvious ones:

1) Attempting to prove a negative is futile.
2) How does "you can't disprove it and I can't prove it" result in a 50 - 50 probability of it being true?

On another note, why do you want to "control" anyone?

 

I am not a roach. Why? Because roaches cannot type, ergo, its possible to conclude the negative, that I am not a roach. Go figure.

The bigger problem for atheism is that everything they say is based on evidence, so when atheists, who preach science, start venturing into the spiritual realm? Why the very basis of everything atheist just disappears. Not surprisingly, many atheists seem to have a problem with it - even as many tell us that you CAN be both spiritual and an atheist ... but look what happens when someone attempts to combine the two?

 

Yeah, this was like Pascal's Wager argued in the worst way possible. I didn't know the argument could get worse, but apparently, I was wrong.

 

Red herring. This is not a problem for atheism as it has nothing to do with atheism as irrelevant to the flimsy argument of Pascal's Wager.

 

You are trying to bring statistical analysis into theism... epic fail there says I. Trying to calculate the probability that an intangible exists or not is an exercise in futility.

Wisdom is subjective and wide open to interpretation. What is wisdom to one is insanity to another.

 

So, what if there is God decided that people who believe scripture go to hell for being gullible and people who don't get to live in heaven? By your logic, there is a 50/50 chance that this is correct, and in order to avoid hell, you should stop believing in scripture.

We know that the concept of hell is has served as a good deterrent for crime, so we have a good explanation for why it's so common in different places all over the world. Therefore, the extra credibility you give your version of hell for being common is moot and our two different versions of hell are equally credible.

As discussed in another thread, the harmlessness of believing in hell is compromised if we consider any other influence your belief might have. A person who doesn't wear a condom because he thinks it's a sin can catch AIDS and thus receive harm from his concept of sin without going to hell. Of course, good things can also come, but if those things are truly good, then non-religious laws will also allow/encourage them.

I'd be much more tense if there was a chance that I'd be tortured forever if I committed the wrong thought crime. Even if hell does not exist, most things you call "sin" are not appreciated and we would be better of without them. That's why most atheists don't murder, rape or steal. I'd also be happier if people didn't kill me because they had no reason to kill me, as opposed to the situation where they want to kill me but won't because they get smacked on the fingers if they do. For eternity.

I have managed to maintain balance (I can't say anything about purity, because I don't know what you mean by that or whether or not I think it's desirable) in several locations without gods or hells.

 

I'm in the UK. Imagine I buy a lottery ticket each week for 10 years. What are the chances of a perfect winning streak? Well, I can either have a perfect winning streak, or I can fail to have a perfect winning streak. That's only two possibilities. So it's 50/50, right? No, of course not. It's 9x10^3715 to 1, which is many many orders of magnitude more than the number of atoms that are thought to exist, making it impossible for all real intents and purposes.

Therefore, when something has only two possible outcomes, it may be that one of the outcomes is realistically impossible. If you think the existence of hell is exempt from this rule, then please explain why.

 

Actually, a roach CAN type. In the classic book "Archie and Mehitabel" by Don Marquis, Archie is a cockroach that sneeks onto Marquis' typewriter after the newspaper closes at nite, throwing himself headlong onto one key at a time to write the stories of Mehitabel the alley cat. A great read from the 20's. Highly recommend it.

 

im not sure an either or, is = to a 50 / 50 chance

if you have 10 black marbles in a bag and 1 white one you’re going to pull out either a white or black marble but the number of possibility’s is not the number of the odds

Without evidence you don’t know what the odds are

And there could be any number of places you would consider haven hell neither and what’s 1 for some 1 may be another for someone else

 

Yawn. Stated before and failed badly every time.

Do I have a nuclear weapon on me? I have not proved it to you and you have not disproved it, so the probability is 50/50.

Get 1000 people claiming to have nukes. Why, you'd expect 500 to have them!

Argument is flawed before even getting into Pascal's Wager.

 

Unless the contradiction arises and you are unable to solve it through your analysis, you cannot call it as unimaginable action. Unless you recognize the unimaginable action, you cannot accept that God is unimaginable, who is the source of the unimaginable actions. For the establishment of unimaginable actions, there should be pre-established imaginable background so that the violation of such imaginable background can be identified as the unimaginable action. Therefore, God created the imaginable background, which can be understood by all the humanity through imaginable logic. Then, on some required occasions, God violates the imaginable logic so that people fail to analyze such violations through their imaginable logic and finally conclude that God is unimaginable. Now, you can understand the necessity of both the imaginable background and the unimaginable violation of it.


As per the imaginable background, the unimaginable God is beyond this imaginable creation. God is unimaginable because God has no spatial dimensions. This creation is imaginable since it has the imaginable spatial dimensions. Our logic is based on our senses and the sophisticated scientific instruments. Our senses can grasp the visible items. The scientific instruments can grasp the invisible but imaginable items and pass on the information to us regarding such invisible items. You can see a pot through your eyes but, you cannot perceive the invisible cosmic energy that pervades all over the cosmos through your senses.

But, the cosmic rays can be detected through sophisticated instruments and you can understand the nature of the cosmic rays through such instruments. A pot is visible and imaginable. A cosmic ray is invisible but imaginable with the help of scientific instruments. Both these examples are parts of the imaginable creation. You can analyze the visible and imaginable items. Science can analyze the invisible and imaginable items. Science is sharper than human beings but, it does not mean that science can analyze the unimaginable items.

 

This is not the most important part of my rebuttal. Why don't you address the counter-examples that have appeared many times in this thread instead of telling me that I can see pots but not cosmic rays?

How do you tell unimaginable occurrences from occurrences which you personally can't imagine because you lack imagination? I can imagine most miracles, I can imagine, for instance, Lazarus rising from the dead, so even if miracles were proven to have occurred, they have no relation to unimaginable beings.

Science is the process by which we correctly obtain knowledge. If you obtain knowledge in some way which is not based upon science, then you have no basis for believing it. Using your arguments is science. I'd say it's bad science, flawed science, but it is a form of science.

 

FYI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager

There are a number of fundamental problems with this argument. In the absence of proof either way, there is not a 50-50 chance of a specific god existing. There are an almost infinitely number of possible gods and pending any evidence, all are equally likely (as is none of them existing). Many of these gods will not involve any kind of hell or judgement in death. Many will involve judgement concepts entirely alien to your personal beliefs.

On a related note, simply believing in hell won't necessarily be enough to avoid it. Who is to say what criteria a given god may have? It could even be that playing this logical game of probability is in itself a hell-worthy sin, showing a lack of faith.

Anyway, I'd argue we can't choose to believe anything at all. If I don't believe in a god or a hell, I can't make myself believe such things exist, however much I wanted to. Basically, Pascal's Wager puts us all in the same boat. None of us can know if what we believe is correct or whether there is something out there judging our lives favourably or not. Based on that complete lack of knowledge, what exactly would you have us do?

 

dattaswami meet Russell's Teapot:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

 

Very interesting. What's your religion if i may ask by the way?

 

God will punish those who believe on blind faith.

I win.

 

It's in his link. I think it's his own.

 

I do not belong to any particular religion. I belong equally to all religions. Infact I am not religious but spiritual.

Religion is like a medium of instruction and spirituality is the curriculum. One can get doctorate degree through any medium and a doctorate will be respected by all over the world equally. Thus we should pursue to reach higher levels in spirituality in our own religion. Nobody need not change his religion. Change of religion is moving horizontally and moving to higher classes in spiritual curriculum is moving vertically, which is only called growth. Spirituality is beyond religion. Infact any true divine preacher never confined to any one particular religion, caste, creed etc, because all require God.

 

You should not give value to anything except analysis. You should not try to give value to a statement in the scripture because it is in the scripture. The concept of the statement of the scripture is always true and the truth stands always in any extent of intensive analysis.

Truth never fears to stand before the verification by any extent of analysis. If the statement in the scripture fails in analysis, it means you have taken the statement in the angle of some wrong interpretation. If the statement of scripture is taken in its original correct angle, it never fails in analysis.

The Gita starts with the praise of analysis (Sankhya Yoga or Buddhi Yoga). The last verse of the Gita says that Arjuna should analyze everything said in the Gita and accept only after analysis. Shankara condemned the atheistic Sankhya Yoga of Kapila. Then the opponent said that Kapila is said to be omniscient. Shankara refused the validity of such statement stating that tomorrow somebody may say that some Tom, Dick and Harry are also omniscient. The validity of the truth comes only from the analysis and not by any other undue consideration. Actually the omniscient Kapila, who was the human incarnation of God, is different from the Kapila, who is the author of the atheistic Sankhya Yoga. This confusion is exploited by the opponent.

 

God has created this imaginable creation and remains unimaginable since He is beyond space. The generator of the space cannot have spatial dimensions. Therefore, God remains unimaginable always and cannot be included in the visible or invisible items of the creation, which are always imaginable. The Veda says that those who knew God rejected every item of the creation not to be God. It means God is unimaginable since every item of the creation is imaginable. But, the requirement is that the devotees of God want to see, talk, touch and live with God in this world. To fulfill this requirement, God enters a human being and gets identified with It like the invisible current enters a metallic wire and gets identified with it. In this example, current is invisible but imaginable. We can only bring some invisible item of creation to compare with unimaginable God since there is no second unimaginable item in the creation other than God. Therefore, you should not think that the invisible item is unimaginable.

Even in the ancient logic, all the invisible items were detected as imaginable parts of the creation. But, somehow, the ancient logic could not detect the invisible awareness as imaginable item. Of course, some schools have recognized the awareness also as the imaginable item. Even the Gita mentions the awareness indicated by the word ‘Chetana’, which is included in the imaginable items of the creation. Even the word ‘Jeeva’ is mentioned as the precious part of the creation (Prakruti) only.

 

So what if the people who thought they knew God in the Veda either were mistaken or misquoted?

 

What if they were?
What do you think of the idea?

 

What I think? I think the "God" he suggests is poorly defined, his methods are abysmal and his debating style non-existent.

However, doesn't seem to be able to understand posts/arguments longer than one line, so I have to keep my posts short and to the point.