Some people...

[conuly]

Somebody just tried the watchmaker analogy on me, followed rapidly by Pascal's Wager. Didn't even attribute it at all, just "I heard somebody say once...", which is lazy.

Why do people do that? That's not quite up there with Jack Chick apparently believing that the only reason there are non-Christians in the world is because nobody bothered to tell us all about Jesus, but it's darn close.

If you heard somebody else use this analogy to explain why we should all join your religion, it almost certainly is so old it is a cliche, and the person you're talking to probably heard it back in middle school or high school. It absolutely has been refuted by somebody else by now. I know we can't all be brilliant thinkers, but you're not winning any points by being trite.

Comments

[redbird]

Did you point out that, all else aside, Pascal's wager doesn't tell you whether to worship Jesus, Thor, or Quetzalcoatl?

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Best to play it safe and worship them all, like Liber Astarte (http://hermetic.com/crowley/libers/lib175.html) says.

[conuly]

"Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it's all true you'll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn't then you've lost nothing, right?" When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said, "We're going to show you what we think of Mr Clever Dick in these parts..."

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

That's one of the points mentioned in the book UnChristian (http://www.amazon.com/unChristian-Generation-Really-Christianity-Matters/dp/0801072719).

I was brought up by Christians. I attended Sunday school every week, sang in the choir from the time I was six; went to Vacation Bible School and youth retreats; the whole nine yards. I first read the Bible cover-to-cover when I was 12, and can still quote a lot of it. But I have not been a Christian since I was 15.

I just couldn't keep on believing in it. Oh, I wanted to, i tried to, but the more I studied Christianity, the more I could see no reason to suppose that the Bible was the Word of God, or that Jesus was the Son of God, or that God Himself existed at all. The Judeo-Christian mythos simply falls apart under critical examination like the proverbial cake left out in the rain; every argument one can find to support it turns out to have been conclusively refuted long ago. This is a pretty agonizing realization when one has grown up as one of Christ's faithful followers.

Therefore, try to cut some slack to his followers who haven't realized it yet; who cling to the same-old trite arguments because the alternative is to admit to themselves that there is no rational basis for their faith. (One could say that the entire Western Esoteric Tradition is founded in the desperate attempt to find a way around that terrifying but inescapable admission, but one might get figuratively burned at the stake for saying it.)

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

I've always preferred the Marcus Aurelius quote myself. I expect someone's refuted that, too, but it's a good principle.