Chariots of Iron

I’ve always had a biog problem with Pascal’s Wager, and I am surprised how often it seems to be used. Often this is just a first line of approach by evangelists trying to get me to come around to their side of the fence. Of course a common argument that people use against Pascal’s Wager is that any omniscient god could easily see through a “saying you believe just to get to the good place” type believer.  My issue is this, coming from the non-believer perspective, is that once you get someone over the god-hump how would you then convince them that you’ve got the right bead on the all-mighty? Considering that many religions like to lump those who in other religions in with non-believers (or do I go to a slightly more or less burney-pitchforky-kind of place? because I’m an atheist as opposed to a, for example, Buddhist?).

For the sake of my following, slightly math-related, rant I am going to actually give the faithful a *BIG* benefit of the doubt here and give a deity a 50-50 chance of existence (in all likelihood I’d say that given the total lack of and substantial evidence this chance is several orders of magnitude lower).

So 50% Chance there is a god and I better do what he/she/it says. 50% chance I’m already doing just fine enjoying the very real miracle that is intelligent life (thank you law-of-large-numbers!).

Now how am I to judge the likelihood that any of the “revealed truths” that humankind has ever believed in is the correct one? Once again giving the faithful a big leg-up in this example and ignore all the religions that no one follows anymore, although to be accurate I would have to include these, of course I’d also have to include the chance that some guy in west dumbfuckibad got the real revealed truth but was nailed to a tree by the first person he told… there’s really no way to count those. I’m also not including Scientology amongst the possible “correct” religions, nor small cults, tribalism, all the varieties of paganism, spiritualism, etc… But for the ease of the example I’m going to give those faiths that I do use all an equal chance of being “correct”.

• Christianity
• Judaism
• Hinduism
• Sikhism
• Islam
• Shintoism
• Jainism
• Zoroastrianism
• Cao Dai
• Confucianism
• Taoism

Now We also have to realize that amongst some of these religions there are sects who wholly believe that members of differing sects within the faith are also dammed, here I’m going to pick out some of the more major ones

• Mormonism – Christianity
• Catholicism – Christianity
• Protestantism – Christianity
• Sunni – Islam
• Shiite – Islam
• Orthodoxy – Christianity
• Orthodoxy – Judaism
• Reformed – Judaism
• Conservative – Judaism

And there are even sub-sects of the above… especially when it comes to Christianity, it’s ridiculous.

So we have a final of 18 faiths to pick from (in reality there are so much more and it’s why Pascal’s Wager is the biggest joke in evangelism) this gives you a 2.778% chance of having the “right” religion. Now let’s look at my 50% chance that atheists are right now we can add to that all the works based religions who pretty much don’t care that I don’t believe or who say belief is secondary to just generally being a good person as your key to the big eternal sky/reincarnation/whatevertheheck bliss. This gives us back 22.223% of the “Faith pie”, because as long as I’m not a total bastard I’m pretty much ok. So based on these very basic percentages If I choose whatever faith I’m being evangelized at about I’ve got ~3% chance for all that afterlife wonderfulness, a 22% that I choose your faith and it really didn’t matter, still get the cool afterlife stuff, a 25% chance of burning in hell, and a 50% chance that when I die it’ll pretty much be the same experience as I had before I was born. So instead of the 50-50 the faithful like to spout at you for the good ol’ wager, it’s more like 25%-75% and they’re asking you to take the 25%.

You’re asking me to play spiritual roulette… and every believer is betting. They’re sacrificing their time and money, they’re making other people’s lives miserable all because they think that 00 is where the marble is going to drop.

Sorry, I’m not playing your game.

In truth the chance that any single religious nutbag coming to your door is actually correct about any of these matters is as close to zero as makes no odds, to be fair we’d have to consider every religious belief held by anyone who has claimed the miraculous occurred because of their faith, because that’s all we have, claims.

I’ll take the evidence over the claims anyday.

If you are a believer and you want to get me to believe you’re going to ask me to read a book. Given United States demographics,  that book most likely will be the Bible (in some version or another). And, I would have you know that I have already read it, however if you’d like for me to go over it again I’m going to have a corresponding book for you to read. This book is Breaking the Spell, by Daniel Dennett. In Breaking the Spell Professor Dennet tackles one subject above all others, the idea that it is not belief but “sacredness” that is the problem. The concept that one set of ideas cannot be questioned or criticized because of some special property inherent in the idea or belief itself.

Unlike the other Atheist “Four Horsemen”, Dennett seems to have a sincere appreciation for some aspects of religious thought. His book is far less condemning than those of Dawkins, Hitchens or Harris. The reason I choose this book as the primer I would have any person who wishes to proselyte to me read is that it best expresses my views on religion in general, and I want them to understand what they’re going to encounter if they come to me with their “truths”.

Unlike some of my fellow strong atheists, I am slow to condemn “religion” as a whole, however unlike some others I am very quick to criticize specific beliefs, it may be easy to construe this as myself condemning religion as a concept, when all I am saying is that, “belief X is obviously laughable”. Lamar is correct in season one, show two when he says, “religion does community extremely well”. I believe that it does, and I feel that it can be replicated in a wholly secular way. The problem is compounded in a “faith in a sacred truth”.

The faith in a supernatural supreme being of some sort or another without question is a huge problem for me, it is my nature to question and any idea that cannot be held to scrutiny is quick to fall from my favor. Combine this with the “sacred” concept, that these questions and criticism should not even be leveled and you’re stepping to the plate with two strikes already. The third of course is usually the tone in which the faithful like to preach to the non believer, it’s either condescending or dripping with pity.

I firmly believe that we should place our faith in each other, in those we can hold accountable when that faith is betrayed and in whom we can set realistic expectations of that faith. I have faith that my wife loves me, a faith built on evidence from past behavior and promises made for the future. I have faith that my garbage company will pick up the trash on a weekly basis, based on an agreed upon contract of payment for services and enforced by governmental agencies should that faith be broken. But none of these faith’s are held sacred, all can be held up for question and scrutiny.