Poker Gaming and Life: Religion....for DS's playground

[DcifrThs]

just read some of DS's short thoughts about life at the end of his book.

honestly, i was fairly impressed and i enjoyed them.

one that stuck out that i am still pondering is the following. it comes under the topic of things that are hard to refute:

if there are 100 religions that believe 100 different things, the number of religions that believe something that is incorrect MAY be all 100 of them. but it is AT LEAST 99.

while this may be true and is definately hard to refute, im more interested in the implications therein.

particularly what can be implied about the likelihood of a religion being correct. im currently operating as if EVERY religino is wrong and nobody knows anything because if there is a god then the interpretation of that deity by a human is pretty much guaranteed to be incorrect or at least biased by the nuture that person has received up until the point of being able to grasp the concept of a greater power.

it would affect my state of mind if i KNEW that at least one religion was correct.

any thoughts.

Barron

What about the possibility that none of them are 100% correct, but they all come close to the actual truth in their core beliefs?

For example, Xians, Muslims and Jews all believe in one God, a basic moral code, life after death, the immortality of the soul, rewards for a good life, etc.

[BluffTHIS!]

David's state about at least 99 being wrong is undeniably correct and that should be obvious. The only way tht OOO can be correct about all of them only possessing partial truth to some degree is if there has never been any divine revelation by God to give information, or if that has been and God did not provide so that the message is passed on incorrupt over the centuries. The 3rd logical possibility is that God has yet to reveal himself.

As a Catholic I think that my religion is the only one that is 100% correct and can make good if not conclusive arguements that it is, particularly when compared to other Christian denominations. But unlike other christians here, who have different views on free will, catholics do not believe that in general God presents men with 100% believable evidence, because to do so would effectively take away much of that free will and negate the value of faith to some degree, although we believe God has done precisely that in biblical and other times when supernatural miracles were performed. In general however, there is only partial evidence and what tips the scales of belief for most, if they have ever truly examined the religion in which they were born and practiced it whole-heartedly, is their own personal experience of that faith.

So the answer is to search. Read the bible and religious texts of other religions and pray that if there is a God that He will enable you too see Him in those writings. You could also take the wager of catholic mathematician Blaise Pascal known as Pascal's Wager, in which the payoff matrix is as follows:

If I wager for and God is -- infinite gain;
If I wager for and God is not -- no loss.
If I wager against and God is -- infinite loss;
If I wager against and God is not -- neither loss nor gain.

To do this for a limited time to evaluate, it has been suggested that you for one year read the bible and attend church and then see what you think. Logically of course this can be applied to any religion. The above matrix does assume a more harsh payoff for not believing than I believe to be correct in all cases, although many protestants will say it is exactly that. I should note in fairness, that there are more critical mathematical arguements against the wager, especially in that the matrix should have more rows and options.

[Alex/Mugaaz]

I think anyone with any amount of wisdom can see that if you believe only because of Pascal's Wager then your belief is worth nothing anyway. Who the hell believes that there will be cheaters even in the final judgement?

[David Sklansky]

Wallenda would be proud.

[BluffTHIS!]

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Wallenda would be proud.

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Probably not. I work with a safety net.

[sexdrugsmoney]

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As a Catholic I think that my religion is the only one that is 100% correct and can make good if not conclusive arguements that it is, particularly when compared to other Christian denominations.

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100% eh?

Can I offer you 99% with an ocean view? /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[benkahuna]

I see a problem with this sort of rational thinking as it applies to religions.

And that is that I don't see how you can successfully approach religions this way, which obviously is much of the point.

The only way that I see to deal with this issue is to take go for a faith-based approach and ignore rationality on this particular issue.

I'm not religious though. I'd definitely be curious how religious types deal with this conundrum (which I've thought of on my own--it's pretty obvious).

The Catholic spoke up and said he felt that he had compelling reasons why his religion was the right one, but kept an open mind to the train of thought. How about other religions or denominations?

[BluffTHIS!]

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I see a problem with this sort of rational thinking as it applies to religions.

And that is that I don't see how you can successfully approach religions this way, which obviously is much of the point.

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This can only be correct if you posit a god who is explicitly illogical. If a religion is true, then it should not be in conflict with true science and logic. Of course this does not apply to the given axioms as long as they are not too far-fetched. We in the catholic church have Thomas Aquinas to thank for this, and his writings often stress the importance of reason applied to God. He also credited Aristotle regarding reason and logic. If any religion or denomination cannot present a set of beliefs that logically follow from its given axioms or are not logically coherent with each other, then that is strong evidence that that particular belief system is totally false or that it is partially so. My recent thread entitled "What Protestants Don't Seem To Get" makes this point regarding christian denominations and the logical implications of certain beliefs. Note that I am talking of logic here and not the degree of probability that evidence for the axioms is true.

[benkahuna]

That makes good sense.