Why I don't believe in God

I decided to try to put down succinctly the reasons for why I don't believe in god(s), just because my justifications have been constantly developing over years, though the nonbelief has remained the same.

1. Subjectivity of evidence- The only evidence that is offered for the existence of a deity is that of either seeing design in the universe (necessitating, for some reason, their particular flavor of creator god) or of having "experienced" God. The fact that people of all religions claim to experience their particular deities, or have visions consistent with their religion's cosmology, is not a very good indication of truth. Especially considering the rarity of such experiences, and the fact that they could be more reasonably explained as credulous hallucinations or even willful deceit. Without hard, verifiable, objective evidence consistent with a particular view of the divine, I am left unconvinced, but not immovable.
2. Inconsistency with reality- There are quite a few religions that offer a perspective on existence that simply contradicts known facts, and the rules of logic. Specifically, the Christian God is internally inconsistent if you accept that he allows free will, is omniscient, and omnipotent. And the religion is externally inconsistent if you accept that he is omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and acknowledge that there is injustice and suffering in the world which is NOT necessarily alieviated in their view of the afterlife. In addition, the Bible is also externally inconsistent with reality, in that God does not interact with people in the explicity manner portrayed in it. These contradictions, both internal and external, are actually a very minor consideration, but one worth making.
3. The unknowable nature of the supernatural- We are natural beings, in a natural world, confined to natural senses and only able to observe natural phenomenon. Supernatural beings and phenomenon are simply beyond the scope of our observations and are unknowable (being, by definition, beyond the natural). As such, we can never have objective evidence of a truly supernatural entity and, in our experience (reflected in point number 2) we have no reason to believe that such an entity has any influence on our existence that is distinguishable from regularly occuring natural phenomenon. As such, any claims pertaining to specifics of the supernatural are impossible to verify.
4. Speculative traits and vague principles- This is not a reason for disbelieving in a god, in of itself. It is a reason to cast doubt on any of the imagined forms they are claimed to take. When people attempt to prove that a god must exist, they tend to make arguments regarding first causes, moral law-givers, etc. The problem with this relates to point 3. Essentially, these "proofs" of God's existence merely attempt to verify a single aspect that he represents (a creative force, a personification of the human conscience, etc.) and try to show that the represented aspect is a necessity by reducing God to a single principle of reality. From there, by claiming that such a God must exist, they equivocate and suggest that the God of theology, with a variety of unverified traits, desires, and with a supernatural cosmology to attend to, is that God which must exist. This conflation of a single natural principle and a complex, multifaceted intelligent force with specific needs and wants does not cast doubt on God's existence, in of itself. But it does illustrate that the proofs for his existence are generally flawed, and fail to even indicate that something supernatural must exist, despite intentionally mislabeling unknowns "God".
5. Religiocentricity- Quite simply, considering the points in 3, and 4, and knowing of all the other religions in the world, it is easy to realize that any given religion is a glorified guess about an essentially unknown and unverifiable aspect of existence. From that perspective, it is hard to accept the dogma pertaining to the speculative deity of that religion's choice, to say nothing about their description about what that deity MUST be like. As such, even if were to concede that a supernatural "god" or something like it were 100% likely to exist, it would be pointless to lump yourself into any given religion, because there are almost infinite possibilities as to the nature of the god(s) in question. It is from there that religion becomes a pointless identification, and it is clear that is focused on a purposefully arbitrary claim.

Well, that's that. One could say that this is actually more consistent with deism than atheism, though. But, since I think that "god" is an arbitrary label, and that it is inappropriate to apply that label to a non-sentient and motiveless creative force or principle, and I also am unconvinced that anything supernatural exists at all, I think "atheism" is a more appropriate description.

Free Will and Omniscience.

Apparently, wikipedia was kind enough to compile a variety of responses that supposedly are attempts to resolve the contradiction of "free will" and absolute foreknowledge on the part of a creator. They've conveniently lined them all up to shot down.

God can know in advance what I will do, because free will is to be
understood only as freedom from coercion, and anything further
is an illusion.

Hmmmm. Doesn't mesh. Free will is not just freedom from "coercion" in the form of outside intervention but also the ability to make choices free from constraints and causations beyond one's control. Since God knew what events would happen beforehand, from your birth to your death, to every factor set in place from biology to environment that would influence you in a pre-known fashion, you could hardly call that freedom from "coercion" because God isn't doing directly.

God can know in advance what I will do, even though free will in the fullest
sense of the phrase does exist. God somehow has a "middle knowledge" -
that is, knowledge of how free agents will act in any given circumstances.

The problem with middle knowledge is this: it is knowledge of every single possible outcome without knowledge of which one is actually going to happen. Obviously an omniscient deity should have knowledge of every possibility, but, unfortunately, omniscience is worthless if it doesn't even give you an inkling about which occurrence is more probable than others. By giving him knowledge of every feasible option, but no way of discerning the nearly certain from the nearly impossible, it makes that knowledge absolutely worthless.

God can know all possibilities. The same way a master chess player is able to anticipate not only one scenario but several and prepare the moves in response to each scenario, God is able to figure all consequences from what I will do next
moment, since my options are multiple but still limited.

Same problem as middle knowledge. Knowing the possibilities without awareness of which one is going to occur or which one is most likely is essentially worthless, and, given that God would know a nearly infinite number of possible courses of action for billions upon billions over the years, without having some foreknowledge of the actions taken, God would be completely unaware of the future beyond a few days.

God chooses to foreknow and foreordain (and, therefore, predetermine) some things,
but not others. This allows a free moral choice on the part of man for those
things that God choose not to foreordain. It accomplishes this by attributing to
God the ability for Him, Himself, to be a free moral agent with the ability to
choose what He will, and will not, foreknow, assuming God exists in linear time
(or at least an analogue thereof) where "foreknowledge" is a meaningful concept.

Rather arbitrary. Positing selective omniscience, which, somehow, gives us a small amount of free will in regards to "moral" action creates a few problems . If moral actions include the choice between whether to engage in warfare and violence, or whether to rape someone, I don't know how it is possible for God to have a blindspot in regard to that particular decision, yet still have foreknowledge about the potential victim's life. Unless God only "foreknows" predestined events that occur on a global level, but even then, if it has to do with national politics, or collective human activity rather than individual, then God's omniscience is limited to an absurd degree. But, I assume it makes it so that praying actually makes sense...

It is not possible for God to know the result of a free human choice. Omniscience should therefore be interpreted to mean "knowledge of everything that can be known". God can know what someone will do, but only by predetermining it; thus, he chooses the extent of human freedom by choosing what (if anything) to know in this way.

If God cannot know the results of human choice, then he is completely blind in regards to all human activity, society, and warfare, unless he managed to rob that particular individual of his free will. And, the funny thing about positing that he CAN rob us of our free will at a whim that you cannot say with certainty whether a given person is acting freely or not! We could be given as little or as much free will as he desires, and we would never be able to tell the difference (note: this is pretty much the objective verdict of free will in regards to supernatural influence).

God stands outside time, and therefore can know everything free agents do, since He does not know these facts "in advance", he knows them before they are even conceived and long after the actions have occurred. The free agent's future actions therefore remain contingent to himself and others in linear time but are logically necessary to God on account of His infallibly accurate all-encompassing view. This was the solution offered by Thomas Aquinas.[4]

This doesn't help. Existing "outside of time" would mean that he would be aware of past, present, and future with even more certainty than if he were to exist in linear time along with us. By existing outside of time, he can see past, present, and future events and actions all set out before him, with no regards as to what point the current timeline is located. The future has already occurred in such a position. Unless, of course, being beyond time is supposed to mean that God doesn't interfere which means, once again, we get to the problem with the first argument. If it is supposed to mean that he can see an infinite series of possible timelines, we go back to the problem with the second argument.

Instead of producing a parallel model in God's own infallible mind of the
future contingent actions of a free agent (thus suppressing the agent's free
will), God encodes his knowledge of the agent's actions in the original action
itself.

Hrrmmm. Crap. I can't even understand what this means. I'm not sure if this is supposed to mean that God regains knowledge that he once had of an agent's action after the agents have already acted, or that he is always aware of the next action they will make, and only that action. Or if the agent's themselves have God's knowledge of their own future actions. All I know, is it sounds like another "can't predict human social, military, or moral activity past the course of one day" things

God passively seeing the infinite future in no way alters it, anymore than us reading a history book influences the past by simply observing it
retrospectively. However, He might choose (or not) to read any chapter or the
ending, or open the book at any page.

This is the most ridiculous of them all, because it intentionally ignores the fact that God set everything involved in that infinte future into motion while knowing every detail of it. On top of that, he had the power to make it whatever he wanted, and the power to change it at a whim as well. This analogy only works if God was not an omnipotent creator in addition to being omniscient.

Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada has stated that man does have limited free
will; he can decide whether or not to surrender to the will of Krishna.
Otherwise, all material happenings and their implications are inconceivably
predestined. This concept being subject to challenge in customary affairs, it is
then also somewhat ridiculed as a philosophy.

So, this is another one of those free will blindspots, except, the blind spot is incredibly small. Now, here is the problem again: if their is an omniscient deity, who knows and predetermined everything save one specific form of choice, he cannot be aware of any consequences arising from that choice either. If their life is affected, in any way, by the acceptance of Krishna, the omniscient one cannot know about this without effectively being aware of whether it happened. A guy accepts Krishna and saves three thousand people over the course of 40 years due to his belief system, and the all-knowing god cannot be aware of that fact without compromising free will. A guy accepts Krishna, and is told that he should go around killing and eating people to appease him, and winds up ending 60 lives and makes many in the general populace lose faith in humanity, detach from their former religion, and eventually begin civil war with the unfazed maintainers of the status quo. And yet God cannot be aware of any of those facts either, lest he be tacitly aware of the mass-murderer's acceptance.

This brings me to my conclusion: free will and an omniscient Creator just don't mesh. You need to take away one of those (free will, omniscience, or creator) in order for them to make sense together. Even then, it is iffy. Every attempt was either a bizarre attempt to work around omniscience, or to hide parts of the puzzle under the table to make the pieces look like they fit together. They just don't.

Coveting thy neighbor's credibility

Inspired by the coining of the term "Fatwa Envy" (below) by PZ Myers during the Wafergate affair, I have concocted a few labels in a similar vein in order to have a fast and easy summary of some of the more common thoughts that plague a religious believer's mind, and drive their perspectives of reality. Please, do not take any of them too seriously....

Koran Envy (Also, Jihad/Fatwah Envy or Theocracy Envy): A term that I originally picked up on PZ Myers' blog, Pharyngula [i.e. this one is not of my invention]. The desire to have enough authority to violently harrass or even bring about legal reprecussions for anyone who disputes the veracity of their religion, mocks it, or damages any functionally worthless artifacts relevant to the faith. Often reveals itself through a longing for blasphemy laws to prevent their religion from being questioned, or simply through pining for vigilante or mob justice against similar actions. Strangely, it can occur in people who have Martyr Envy as well.

Idealistic Masochism (Related to Persecution and Martyr Complexes): A desire to die, suffer, or be treated unfairly due to one's religious faith. A peculiarly common occurrence in Christianity, due to its fixation on the martyrdom of Jesus and the original Christians who were tormented and killed for their beliefs, with many Christians imagining themselves in a similar situation, either due to a tacit wish to feel more important due to being afflicted with similar trials, or due to a wish to perceive conditions that fulfill prophecies pertaining to such treatment. They perceive themselves as suffering in order to lend credibility (in their own mind) to their beliefs. Sometimes indistinguishable from standard masochism.

History Book Envy/Science Envy/Logic/Fact Envy: Describes the general belief (or the desire to declare) that one's religion is accurrate due to having some exclusive rights to a claim of intellectual authority or consistency. The most common form in Christians is the claim that the Bible's historical accuracy lends credence to the entirety of its doctrine. It is also common for both Muslims and Christians to claim that their particular holy texts offer insight into scientific observations that were not formally made until much later in time, and that this makes their metaphysical claims true. A mildly unrelated form is to claim a monopoly on the process of reason entirely (mostly due to the works of people of their faith in the realm of philosophy and science, or due to a presuppositionalist argument pertaining to their deity/ies, pertinent to Order Envy). In general, whether or not the claim of historical, scientific, or logical superiority relative to other religions happens to be true, it still does not indicate that the metaphysical claims are true by mere circumstance of being stated amidst otherwise factual statements. The person who tries to make it seem otherwise is most likely unsatisfied with blind faith and wants to add a veneer of legitimacy to an otherwise unjustified and unjustifiable belief.

Spontaneous Deism(Also, Pantheism Envy, Nomadic NOMA, or Selective Nonspecificity): Desire to affiliate with a particular religious viewpoint, to accept most or all of its doctrine, but to selectively discard (or temporarily ignore) properties of that deity that make it too anthropomorphic, or that would make the existence of such an entity inconsistent with our everyday experiences. It is a very precisely directed will to make the deity of choice a non-interventionist and to make it less strict and specific in aspects that you either disagree with or that contradict other aspects. Spontaneous Deism, according to its name, is only brought about in circumstances where beliefs and doctrine are brought under scrutiny, and the extent to which the deity's properties are discarded is limited when outside of an argument about said deity.

Just worldview fallacy (Also, Christian nationeers, Monopoly on law, or Hell-blindness): (supplemented by its namesake, "just world fallacy") A wish to claim that your deity or your religion has had a significant positive influence over civilized law in its current form, over positive human emotions, over certain moral behaviors or concepts, or just a wish to claim that the cosmology put forth by your religion is good, fair, and reflects positively on the deity that is declared to be responsible for it. It is only called the "just worldview fallacy" when these claims are not true, or are exaggerated. Most blatant when claiming responsibility for laws that predated your religion, for moral concepts that either predated the religion or are contradicted by it, and for cosmologies that are clearly unfair and cruel.

Desperate definition-seeking: (Also Order Envy, Proof through subjective meaning, or Urge for Creation Monopoly): The perception that your particular religion is the only one with a possibly valid explanation for existence, for a natural order, or for why humans exist. Interestingly, this one does not often result from a desire to be better than other religions and their explanations, but rather from a complete ignorance of other explanations. Rather than defining itself in contrast to other religious explanations, it contrasts itself to non-religious explanations. Often, it is also ignorant of those as well. Order Envy always exists as long as they believe that they have an explanation for origins.

Hedonist Envy (Also Hypocrite's restraint): A desire to indulge in behavior of a violent, sexual, or just plain antisocial manner, and using religious doctrine as a method of restraining yourself. Often manifests as a rabid condemnation of people who do indulge in the desired activities, while simultaneously people who do not follow your religious doctrine, under presumptions that they are unrestrained and have similar urges. When normal instead of abnormal behavior is restricted by religious doctrine, abnormal behavior that is or is not explicitly forbidden as well may manifest, and feeds into the level of condemnation and generalized hatred of other people.

Holocaust Envy (A special form of Idealistic Masochism; also called Pogrom Envy, Slavery Envy, Racism Envy, etc. based on incidence): A wish that you were a member of a group that had a history of being discriminated against, persecuted, and killed, solely on merits of being in that group. This comes with the qualifier (which usually appears as the explicit manifestation of the underlying urge) that you are granted a level of respect and tolerance on merits of that history beyond that of normal groups. Often manifests when trying to ask why such groups do not suffer from harsh criticisms that are applied to your own.

Exclusive Wisdom (Also Enlightment Envy or Zenvy): Belief that your religion offers special knowledge and insight into the world that others cannot offer. Often extends into a wish to claim moral, or "spiritual" superiority on merits of such insights or merely being a member of that religion. Often only relevant if one can only attain this wisdom by merits of being a member of the religion, and not through a specific process that is independent of acceptance of other doctrine.

That'll do for now...

Voting: The S & M way

(Inspired by the idea of PUMA, and by people wondering why African Americans are so disproportionately Democrats...)

It is a remarkable problem that has become increasingly obvious over the last few years. Closeted gay politicians pass anti-gay legislation. Post-equal rights women speak publicly about the evils of feminism. Pundits from a minority group rant about how we should do away with the overcompensatory measures of affirmative action. And those in bottom quintile for yearly salary speak out against welfare and "socialism". These are a vast and varied group of people who, for whatever reason, fight valiantly on behalf of a group that is against their own best interests. They are the Stockholm Republicans.

They may see it as a noble sacrifice, or they may simply focus on aspects of neo-conservative policy that doesn't pertain to stripping them of their rights. But, for whatever reason, they find themselves supporting the people who hate them and want to limit their existence as much as possible. They are racial minorities who ally themselves with racists (e.g. D'Souza). They are women who are willing to sacrifice their rights to choice (in regards to womb and work) in the name of tradition (e.g. Schafly). They are non-Christians supporting the claim that they live in a Christian country and that the legislature should feel free to impose fundamentalist views on the general populace. They are gays who support the party that is bastion of hope for homophobes across the country. Their motives are unknown, but, whether or not they are consciously aware of the fact that they are adamantly supporting their own oppression, or if they merely see it as a necessary evil in favoring an otherwise agreeable platform (from their perspective) is up for debate on a case by case basis.

Nevertheless, I think it safe to assume that they have a masochistic streak (especially in light of seeing how well Republicans do on the economic and military fronts, and not just the social one). Whether they should be pitied as victims of two-party circumstance, hailed as martyrs for an indeterminate cause, or hauled off to a mental facility, their existence is a striking blow to our political system. Under circumstances without such a group, the Republicans couldn't afford to remain as the "rich Christian white straight male's party" and let the Democratic party be the "everybody else's party". They would lose every election. But, the group of Stockholm Republicans (be they "followers of the status-quo", those who hear the party platform and say"one out of five ain't bad", or the "optimistic ear-pluggers") effectively innoculate the party from such a threat, and assure that they never have to abandon their lack of concern about society beyond the original core "panderees".

I have my fingers crossed that they are too small of a fringe to matter in this election (where the past administration should have thoroughly dismissed any illusions of conservative fiscal responsibility, moral superiority, and military expertise). But, then again, you will be surprised how many people are willing to take up the brutal four more years of the self-flagellation they know, than the black, inexperienced secret Muslim that they don't.

Pacifism: Cheers or Jeers?

So, I was reading this great article about how objective morality is effectively irrelevant, and how the Bible's "morals" have not particularly affected the morality that present American society possesses today. And, in this article was a quote that caught my interest "pacifism is inherently immoral".

Though it surprised me initially, I can now say that it does make sense. Extreme pacifism, in the most dire situations, is akin to martyrdom for the sake of your own beliefs that violence should never be used, which feeds into a sense of moral superiority. Of course, this is sort of a strange thought for me to be having, since I consider myself to be pacifist. I did some more exploration on the subject, to see how I could best frantically justify some form of a non-violent position. And that's when I came across this article.

Pacifists are not serious people, although they devoutly believe they are, and their arguments are not being taken seriously at the moment.

Well, it's good to see his conclusions at the outset. I hope he shows his work...

It is worth it, first of all, because the idea of peace is inherently attractive

True....go on.

because the reactionary left-liberal crowd in America and in Europe has already staked out its ground here:

Tell us how you really feel...

What happened to America is America's fault, the fruits of foolish arrogance and greedy imperialism, racism, colonialism, etc., etc. From this rises an argument that the resulting war is also an exercise in arrogance and imperialism, etc., and not deserving of support.

In the case of America, a history of violence in the name of protecting others could have to do with the "Death to America" sentiment in the Middle East prior to 9/11. And this hatred proved fertile ground for violence directed towards us. We decide, of course, to respond with more violence. And decide to topple Iraq as well, despite it having no relevance to the attack received, thus lending more credibility to the "arrogance and imperialism" justification for hating us (if that was the actual reason...we really don't know).

Of course, this is the problem with paranoia, idiocy, and an over-reliance on violence and military strength, but it does not necessarily mean that pacifism is any better.

Pacifists see themselves as obviously on the side of a higher morality,

And I assume that this is a significant problem, because if they think that pacifism is of such incredible importance in determining whether they can call themselves "moral", which means that they will be hard pressed to abandon it when necessary. Arrogance, stubbornness, and a sense of moral superiority tend to go hand-in-hand-in-hand.

Two wrongs don't make a right; violence only begets more violence.

This is primarily true. And violence does only beget more violence...unless you wipe out everyone who gives a damn about it, and then decide to become (dramatic pause) pacifists.

So, for instance, a German citizen who declined to fight for the Nazi cause could be seen (although not likely by his family and friends) as occupying the moral position.

Why is it moral to refuse to fight for the Nazi cause, exactly? If he is German, and in the midsts of war, it is suicide to refuse to help the army fend off other countries now that Hitler had plunged headfirst into pissing off of the entire planet, and it is immoral to allow whatever unknown fates might await his loved ones and the defenseless populace, due to his own wish to have the moral high-ground. Saying "Nazis bad" isn't good enough.

But in the situation where one's nation has been attacked — a situation such as we are now in — pacifism is, inescapably and profoundly, immoral. Indeed, in the case of this specific situation, pacifism is on the side of the murderers, and it is on the side of letting them murder again.

This is the crux of matter: under what situations is pacifism is a moral position along with a tenable solution, and under what situation is it tantamount to appeasement or outright suicide? It is actually rather hard to tell, but what the author is trying to imply is that violence is a solution, and pacifism is only a route to victimization, in situations where you, yourself, are subjected to violence. As a general rule, violence being justified as a response to UNPROVOKED violence works, but, unfortunately, it tends to lend into the "violence begets violence" cycle due to varying perspectives. Which is our situation now: we have responded to the initial terrorist attacks in a manner that not only escalated it, but involved parties beyond the initial culprits, thus making us the unprovoked attackers of Iraq, and continuing to justify their own violence by remaining there.

In this case, pacifism would be best, because continuing to battle against a bunch of citizens who are only fighting us due to our insistence on continuing to battle is, in fact, immoral and idiotic.

The Nazis wished the British to not fight. If the British did not fight, the Nazis would conquer Britain.

Though diplomacy would be ideal, in a situation where you are in imminent and undeniable danger due to the overbearing presence of an individual or person who is making clear their intent to harm you, violence is also justified. Unfortunately, I would argue that responding to a threat is less justified, but more safe, than responding to actual violence, due to the ability of paranoia to leak in and turn every person or nation you interact with into an "imminent threat" (see: Iraq again).

Organized terrorist groups have attacked America. These groups wish the Americans to not fight. The American pacifists wish the Americans to not fight. If the Americans do not fight, the terrorists will attack America again. And now we know such attacks can kill many thousands of Americans. The American pacifists, therefore, are on the side of future mass murders of Americans. They are objectively pro-terrorist.

Ridiculous. Tell me which "pacifists" are not supporting us pursuing bin Laden, and I will concede. Otherwise, you are conflating "wishing the Americans to not fight" with "wishing the Americans would not fight people and countries unrelated to the terror attacks we are responding to". We are not fighting terror anymore. We are provoking people into defending their homes.

The rest of his article is pretty much the same as the above.
Of course, I ran across another article on the subject: a strange article that spends its first half in some hypothetical anecdote scenario where a mugger robs and kills a man who is unwilling to fight back due to being a pacifist, and then mugs another guy who pulls out a gun and shoots him. It is kind of funny if it weren't, you know, kind of contrived. But then, he goes for the nut meat.

The Pacifist claims that he (or she) is too good to fight against evil, and this is the catastrophic intellectual and moral failure of Pacifism. In the guise of being too good to oppose evil, the Pacifist invokes the ultimate immorality by aiding and abetting and encouraging evil, on the pretext of being too pure, too wise, too sophisticated to fight evil,

This is essentially true. Except, I disagree with the idea that "evil" is a clear and pervasive enough of a force for pacifism to be truly wrong. Full-blown pacifism in a scenario involving "evil" however, would indeed be immoral. So I suggest pacifism in moderation; within reason. Pacifism is only a virtue when there are people who are willing to respond to non-violent methods of problem-solving. When they are not, and clearly so, or when it is not possible due to time constraints and the threat of violence, then pacifism should be put on hold. But, keep in mind, if you start thinking that everyone is "evil" and use that as an excuse to use excessive violence, you may have suddenly become the problem yourself, and you better damn well wish that the person who sets you straight is a rational pacifist rather than a paranoid vigilante like yourself.

“There is nothing good worth fighting for. And there is nothing so evil worth fighting against.”

This is the problem with the pacifist. There are things good enough worth fighting for, and there are things evil enough worth fighting against. It is just nigh impossible to tell what those things are with certainty, and it is ideal to try to acheive them through non-violent ends, lest we ourselves become someone else's "evil". As a general rule, your own life is "good" enough to fight for (but not at the cost of other lives), and someone threatening to kill you with sincerity and with the methods of doing so is "evil" enough to fight against (but not at the cost of other lives). If you fight, and it turns out that the good was in no danger, and the evil was non-existent, then you may learn why pacifism is useful in situtations where it is practical and possible.

In order to be a Pacifist, one must hold that Nazism or Islamism or Communism or any other puritanical totalitarian ideology that seeks to slaughter or oppress all the Jews or all of any other race or tribe is no worse, is not morally inferior, to the existence of Jews and Judaism,

LOLWUT? If one is a pacifist, one supports peaceful solutions and does not think that violence is good. Those oppressive and murderous regimes are violent, and the victims are not. So, pacifists hold the victims as morally superior to the killers. Or am I missing something?

For the Pacifist devoutly believes that by refusing to fight against evil he is affirming that he is good, too good and pure to oppose evil, too good and pure to fight evil, to good and pure to kill evil. But in the end, he is the enabler without whom the triumph of evil would not be possible.

Sigh. It is confirmed: black and white thinker.

Anyway, even if they were a little off-base, the articles were enlightening enough for me to realize that complete pacifism (refusal to use violence at all) is a dangerous position, in that it could be outright suicidal in the wrong circumstances. But, if you take a looser pacifism, and realize that violence is sometimes a necessity, sometimes justified, but should still be used only in desperate, life-threatening situations, as it too often makes martyrs and infuriates friends, then you have got something that is practical and workable. Violence as a last resort, and only when provoked is a rather reasonable policy. I am not quite sure that it would qualify as "pacifism" of any kind, since it effectively seems to be an almost universal principle that all but sociopaths tend to act upon. So, I assume that pacifist may be one less label I need to bother applying to myself.

On truth, Truth, truf, and TROOF.

truth: An accurate assessment of reality; something that isn't false; a claim that is supported by, or consistent with, the facts. Factuality; actuality.

Truth: That which is considered to be the supreme reality and to have the ultimate meaning and value of existence. Often used inappropriately in place of the word "TROOF".

truf: Informal phrase that means "that is the truth", or simply "truth"; petinent to irrelevant, trivial, and insignificant matters only. Statements that could be called "truf" either are personal to the point of being irrelevant to anyone but the persons directly involved in the matter, or are otherwise obvious claims that do not advance a line of reasoning, and are often used for deceptive, manipulative purposes beyond the scope of the statement itself. See also: "non-sequitur".

TROOF: [for a lower-case version of the same word, see the definition of the word "truf" for alternate definitions.] A concept, or set of beliefs that is either believed by a sizeable chunk of society or believed with unwavering conviction by a specific individual addressed. The concepts or beliefs relevant are often either factually unsupported or outright falsehoods, but are nonetheless presented as truth or Truth (see above definitions) by those that hold them. The people involved must also present no possible doubts of the veracity of their claims in addition to the above criteria in order for the ideas presented to fit this definition. Bonus points if they are belligerent assholes about it. See also: "faith".

The Christocentric Definiton of Atheism

I am sure that you have heard this before: atheists are only atheists because they don't like the Christian God (for whatever variety of reasons). Atheism to people with such a mindset is fervently opposed to Christianity alone, and is simply a refusal of their own doctrine. To such people, no other world views have any factor on the decision to become an atheist, no other gods are being "opposed" or "denied". It is only the god that they believe in that needs to be actively despised or rejected in order for one not to believe in it.

It is hilariously egotistic, thoroughly entrenched in the presuppositions of their own doctrine, and so blatant in its disregard of how they, by the implications of their assertion of atheism being hatred of a deity, must have an incredible amount of spite towards every other god that others hold as being true.

So, yes, atheists are only atheists because they despise Jesus and Yahweh. Serves you right for how much resentment you bear towards Allah, Vishnu, and the entire Greek pantheon.

The Stalin/Mao/Pol Pot Gambit

Okay, I have been seeing a lot of this come up lately, and it grows increasingly annoying because it obvious that it is a hell of a lot easier to ask, remember, and regurgitate across the intertubes than it is to come up with a clear and concise response to why it is more than a little off kilter. The basic idea is this: atheism is no better/worse than Christianity because the worst crimes and atrocities committed by Christians have only death tolls in the thousands, but the atheists Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot all killed a number of people in the millions.

Let me just point out the problems, step by step. The first little complaint is that "atheism" cannot be equated to Christianity as an ideology, in that atheism is simply the lack of belief in god(s) and has no other common doctrine or conclusions attached to the title. As such, there is very little uniting atheists together, and very little that defines them as being similar, and, as such, any given atheist has less in common with another atheist than a Christian would have in common with a Christian (even despite the heavily sectarian nature of the religion), due to the large amount of doctrine that they both are exposed to, are influenced by, and tacitly accept. Atheists have no such comparable exposure or adherence to common ideas, and, as such, atheism in of itself cannot be as connected to the activities of any given atheist as it could be for any given Christian. I know this sounds unfair, and undemocratic of me, but I think it stands to reason that people who all believe in the existence of God, the veracity of the Bible, the divinity of Jesus, the necessity of his moral law (whatever those morals may be...), and who regularly interact with those who share those beliefs in settings focused explicitly on them have slighty more ideological connections to one another than the rare, insular people whose only common belief is that they have no belief in the religions that surround them.

The second problem is related to the first: that, even though these three dictators were all atheists, what defined their actions and mindsets more than simple non-belief in gods alone were the ideologies of communism to which they subscribed (and abused in order to attain oppressive totalitarian regimes). There was far more similarities in regards to their political ideologies than anything to could be said about atheism alone.

The third issue is both of a general defense of any set of ideas, beliefs, or actions that are challenged due to an alleged connection to a set of horrifying events. Though it is tempting to leap to judgment when a (presumably) clear correlation between some kind of ideology's prominence in a society or many societies and horrible events occuring in those locations, it is pertinent to try to reserve judgment unless you have seen that the ideology can and has influenced such behavior in several different socio-political climates, varied in time and location. The more it seems to occur across different times and regions, the more confidently we can blame the ideology itself, rather than underlying problems in the population, societal structure, economy, etc., which is presumably unrelated to the ideas criticized. And, unfortunately, the atrocities of communist regimes are relatively confined to a few struggling nations within the early to mid 20th century. Whether these nations alone reflect upon an inherent evil in communism or atheism, one could hardly say with honesty.

The fourth issue is whether the massive death toll somehow makes Christianity's own death toll from the witch trials, Crusades, Inquistion, etc. less significant. There are few problems with this. The first is that the three atheistic regimes did not engage in formal warfare, which is what constitutes an "atrocity", apparently, whereas this was the primary fashion in which Christianity went about killing a majority of the lives that could be tallied up against it. The problem is that we somehow dismiss the warfare as justifiable and beyond reproach (in fairness, I do not mean to suggest that Christianity in of itself was behind every war of Christian nations, but I simply mean to express that one need not spill the blood of many dissidents when you are sending off your own to kill and die for the sake of glory, satisfying the desire for violence and power in a more "acceptable" fashion). The second is that Stalin/Mao/Pol Pot had a much larger population to work with and, as such, it is a little underhanded to suggest that the failure of Christians to kill millions within the confines of a decade in the Middle Ages, as these three have done in the 1900's, somehow reflects upon some form of restraint. The third is related to the second: Stalin/Mao/Pol Pot not only had a larger crop of potential victims than Christianity had in its more impressionable years, but they also had much more efficient modes of execution. Even if the population had been identical to today back during the Inquisition, the Inquisition would still fail to have a significant death toll comparable to the atrocities of the three communist regimes without the Industrial era tools, transportation, and weaponry to do it (to say nothing of the fact that the Inquisition would need to focus more on execution and less on torture to compete).

So, to put it concisely, atheism is not detailed, consistent, or universal enough in its implications to be blamed for the actions of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot; what is more more relevant to the Big Three's behavior is communist ideology itself (which, even there, they deviate); one should not dismiss any set of ideas or beliefs as the direct cause of certain events without seeing that there is not something else at work (the fact that most successful and peaceful European countries of our day and age are atheistic helps to show that the assumption that atheism itself leads to these atrocities is flawed); and Christianity's atrocities are not entirely mitigated by the fact that they have lower total deaths attributed to them, given the fact that those atrocities may have been much larger in scope if given the population size and technology of the nations that they are being compared to.

All in all, this little argument, though deceptively convincing, is blatantly unfair and is a glorified illustration of jumping to the conclusion of correlation implying causation. As such, this argument is suitable as a rebuttal to a similarly unfair jump in logic of trying to cast doubt upon the entire precipice of Christianity by touting about a few acts of violence of centuries past. When it comes down to it, and you get beyond the false appeal of an argument from consequences, none of the tenets of Christianity, nor the arguments of atheism, are swayed in the slightest. They merely sit, ignored, as we entertain ourselves with horrific distractions.

To Poe or Not to Poe...

Hmmmm...apparently they are going to be starting up a Christian oriented magazine on campus. It is interesting, because I've found that this going to be one of many religiously oriented student organizations on a campus with no secular based organizations (basically, no atheist groups), though I have the hunch that atheism is a little more common around here than in most parts of the countries [it's Massachusetts, ultra-liberal to the point where we do have Republican Clubs on our campuses but no Democratic Clubs, due sheerly to the fact that, if we had a Democrat Club, it would consist of almost 90% of the students and faculty]. And, it came to me, while staring at this little pamphlet talking about this magazine, asking for writers to "express their faith", that this magazine would be perfect for me!

What better test is there for a person to not only write things that they patently do not believe in, but to also do it in a low-toned, coded fashion that allows for the objective observer to see that there is more to your articles than meets the eyes. How much fun would it be to write about an issue you feel passionate about, but to completely hide the fact that you feel passionate in the complete opposite fashion as your readers and employers, yet they are none the wiser? I could just imagine how giddily I could make my submissions to that paper, writing spiritual poetry that takes tacit jabs at the common idea of God, writing editorials that explicitly condemn non-belief and sin, all while tacitly bringing into question how one could bring yourself to such condemnation without violating Christian principles. And I could see myself laughing as I send in an easily refuted piece of garbage of an argument that implicitly refutes itself, just waiting to see how the magazine responds to the off-handed rebuttals sent in response by the handful of atheists on campus who would bother to pay attention to such trash.

And, thinking about all this, pining for a way to get published and get ideas out there, while also relishing the opportunity to both bamboozle believers and weave intricate dismissals of everything that they believe in the guise of intentionally weak faith-based rhetoric, I wonder: should I go for it?

Well, if I do not do it, it would probably be for the best, and save me some real stress (especially if I am exposed and confronted for basically trying to sabotage their magazine). But, if I do do it, may Poe's Law protect and serve me well....

Building a Better Morality: Ten Commandments Revised

Okay, on the subject of objective morality, I decided to take a long, hard look at the most objectivest (sp?), moralest code of objective morality that Judeo-Christian religions have to offer: the Ten Commandments. I believe that George Carlin cut these down to size in one of his routines, but my goal isn't to make the commandments more succinct...it is to dispose of the irrelevant commandments in order to add moral codes that are, tellingly, excluded from the original, as well as altering or expanding the roles of other commandments. Well, let's begin by looking at the actual Ten Commandments.

1. You shall have no other God before me.
2. Do not make any image of what is in the heavens above
3. Do not use the Lord's name in vain
4. Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.
5. Honor thy father and thy mother
6. Do not murder
7. Do not commit adultery
8. Do not steal (actually believed to be a reference to kidnapping)
9. Do not bear false witness against your neighbor
10. Do not covet.

Okay, right off the bat, it is pretty clear that the first four commandments can hardly constitute objective morals. There is no morality involved in that, they are simply demanding that you be Christian in order to adhere to them. In fact, there seems to be little moral reason to not make artistic depictions of gods, little immoral with saying "God" as an interjection in casual conversation. There is no harm brought about to any at all for working on the Sabbath. And, given that these objective morals are only relevant if you are presupposing the existence of the Judeo-Christian God, it is hardly universally applicable. So...let me just empty those four slots for now, and we will move on.

5. Honor thy father and thy mother
6. Do not commit murder
7. Do not commit adultery
8. Do not steal/kidnap
9. Do not bear false witness.
10. Do not covet.

Alright, for commandment five, I think that we need to keep in mind that 1. parents aren't the only ones in society who should be respected by an individual and 2. some parents should not be honored (namely, abusive ones). As such, I think that Commandment five should be revised to "Honor competent and respectful authority figures".

6. Do not commit murder.
7. Do not commit adultery.
8. Do not steal/kidnap.
9. Do not bear false witness.
10. Do not covet.

For commandment six, I think we need to revise it from "murder" to simply "bringing death and physical harm to others intentionally", in order to remove loopholes of warfare, justified homicide, and torture. As for commandment seven, I think that the "adultery" prohibition was originally meant to both promote sexual restraint and to prevent unfairness within a marriage (though heavily favoring the male, in that it was only considered adultery originally if the woman involved was married). I think that sexual restraint could be incorporated into commandment 10, and I could change commandment 7 to focus on marital equity. So, commandment seven could say something like "do not violate the trust of those closest to you", to make it a little more universal. And, change commandment ten to read "restrain yourself from potentially damaging desires and moderate your indulgences". Which leaves us with:

8. Do not steal/kidnap.
9. Do not bear false witness.

Alrighty. Well, I will address slavery later on, so I will assume that Commandment is actually what it is commonly interpretted to be. I will leave it relatively intact, but rephrase it to be "do not steal, damage, or destroy property that is not your own". As for Commandment nine, well...even though it is commonly equated to lying, it is really lying within a context that brings about harm and punishment for the person you are lying about. So, I will simply revise this as "do not speak falsehoods to disadvantage or harm others". So, what we have thus far is:

5.Honor competent and benevolent authority figures.
6.Do not intentionally bring about suffering or death for others.
7.Do not violate the trust of those closest to you.
8.Do not steal, damage, or destroy property that is not your own.
9.Do not speak falsehoods to disadvantage or harm others.
10.Restrain yourself from desires that would bring about damage, and do not overindulge yourself.

And, now I have the ugly task of whipping up Commandments that were never mentioned in the original. First off, I guess slavery would be a nice starting point. So, I think that "do not treat other human beings as inferior to oneself" suits that purpose.
Then there is the issue of child molestation, rape, and other forms of sexual abuse. In a sense, revised commandments 1, 6, and 10 would work against this, but I think that it needs to be explicitly condemned. I think "do not exploit others in order to indulge in one's own desires" works for this, and further helps to condemn slavery.
Then, we can get the last two. I think one issue is relative altruism: that is, helping other people when it is desperately needed, if doing so costs you little to nothing. The other issue is to not prompt or directly support people specifically in doing an immoral activity (and, given the strict nature of what is considered immoral here, this would largely be mafia dons, people giving money to terrorists, slave traders,people encouraging Klan members, etc.) . So, we have the following final revised Commandments:

1.Do not treat other human beings as inferior to oneself.
2.Do not exploit others in order to indulge in one's own desires.
3.Give help to others that desperately need it if doing so costs you little.
4.Do not actively promote immoral activities of others.
5.Honor competent and benevolent authority figures.
6.Do not intentionally bring about suffering or death for others.
7.Do not violate the trust of those closest to you.
8.Do not steal, damage, or destroy property that is not your own.
9.Do not speak falsehoods to disadvantage or harm others.
10.Restrain yourself from desires that would bring about damage, and do not overindulge yourself.

At face value, I think it looks pretty good. Not too shabby. Not sure if it is better than the original in being slighly more broad and comprehensive, and not as obsessed with how we interact with the Invisible Man, but, well...it was worth a try...

In the Spirit of Celebrating the Absurd...

I decided to come up with a doctrine for my own religion. It will be conceived in a similar manner to the Pascal's Roulette universes that I have designed below...but using none of the options assigned on the chart...Go baseless and excessive complexity! Join me, unbelievers...your conversion is nigh!

Deity: Oh, deities. How much fun has been had at their expense? From Russell's teapot, to the Invisible Pink Unicorn, all the way to the Flying Spaghetti Monster (pasta be upon him), many parodies have arisen in how difficult it is to disprove the nature of god or gods, allowing to basically say whatever the hell you want. Which leads me to the following completely unverifiable conclusion of the nature of all of existence as we know it, and if you think I am wrong, prove me wrong:

It has been revealed by prophecy that the universe as we know it is controlled by massive horde of irradiated half-fish/half-chipmunk/half-pterodactyls that exist beyond human senses, and beyond the irrelevant constrictions of mortality and space-time. These creatures reside within the 53rd dimension, and are latched onto every seventeenth human being born during a leap year, or to anyone who bastes themselves in tabasco sauce. In addition, these creatures are personally responsible for giving us the illusion of the reality that is around us, which serves to hide their presence from us. They personally deceive us by manipulating the appearances of this world to make it appear as if it follows the laws of nature and physics consistently, but only do so to mess with us, because we are more tasty when we are confused.

These creatures, henceforth known as Omegapisces, are responsible for creating the reality that we know out of extradimensional soap, before vomitting the collective human mind into existence, and deceiving them into perceiving the universe as we see it, for the transcendent lulz.

Doctrine: Because the Omegapisces enjoy when we are confused, they will be incredibly angry if you realize that they exist. Followers of the Truth that is their existence, however, deliberately worship the false idol Chuck Norris, in order to satiate the Omegapisces desire for humans to be blatantly incorrect, in order to keep an internet meme alive, and in order to make the Bible-beater Norris really peeved. Only those that worship Chuck Norris or other arbitrary and absurdly incorrect messiahs will be favored among the ranks of the Omegapisces.
In addition, in order to be latched upon by the Omegapisces, one must not only be confused and remain confused as expected above, but you must also either be one of the lucky few who are automatically latched on to, born each leap year, or you must bathe within tabasco sauce and sing the haunting melody of the Extradimensional Dinner Call. Only under those conditions can you attain the state of being fused with a parasitic extradimensional Omegapisces.

Eating or harming fish, small mammals, or anything with wings will immediately cause you to lose favor with your guardian parasite and will leave abandoned, and only upon redeeming yourself by chopping off a digit, or limb, can you receive another Omegapisces. In addition, you must not ever speak to other people about anything pertaining to geography, physics, water vessels, weather, bacteria, electricity, Zionism, or foreign automobiles, as these things cause great terror to our half-fish/half-chipmunk/half-pterodactyl overlords, and will prompt them to flee from your presence if you dare to speak of such ineffable things.

Violence, sexual activity, kindness, or civility of any form are of no concerns to these beings, and as such, one has been latched on to will not lose such status for those petty misdeeds, nor gain them.

Afterlife: The best afterlife is observed only by those who were privileged by being latched on to by a Omegapisces before their death. As such, their consciousness survives bodily death, and they enter the 53rd dimension, and immediately thereafter join the ranks of the Omegapisces. Those who knew of the Omegapisces, and worshipped a ridiculous deity instead, but did not have an Omegapisces latch onto them, will survive death and keep their individual consciousness. They will also be given a golden star sticker. Those who knew of the Omegapisces and did not worship anything will receive the same fate, but get no sticker. Those who worshipped the Omegapisces will die an early death and be banished to the Room of Slight Discomfort for the rest of eternity. Those who sincerely worshipped a seemingly legitimate god will be consumed by the Omegapisces, and will be regurgitated into the collective consciousness from which all human minds were originally drawn from. Those who sincerely worshipped ridiculous gods will just die. Just. Die. Those who worshipped no gods at all, yet did not know of the Omegapisces, will be survive death with an individual consciousness, but will have to wear a goofy hat to forever display the shameful reality that s/he never discovered the Truth in order to properly deny its existence.

The collective consciousness pool is continually redumped into existence until they are finally introduced into an illusory reality where they can finally realize the Truth, instead of continuing the trend of being guillible failures like in previous lives. Individual consciousnesses that remain in the 53rd dimension and have no turned into Omegapisces will be able to reincarnate in a privileged position in reality and with some memories of their former life in order to more effectively attain the goals that the others reintegrated into existence can only stumble upon.

Conclusion: Reality as we know it is an illusion established by fish/chipmunk/pterodactyl hybrids from another dimension that will only feed upon us, and thus provide us with the ability to join their ranks, if we deny their existence, bathe in tabasco sauce, refuse to eat certain vague categories of meat, and avoid speaking about certain arbitrary taboo topics. If we fail to do so, we are doomed to either outright die, be exiled to eternal discomfort, have our minds shuffled around with the rest of the human population and shoved back into the illusory reality, or kept relatively preserved, informed of the true nature of existence, and later shoved back into the illusory reality intact (though with altered memories). Are you foolish enough to risk not escaping this endless and dangerous cycle? To refuse the Truth as I set it out plainly before you, and clearly explain the risks of not unconsciously realizing it to be so, while outwardly denying it? Please...repent now! Sever your left pinkie, bathe in tabasco sauce, recite the Extradimensional Dinner Call, worship Chuck Norris, and live your life restraining yourself from affronting the great Omegapisces now, before it is too late!

"Is God necessary for morality?"; or Incredibly Retarded Question.

Here's the scoop: my school hosted a debate between philosophy professors last week trying to answer the question "Is God necessary for morality?", which was a nice two and half hour performance that I wanted to go see. Unfortunately, my grandfather swung by unexpectedly, and I spent time with him, only returning to campus when the debate was already mostly over. At first, I didn't care. Until I read the summary in the newspaper about it today. Apparently it was a rather heated debate. But, the core issue, the question at the heart of the discussion, is one that is patently simplistic to resolve, that I was not inclined to mourn the exercise in inanity that was most likely to have occurred when two people argue about theology with their agendas on their sleeves. Especially since I was able to read the summary of their arguments. So, I'll give my take on this little issue.

The reason why God could be seen as necessary for morality is if 1. God sets absolute, objective moral standards that humans must live by and 2. it is not possible to have objective moral standards without such divine commands.

Though number one may be true if you are willing to presume that a God exists, it really is not incredibly relevant to say that God sets moral standards, because if you suppose God to exist, then he supposedly standards and laws governing all aspects of existence, with morality being no exception. As such, it is akin to saying that "Since God exists, God exists". The creation of morality is all tacked on with the idea of God along with the laws of nature and existence itself, so if you accept the idea of the Biblical God, there is no use arguing over the rest of these points. Of course, in fairness, one could argue about how relevant the objective moral standards given to us by God are if many of his commands are outright ignored as illogical and irrelevant, or even deemed to be patently immoral in some instances. If morality comes from God, then what tells us which among God's law to follow, and which to deem as superfluous? (For instance, look at the Ten Commandments. How is that we feel that not killing and not stealing are more important than lying and not committing adultery, which are themselves more important than not working on the Sabbath and not respecting our parents? How is it that we know which is more horrible among the forbidden activities if they are all objectively wrong by God's law?)

The second point is a thought experiment in which one must disregard the idea of God deliberately overseeing our actions and commmanding certain behavior for a moment. Imagine a purely materialistic world, which is not overseen by any entities beyond our comprehension, and whose creation is a mystery of utmost irrelevance. Now, we have groups of people dotting this unwatched existence, and, supposedly, they should be able do whatever they damn well please. Of course, if that happens, if the people within each distinct group do not act within the confines of certain acceptable behavior, the group will not function as effectively, and will either be internally or externally destroyed due to this. In this sense, we give birth to morality as a social contract: commonly agreed upon behavior that will allow for social groups to function optimally, promoting fairness and cooperation in order to sure collective success and prosperity.

It only requires minimal thought to determine the consequences on a group of each within the limited society adopted a certain pattern of "immoral" behavior. If a group consisted entirely of rampant murderers, the society would be stripped down to nothing by its own hands, leaving it in the dust of more cooperative societies. If stealing was common, property would essentially become meaningless, making it so that the most audacious thieves are the pinnacle of society, or simply increase bitterness, conflict, and outright violence over the unfairness involved, weakening the cohesion of the group. Adultery leads to unclear paternity and, if done secretly, is a betrayal of a mate's trust that could result in group separation or outright retaliation. Interestingly, rape and slavery have no such easy refutations on such a simplistic level (which may account for the fact that they are not rebuked by the Bible...). But, it is fairly easy to see, if not in the midst of a hypothetical social group, but purely within the realm of reason, that rape is cruel and unfair to victim, due to it causing physical harm and being undesired by the victim, along with its potential for psychological harm, and slavery is simple economic and social injustice, even if there is actually no social ramifications for the group enslaving others.

With the combination of pure reason, one can easily come up with objective moral standards, and, with the combination of human empathy, emotion, and experience, develop subjective, individual moral standards as well. Of course, when it comes down it, it is difficult to say what universal morals exist with such a method, because universal morality derived from logic and basic group dynamics alone are just as likely to be ignored as the morality supposedly imposed upon us by God. So, all in all, it really is incredibly difficult to pin down an answer, making this (drumroll please) an epic waste of time and energy!

But, hey...that's my life...

Random Number Realities: A little fun with Pascal's Roulette

See Pascal's Roulette for information about what the hell these are:

Reality One: (Random numbers 3, 9 and 12 for each respective category of Deity, Doctrine, and Afterlife on my previous chart). Pantheist deity with a doctrine of works and ritual, and an afterlife of Heaven, Reincarnation, or Oblivion. This is a rather odd theological/cosmological occurence, but it actually seems like it could just be a combination of karmic reincarnation (fueled by works), overseen by a collective energy kind of deity that only allows one to break the reincarnation through a certain combination of morality and obscure ritual accomplishment, with your fate being determined by the nature of the accomplishment. The Oblivion or Heaven thing could simply to different final outcomes, depending upon your inner character, or it could simply be that your reward is to become one with the pantheistic deity, and thus Heaven is Oblivion....

Reality Two: (Random numbers 6, 14, and 8). No God, all four criteria judged, with an afterlife of either Heaven or Oblivion. This is the interesting idea that there need not be an active deity overseeing you in order for there to be life after death. In this case, though, it seems odd, because you can presumably only attain a reward afterlife if you have faith, along with wisdom, good deeds, and ritual accomplishments of an unknown nature, even though there is nothing to have faith in. The reason why faith is criteria, however, is because it is necessary to have faith in the God that you are worshipping, which is supposedly the one exists. However, no God exists in this scenario, so faith is either moot and ignored, or one must have had "faith" in the existence of no Gods in order to attain the afterlife. This would be an interesting case of Pascal's Wager favoring atheism, if that interpretation were correct.

Reality Three: (Random numbers 3, 14, and 10). A pantheistic god, again. And all doctrine required, again. Afterlife is Heaven, Hell, or reincarnation. So, this is world energy god that requires you to undergo certain rituals, to have faith that a collective spiritual force exists in the world, for you to do good deeds, and for you to attain wisdom in order to go to attain a positive afterlife. Presumably, if you are on the way to attaining these goals, you would keep reincarnating until you reached them. And, if you, instead of attaining these goals, consistently proved oneself to be in opposition to other lives and opposed to collective energy god, along with doing bad deeds and refusing to perform the required rituals, or seek the required wisdom, would be sent away to the punishment afterlife. It's like a bizarre form of Judaism fused with Hinduism, to an extent.

Reality Four: (Random numbers 6, 1, and 10). No God, only faith, and Heaven, Hell, or Reincarnation. Interestingly, another reality where the hardcore (level 7 on the Dawkins scale) atheist is favored, apparently. I assume that Heaven is awarded to the hard atheists, and lesser atheists along with agnostics are reincarnated in order to give them a second chance. Those who had faith in false gods would be punished in Hell for their presumptions. A truly bizarre existence.

Reality Five: (Random numbers 1, 7, and 10). [sigh] Okay, monotheistic god judging by faith and ritual. That much is new, at least. Afterlife is Heaven, Hell, or Reincarnation as it has been for the last two realities. Now, this actually resembles the Judeo-Christian worldview fairly closely. It has their kind of God controlling it. That God judges according to faith (which the Christians like and the Jews presumably have anyway) and ritual (more problematic to the Christian, only problematic to the Jew if the rituals that he adheres happen to not be the ones that their deity is concerned with). And he sends non-believers to Hell, true believers to Heaven, and everyone in between is reincarnated until they can be clearly divided based upon the God's criteria for judgment.

Reality Six: (Random numbers 1, 12, and 3). Huh. Monotheistic god, with a Heaven and Hell (even closer to Christian worldview than the last one), who judges based on faith, works, and ritual. So, this would basically work just like Pascal's Wager, except that, instead of just non-believers going to Hell, it would also be people who were not sufficiently good, and people who did not perform the right specific actions necessary to get into heaven (circumcision, baptism, daily prayer, ritual scarring, blood letting, what have you). As such, it is still a little messy....

Reality Seven: (Random numbers 2, 7, and 10) Goddamn Hell, Heaven, and Reincarnation! Well, we've got a polytheism, and another faith and ritual method of judgment. So...this is basically just like Reality Five, except that there a significant number of anthropomorphic gods in control of deciding your fate and who need to be believed in, rather than just the one.


Conclusions: Theology is a bitch.

Feeding a Dead Horse: Pascal's Roulette

For those unwashed heathens amongst us, along with those who are philosophically minded among the religious, Pascal's Wager is no stranger. Though you may or may not know it by that name, it is effectively the argument that:

"If you believe in God, and he exists, your reward is infinite.
If you don't believe in God, and he exists, your punishment is infinite.
If God does not exist, neither the believer or non-believer earns or loses anything.
Therefore, believing in God is the most advantageous position to take".

Unfortunately, in the many forms that this argument is whored out in, it usually fails to address the possibility of anything other than a single God existing, and makes that God's non-existence and existence equal in probability. (This is to say nothing of the problem of not being able to force belief, or of the possibility of a God punishing blind faith and rewarding skepticism, but such concerns need not be addressed for the proceeding). So, I decided to undergo the task of pimping Pascal's wager.

Issue One: Deity

Alright, so Pascal's original wager assumes that the only possible God is the Abrahamic God. For the purposes of this section, the only concern with what god happens to be exist among the wide variety is only of nominal importance. That is to say, the nature of God is only relevant if you need to believe in that God specifically in order to attain an afterlife (or at least a positive one). So, in order to be generous, I will make it so that the specifics are not a problem, but only the general nature of the deity. So, we have the monotheistic, anthropic deity of Judeo-Christian lore. Then we have pantheistic, internally contained divine concepts (that is, that the world itself, along with life, compose the entirety of God's being, a liberal take on Taoism). Then we have polytheistic gods, where multiple individual deities have different spheres of influence (as in Hinduism and several ancient "mythologies"). Then we have animistic gods, or, in other words, spirits, which are effectively a fusion of pantheistic and polytheistic outlooks (e.g. Shintoism). And, finally, we have God as being deistic, and simply being a force of construction that has no more current influence on our reality.

So, we have the following for this issue: 1. monotheist 2. pantheist 3. polytheist 4. animist 5. deist/naturalist 6. none

Issue Two: Doctrine (for lack of a better word)

The problem I am going to address here is that we do not know what the deity, regardless of his nature, happens to demand of mankind in regards to how he will treat us. My focus I will be on what criteria God will judge us on.
According the original wager, the sole criterion was faith, which is the basic tenet of Christian and (I presume) Islamic religious lore. But, of course, we also add in the possibility that we are, logically, judged by our good deeds instead(an idea reflected in Judaism, and in the idea of karmic in Vedic religions). We can then posit that perhaps knowledge, or wisdom is what we are judged for and must attain, as proposed by Buddhism in the idea of enlightenment. Of course, implicit in many religious accounts, is the idea that we are somehow disadvantaged in attaining a favorable afterlife if we do not adhere to certain rituals that are unrelated to good deeds, so that it is worthy of mention (notable occurences are dietary restrictions, mandated times for prayer, genital mutilation rites, and the traditions surrounding burying deceased pharaohs in Egypt, deemed to assure their passage into the afterlife). And then, of course, there is the possiblity that our God does not care what we do at all.

This leaves us with the following list (including possibilities of more than one measure for judgment being used): 1. faith 2. works 3. wisdom 4. ritual 5. faith and works 6. faith and ritual 7. works and ritual 8. faith, works, and ritual 9. faith and wisdom 10. works and wisdom 11. wisdom and ritual 12. faith, works, and wisdom 13. works, faith, and wisdom 14. works, wisdom, and ritual 15. none

Issue Three: Afterlife

And this brings us to the final problem of whether, after being judged, we are sent to Heaven or Hell as Pascal's wager assumes.
So, here the possibilities for an afterlife real quick.
(Definitions: Hell is a punishment afterlife, Heaven is reward afterlife, reincarnation is a return to Earth, and Oblivion is full death).

1. Always Hell (effectively the afterlife established by early mythological cosmologies, with the exception of heroes in the favor of the gods).
2. Always Heaven (basic Judaic afterlife)
3. Heaven or Hell (Christian afterlife)
4. Heaven or reincarnation (Buddhism with an optimistic outlook of nirvana)
5. Hell or reincarnation
6. Heaven, Hell, or reincarnation
7. Always Oblivion. (Materialistic outlook)
8. Hell or Oblivion.
9. Heaven or Oblivion. (What Christian afterlife may actually be).
10. Reincarnation or Oblivion. (Buddhism with a less optimistic outlook of nirvana)
11. Heaven, Hell, or Oblivion.
12. Heaven, reincarnation, or oblivion.
13. Hell, reincarnation, or oblivion.
14. Heaven, Hell, reincarnation, or oblivion.
15. Always reincarnation. (Hinduism, I believe)

Put it all together...

As I'm sure you are already aware, if you seriously entertain the number of possibilities out there for the supernatural and essentially unknown, then it is very difficult to make any positive assertions about the nature of such things. Pascal's wager assumes far too much. In fact, even in addressing his wager, I assume that the exact god worshipped does not matter as long as you are on the right track, and I also assume that only the basic kinds of afterlives and criteria for being placed into them that have been popular by religions past and present are worthy of inclusion, and have omitted a great number of possible deviations. Although, I do include certain combinations of afterlife realms and necessary traits to be placed into them that are not common to any theology, so I guess I can call it a push. Well, here's the final product: Pascal's Roulette!


Deity ________Doctrine__________ Afterlife
1. monotheist ___1. faith_____________ 1. Heaven
2. polytheist ____2. works____________2. Hell
3. pantheist_____3. wisdom __________3. Heaven/Hell
4. deist _______4. ritual ____________4. Reincarnation
5. animist _____5. faith + works _______5. Reincarnation/Heaven
6. none _______6. faith + wisdom______ 6. Reincarnation/Hell
____________7. faith + ritual_________7. Reincarnation/Oblivion
____________8. works + wisdom ______8. Heaven/Oblivion
____________9. works + ritual ________9. Hell/Oblivion
____________10. wisdom + ritual ______10. Heaven/Hell/Reincar'
__________11. faith + works + wisdom _11. Heaven/Hell/ Oblivion
_________12. faith + works + ritual __12. Heaven/Reincar'/Oblivion
_________13. works + wisdom + ritual_13. Hell/Reincar'/Oblivion
_______14. all four criteria ______14. All four afterlife possibilites
____________15. none_____________15. none (Oblivion)

So, what does this mean? Well, it means that faith (dependent upon the correct type of god existing), in of itself, is only relevant in 7 out of 15 possible vague doctrines, and that it is only correctly applied 1/6th of the time. Ritual is similarly relevant in 7 out of 15 possible doctrines, but, even if the type of god is not relevant as it is for faith, the nature of the rituals themselves are relevant, in that you may not be following the proper ones. In reality, unlike faith, the necessity for rituals are incredibly religion specific, and, as such, the probability that the rituals that you follow happen to be the ones that you are judged for happen to be incredibly small. As such, almost every possibility in which ritual is a factor will almost always be disadvantageous to all parties involved.
Wisdom and works, however, are nearly universal in their appeal (even if the nuances of each have a good amount of variance). If you able to exhibit either or both, they are the most valuable in assuring a favorable outcome, due to only being minimally affected by the nature of the deities judging you for those qualities.
As for the afterlives possible...there is a significant chance that death is the full extent of our punishment, or that eternal reincarnation is the extent of our punishment, or that reincarnation is the full extent of our reward, or that death is the full extent of our reward. There is a chance that we are automatically given Heaven, regardless. Or that we are automatically sent to Hell. The long and short of it is that we do not know.

But, here is what Pascal's Wager actually looks like in here:
Monotheistic God (1/6) + faith alone (1/15) + Heaven/Hell (1/15)=1/1350 chance of belief in Christian God alone being advantageous and disbelief being fully disadvantageous.

It just really isn't all that convincing, but, hey...better than nothing, right?