An Inside Wager
Religion, any religion, is absolutely indefensible. After many hours spent listening and reading arguments from True Believers, I've come to realize that this utterly irrational stance cannot be justified or defended. The funny thing is, the True Believers know it.
They know it the same way we fully expect our feet to hit the ground as we rise out of bed in the morning; it's something so basely fundamental, that we know it without being cognizant of it. It's the subconscious way we speak and understand our native language, while every other language sounds like silly gibberish. Deep inside most people is a creature lurking in the deep night of the unconscious and that creature keeps the secret motivation of Pascal's Wager away from the conscious mind.
For clarity, Pascal's Wager refers to Blaise Pascal, stating that (paraphrased) it's better to believe in a god and be wrong than not believe and be wrong. He was speaking specifically of the god Yaweh and Yahweh's well-known propensity for torturing and burning non-believers (strictly a Christian conceit, by the way).
What I'm saying is that I believe this proposition of Pascal's Wager is what keeps most butts in the pews. Most people, on some level, know their religious stories are nothing more than fables told by ancient nomads, later to be written. The modern, rational mind knows that these tales were fabricated to explain our place in the universe and to appeal to the human need for an alpha male (how many female gods were lords over all beings? I can't think of one, aside from the recently contrived religion of Wicca.) Humans are pack animals, and we always will be. We need a leader, a silverback to show us the way and, to an extent, absolve us of the responsibility of making our own decisions.
It's natural progression from living in packs to creating an invisible, omniscient leader who's there to make sense of all the senselessness of life. Every culture has done this and every culture has had their particular cultural spin on intangible creatures who rule over us. Some believers will state that the reason humans create religion is because of some intrinsic knowledge of a supernatural creator or creators. This, of course, is ridiculous once you step outside that claim and examine its assertion. What could possibly be the point of a great secret reality that seemingly exists only on the level of intuition and skirts our dreams? What's the use of it existing only in the realm of faith, except for the god's earthly representatives to lord power over the flock of believers?
I say the religious know their beliefs are nonsense because of how vitriolic they tend to become when defending those beliefs. Consider an alcoholic or drug addict. It's very common for addicts to both love and hate their addiction. It beckons them; they know it's self-destructive, but they will vehemently defend against those who might take it away. Religion is that way. It's something that gives people a feeling of peace, of control -- a way of steeling themselves against the jagged edges of reality... much like the drug addict. They love it, but still know it's likely nothing more than a fairy tale. A wager against the universe. Heads I win, tails you lose. You can't go wrong if you believe, right? Well, no.
There have been tens of thousands of religions and literally millions of gods (millions in Hinduism, alone), so, if you're American, you've likely laid a wager with the god of Jews. He's pretty popular and the writings about him and his commands pretty much runs the gamut of "Love thy neighbor," to "Don't suffer a witch to live," so, it's a safe faith all around. You can be a pacifist or a warmonger -- all are welcome.
But what if you're wrong about Woden? Or Zeus? Or Krishna? Or the Hawaiian volcano god? Is it popularity that makes a religion true? That doesn't sound reasonable, but very little is reasonable in this chaotic country of faith-based unknowable knowledge. If popularity is how you gauge truth, then the Christians had better look over their shoulders; Islam is gaining, fast.
It's clear that religion was created to explain the complexities humans began to notice as they gained sentience. One only has to see how the Catholic church persecuted and killed early scientists who deigned to step into the arena of explaining the universe around us. Those early Catholics have been proven very wrong in their assertions about how things work. It turns out the sun and universe don't orbit the Earth; this was a heretical thing to believe 700 years ago. Now, the Church is left humbled and abashedly stating, "Well, sorry about all that."
Science and religion were early enemies because they both had various hypotheses on how the universe worked. Religion has steadily lost ground in the past millennia. And it's getting angry.
Religion's fading myths and transparent tales become less relevant to people unafraid to scrutinize absurd assertions that could be attributed as easily to fairies and unicorns as they are to a god. The True Believers, however, dig in their heels with poor arguments built on the sands of irrationality. They claim science cannot disprove their god, but then the True Believers cannot disprove the existence of any other god, yet they proclaim their god to be the true god. You see the absurdity.
They double-down on the wager as rationality erodes the ground beneath their feet. They're terrified, because that ground that they always expected to be there, might have not been so solid. In fact, it was only an illusion. They would have to admit that the generations that came before them were wrong, and the answer doesn't lie in their god, but that there might not be an answer. There might not be coddling cosmos all around us. We might be incidental. In fact, the evidence strongly supports that idea.
Ask yourself: What's more likely? A great collage of varied invisible beings watching, coddling, and destroying us? Or just a vast universe curling around us, not at all taking notice? One option is more comforting, to be sure. But is it true? Likely not.
Other nonsense arguments about intrinsic morality or the divine spark of life won't be addressed here. This has already gone on too long.
But consider your own wager. If you're wrong about that god or gods, think of what else you might have done with that time or all that rationality you've chosen to ignore. And if I'm wrong, I look forward to a fascinating conversation.
They know it the same way we fully expect our feet to hit the ground as we rise out of bed in the morning; it's something so basely fundamental, that we know it without being cognizant of it. It's the subconscious way we speak and understand our native language, while every other language sounds like silly gibberish. Deep inside most people is a creature lurking in the deep night of the unconscious and that creature keeps the secret motivation of Pascal's Wager away from the conscious mind.
For clarity, Pascal's Wager refers to Blaise Pascal, stating that (paraphrased) it's better to believe in a god and be wrong than not believe and be wrong. He was speaking specifically of the god Yaweh and Yahweh's well-known propensity for torturing and burning non-believers (strictly a Christian conceit, by the way).
What I'm saying is that I believe this proposition of Pascal's Wager is what keeps most butts in the pews. Most people, on some level, know their religious stories are nothing more than fables told by ancient nomads, later to be written. The modern, rational mind knows that these tales were fabricated to explain our place in the universe and to appeal to the human need for an alpha male (how many female gods were lords over all beings? I can't think of one, aside from the recently contrived religion of Wicca.) Humans are pack animals, and we always will be. We need a leader, a silverback to show us the way and, to an extent, absolve us of the responsibility of making our own decisions.
It's natural progression from living in packs to creating an invisible, omniscient leader who's there to make sense of all the senselessness of life. Every culture has done this and every culture has had their particular cultural spin on intangible creatures who rule over us. Some believers will state that the reason humans create religion is because of some intrinsic knowledge of a supernatural creator or creators. This, of course, is ridiculous once you step outside that claim and examine its assertion. What could possibly be the point of a great secret reality that seemingly exists only on the level of intuition and skirts our dreams? What's the use of it existing only in the realm of faith, except for the god's earthly representatives to lord power over the flock of believers?
I say the religious know their beliefs are nonsense because of how vitriolic they tend to become when defending those beliefs. Consider an alcoholic or drug addict. It's very common for addicts to both love and hate their addiction. It beckons them; they know it's self-destructive, but they will vehemently defend against those who might take it away. Religion is that way. It's something that gives people a feeling of peace, of control -- a way of steeling themselves against the jagged edges of reality... much like the drug addict. They love it, but still know it's likely nothing more than a fairy tale. A wager against the universe. Heads I win, tails you lose. You can't go wrong if you believe, right? Well, no.
There have been tens of thousands of religions and literally millions of gods (millions in Hinduism, alone), so, if you're American, you've likely laid a wager with the god of Jews. He's pretty popular and the writings about him and his commands pretty much runs the gamut of "Love thy neighbor," to "Don't suffer a witch to live," so, it's a safe faith all around. You can be a pacifist or a warmonger -- all are welcome.
But what if you're wrong about Woden? Or Zeus? Or Krishna? Or the Hawaiian volcano god? Is it popularity that makes a religion true? That doesn't sound reasonable, but very little is reasonable in this chaotic country of faith-based unknowable knowledge. If popularity is how you gauge truth, then the Christians had better look over their shoulders; Islam is gaining, fast.
It's clear that religion was created to explain the complexities humans began to notice as they gained sentience. One only has to see how the Catholic church persecuted and killed early scientists who deigned to step into the arena of explaining the universe around us. Those early Catholics have been proven very wrong in their assertions about how things work. It turns out the sun and universe don't orbit the Earth; this was a heretical thing to believe 700 years ago. Now, the Church is left humbled and abashedly stating, "Well, sorry about all that."
Science and religion were early enemies because they both had various hypotheses on how the universe worked. Religion has steadily lost ground in the past millennia. And it's getting angry.
Religion's fading myths and transparent tales become less relevant to people unafraid to scrutinize absurd assertions that could be attributed as easily to fairies and unicorns as they are to a god. The True Believers, however, dig in their heels with poor arguments built on the sands of irrationality. They claim science cannot disprove their god, but then the True Believers cannot disprove the existence of any other god, yet they proclaim their god to be the true god. You see the absurdity.
They double-down on the wager as rationality erodes the ground beneath their feet. They're terrified, because that ground that they always expected to be there, might have not been so solid. In fact, it was only an illusion. They would have to admit that the generations that came before them were wrong, and the answer doesn't lie in their god, but that there might not be an answer. There might not be coddling cosmos all around us. We might be incidental. In fact, the evidence strongly supports that idea.
Ask yourself: What's more likely? A great collage of varied invisible beings watching, coddling, and destroying us? Or just a vast universe curling around us, not at all taking notice? One option is more comforting, to be sure. But is it true? Likely not.
Other nonsense arguments about intrinsic morality or the divine spark of life won't be addressed here. This has already gone on too long.
But consider your own wager. If you're wrong about that god or gods, think of what else you might have done with that time or all that rationality you've chosen to ignore. And if I'm wrong, I look forward to a fascinating conversation.
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