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Author Topic: A Little Philosophy  (Read 5131 times)
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Phoenix
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« on: 2010-01-04, 03:26 »

In thinking about how much arguing on this world there is between Atheists and Christians, here's an interesting minor bit of logic I came up with.

Atheists do not want to spend eternity with the God of Christianity.  This is a given.
Christians want to spend eternity with their God.  This is also a given.

Assuming no other religions' deities are involved, and assuming that contentment with one's state after death is irrelevant, the choice during life being the deciding factor instead, we can deduce the following:

If Christians are right and God exists, Christians will get what they want and spend eternity with God.  Atheists will also get what they want, since they will not spend eternity with God.

If Atheists are right and God does not exist, Atheists will get what they want since they will cease to exist and not have to deal with God.  Christians will also get what they want when they cease to exist because, since in this case God does not exist, they will be equally nonexistent, and thus still spend eternity with their God.

Thus in either case, both parties will get what they want.

I find a rather neat symmetry in this, like a perfectly balanced equation.  Thoughts?
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« Reply #1 on: 2010-01-04, 11:45 »

Atheists do not believe in any God much alone spend any time with one. This is a given.
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Tabun
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« Reply #2 on: 2010-01-04, 14:05 »

A somewhat similar argument is used by Benatar in Better Never to Have Been. He uses asymmetry to make a case though, and though he seems to find no fault in his logic, he dislikes the outcome. That's not too surprising, as his conclusion is that it is better not to exist (and, in extension of that, for all life to go extinct (as quickly and painlessly as possible)).

Noting that the argument itself is not directly connected to the believer/atheist-discussion and that this is not my view, but Benatar's, here's how he thinks it works:

1. not suffering > suffering
2. pleasure (in whatever form, so not just hedonistic) > no pleasure
3. death is unavoidable and is to suffer
3. existing means that you can have pleasure, but it is impossible not to suffer
3a. psychologically speaking, people are very bad at correctly estimating their level of pleasure/suffering, and tend to remember good things better, guess their odds for success incorrectly, etc (pollyanna principle, intuition is incompatible with statistics of chance, etc).
4. not existing means that you can't have pleasure, and can't suffer (since there is no you for this to apply to).
5. having no pleasure is not bad if you don't exist, since you're not there to regret its absence, while not suffering is still good, even if it's because you don't exist.
6. Not suffering is better than not having pleasure is bad, comparatively.
7. It is better not to exist.

Existing: suffering (bad) + pleasure (some good) = more bad than good
Not existing: not suffering (good) + no pleasure (neutral) = all good, no bad

This theory is easily attacked, especially if you use a religious groundwork to do it from, but the point is that it hinges on symmetry (and the lack thereof) between existing and non-existance.

---

One problem (that would point to Pascal's wager sooner than Benatar's idea) is that if (some) christians are right, then atheists will not simply cease to exist (which they are fine with) but burn in agony for ever and ever in hell (which they would not be fine with). The point there, I guess, is that it isn't the case that atheists don't want to be with someone they only half believe in; but that they wouldn't mind it, if they could believe it were possible (and if they could understand what that would mean (or at least pretend to)). In reverse, I don't see how ceasing to exist and still spending an eternity is possible either, unless somehow your concept of eternity changes if there is no afterlife?
« Last Edit: 2010-01-04, 14:09 by Tabun » Logged

Tabun ?Morituri Nolumus Mori?
Phoenix
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« Reply #3 on: 2010-01-04, 19:11 »

Benatar's thinking is interesting logic, but I can see several flaws in that logic.  First, non-existence is undefined.  How can you even properly contemplate it?  The notion that all suffering is automatically "bad" is a condition to his argument that has many contradictions in real life.  Nietzsche would certainly disagree with him, as would many Catholics.  There are many schools of thought that paint adversity and overcoming it as positive in the influence of one's life.  "No pain, no gain" as it were.  Second, knowledge of existence is limited to the human experience in his case.  Other modes of existence may not include the degree of suffering afforded to human existence.  Without more extensive knowledge of the universe, I find it to be a conclusion drawn from very limited information.  I can see where he's going and what his thinking is, but if existence does extend beyond death, possibly into realms where there is no suffering, as many ideals of a heaven-like existence describe in many varying beliefs, then his definition of existence would be based again on incomplete information.

If one works under the assumption that there is no such thing as an afterlife, and that life as it is was all that there was, then his point is very understandable when it comes to human life.  This has always been a fault in my ability to understand Atheism in general.  Agnosticism I can grasp, and difficulty in believing in a deity owing to life's difficulties or lack of apparent evidence I can understand, but complete willful Atheism would seem to me at least to reduce life to a state of pointless agony, ending in futility.  It would seem that suicide would be preferable to continuing to live, so why someone would want to be an Atheist escapes me.   Benatar would seem to have hit the nail on the head in that case, and I think I would be in agreement with him.  The problem is that one can't be absolutely certain of what lies after death until they cross that threshold with no chance of return.  If you up and off yourself and find out you were mistaken, you can't undo it.

Regarding my premise, I was deliberately leaving Heaven and Hell out of it because it could complicate discussion, though since you bring it up, I'll expound a bit.  I'm breaking everything down to the simplest binary conditions.  In the first situation I presented, Heaven would be defined as existing in the Eternal Presence of God.  Hell is defined as existing completely disconnected from God.  The environments themselves would be determined by resultant conditions of those states.  Hell would simply be defined as "the place where those souls eternally separated from God dwell".  Whether it is pleasant or not to be in either place, or what transpires in either place I was not considering, only the choices made during life and their results.  A great part of this thinking involves accepting the following principles about God, that:

1)  God is merciful and fair in regards to one's eternal affairs, not to be confused with life always being fair or merciful
2)  God wishes all to choose to be with Him in eternity
3)  God also grants free will to choose to not be with Him in eternity.

If those conditions are true, one could say that there's nobody in Hell that did not choose to be there.  If anecdotal accounts of near-death experiences can be believed, I know of at least one individual who died, went to Hell, decided it's not what he wanted, called upon Jesus to save him, and, while clinically dead and already in Hell, was visited by Jesus and removed from that place and taken to Heaven, before being returned to the earth and his body physically reviving.  If such stories are true, and I emphasis this as a conditional statement, then it could be deduced that nobody is in Hell that does not prefer that over being with God.  So existing "without God", if that is what the Atheist would truly want, would mean Hell is what they wanted in that case.  I know I am presenting this in completely black and white terms, but considering the outcome must be binary, 1 or 0, Yes or No, Heaven or Hell, anyone "on the fence" as it were would eventually be compelled to choose one outcome or the other.  Like the poles of a magnet, they would be attracted to one and repulsed by the other once a certain threshold was reached.  Again, this is all hypothetical and dependent on certain conditions, but those conditions I draw from existing texts and knowledge of God's character based on Christian thought and scripture.
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