Quote:
Originally Posted by Liberty4eva
I watched the video and I must say I am not impressed with his logic and reasoning. At all.
I majored in mathematics and I know there was a mathematician (not sure of the name but could figure it out if you're interested) centuries ago who used an analogous argument that we should believe there is a God and worship him.
His reasoning was more or less as follows: there is a level of uncertainty on whether God exists. If we worship God when God does exist then we are rewarded with eternal paradise. If we worship God when there is no God we are wasting some of our time. If we do not worship God when there is no God then we have more time to do other things. However, if we do not worship God when there is a God we are punished with eternal damnation. His conclusion was we should worship God because it's the better "column" if you will.
So Stu, should we all become religious and go to church every Sunday?
This argument he uses is one of the reasons why I think this global warming myth has in a lot of respects become a religion. And the clerics of global warming keep propogating the myth because that's how they make their money (just like religious clerics).
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Except it's not at all the same. You need faith in order to believe in God. There have been philosophers who have attempted to use reason such as the ontological argument of Anselm and Descartes, but their dualistic metaphysics didn't stand up to scrutiny from the laws of causality or the principle of the identity of indiscernables. In the case of Pascal whom you mention, all he could do was appeal to fear as you say.
There is scientific evidence for the effects of carbon dioxide has on the ability of heat to escape the Earth's atmosphere. The irreversible impact of global warming is a very real possibility. The possibility of our souls going to Heaven or Hell after we die goes every natural law, whatever your philosophical views on it may be. Pascal's fear of divine punishment was likely a product of the religious prejudices of France in his day. He lived in a Catholic theocracy under Louis XIV. This was a time when clerics burning books was commonplace.