Quote:
Originally Posted by BB_Eye
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.
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I think they are very much the same. The global warming video and my religious argument are based on "uncertainty". There's a difference between believing in a God and believing there's a chance a God exists. Even atheist Richard Dawkings (author of the God Delusion) says that there is a chance that there is a God. A very, very small chance but still a chance. You don't need faith to believe there's a chance God exists and are, to some extent, "uncertain" on whether God exists. I base my religious argument on this "uncertainty" on whether God exists just like the global warming video bases its argument on this uncertainty on whether global warming is happening.
Organized religion and global warming are very, very similar. Both religion and global warming have millions of followers. Both are billion dollar industries. Both groups of zealots outright ignore and are deaf to evidence that contradicts their beliefs. Both have shaky evidence that supports their beliefs: religion gets its evidence from a few desert scribblings and Global Warming gets its evidence from this misleading correlation between CO2 and temperature (higher temperatures lead to more CO2 not the other way around).