Religious insurance policy

[Winter LilyParticipant]

Have you ever known a person who believes ‘just in case’ I think its called the Religious Insurance Policy. They don’t believe because they want to they believe because they want to play it safe. Where as most believers believe because they were scared into believing with people telling them they will go to a dark and nasty hell if they don’t.

• This topic was modified 6 years, 6 months ago by  Winter Lily.

[Gallup’s MirrorParticipant]

Have you ever known a person who believes ‘just in case’ I think its called the Religious Insurance Policy. They don’t believe because they want to they believe because they want to play it safe.

I’ve never known anyone like that. Religious Insurance Policy is Pascal’s wager by another name. It doesn’t work. The problem is that a sincere belief in God is all but impossible to muster. For instance, could you ever make yourself genuinely believe in leprechauns, no matter how badly you wanted to do it?

[Winter LilyParticipant]

@gallupsmirror I happen to know somebody like that, they believe just in case there is a god/ heaven/ hell they are trying to play it safe. The whole idea of believing in something supernatural ‘just in case’ it happens to be real seems quite silly to me.

[UnseenParticipant]

Gallup’s Mirror wrote:

I’ve never known anyone like that. Religious Insurance Policy is Pascal’s wager by another name. It doesn’t work. The problem is that a sincere belief in God is all but impossible to muster. For instance, could you ever make yourself genuinely believe in leprechauns, no matter how badly you wanted to do it?

Of course, the other problem with Pascal’s Wager is which deity to place your bet on. What if it’s Ahura Mazda, Allah, or Odin and not Yahweh?

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Believing in one of the gods is not enough. We should worship all of them !!

[StregaModerator]

Unseen wrote:

Of course, the other problem with Pascal’s Wager is which deity to place your bet on. What if it’s Ahura Mazda, Allah, or Odin and not Yahweh?

That’s a perfect rebuttal of Pascals Wager 🙂

[SteveInCOParticipant]

It’s even worse than that. What if the “real” deity hasn’t even revealed him/her/it/them-selves to us at all? Or it’s a religion that has died out and left no known trace in the historical record? (You never know what might be hidden in an undiscovered urn somewhere in Baluchistan.) We cannot possibly make the right choice then!

Pascal’s wager has so many problems that when someone who knows me well enough to know I have more than one functioning braincell tries to use it on my, I simply ask them why they are insulting my intelligence.

Even assuming ONE possible god, there’s no guarantee that the probability of god exists/god doesn’t exist is 50-50 is erroneous.

I even had one idiot leave out one of the four possible combinations of (god does/doesn’t exist) and (you do/do not believe) to try to tip the “odds” in his favor. Honestly, I would have thought (before then) that someone couldn’t possibly improve on Pascal’s Wager as an example of stupidity.

[Gregg R ThomasParticipant]

Winter Lily wrote:

they will go to a dark and nasty hell if they don’t.

What??? It’s DARK down there??? Screw that I now believe in Santa, the Tooth Fairy and that other guy and his kid.

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