From: Spike Jones (spike66@attglobal.net)
Date: Fri May 04 2001 - 22:15:37 MDT
> spike wrote: >"Well, I don't really see any good reason
> > not to get frozen I suppose. A long shot is better than no shot."
>
> Brent Allsop wrote:...but how do you respond to atheist, which
> comonly point out the falacy of "Pascal's wager" as an argument for
> believing in God, that also claims such a "A long shot is better than
> no shot." is the same invalid argument? I tried to make a response
> but I have a feeling that I could or should have had a much better
> response to this assertion. Brent Allsop
The way I would go with that is that religion incorporated offers
no shot at all, merely an illusion of a shot at an afterlife. With
every scientific discovery, we find new possibilities for how
science incorporated might help reanimate corpsicles.
Heres one I tried today: if you took the computer that is
sitting in front of you right this minute and put it in a time
machine, sending it back one hundred years, you could
collect the *very best minds* in the world of that time, show
them the machine and what it can do, and *not one* of
them would have the foggiest clue how it works. They
could take it apart, examine every piece, and the best
scientists of 1901 would be quite profoundly baffled.
Likewise 100 years from now there will be machines
that even the most insightful among us will declare
indistinguishable from magic.
So Pascal himself would surely agree, were he living today,
that the modern person's best bet is with science and
not religion. spike
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