I guess you are asking why I do not seem to be particularly impressed by Dr Dawkins brilliant knock down question, "Which God"?I have already addressed this by saying we wager on gods as soon as we here of them and each new one who crosses our path. The monotheist has wagered that there is but one. The monotheistic presumably has considered one God and a pantheon of gods and is not impressed when say Doctor Dawkins gives them equal weight although when he does this he is trying a horses laugh type argument.
That anyone seriously puts weight on Dawkins question usually tells me that they don't know muck comparative religion to realise the demands made by different religions.
Finally there are atheists prepared to own up to actually not wanting a God. I'm thinking of Thomas Nagel and Lawrence Krauss and would distinguish between that impulse and dispassionate rationality.
Are you a wagerer? I'm not in the sense that Gordon's bookies are unlikely to see me and I guess you can count yourself as not a betting man but I would bet that you hold at least one belief that couldn't be classed as knowledge.
On the question of the monotheism, I immediately call to mind the Epistle of James 2:19, which I give in my own copyrighted translation:
"So you believe in one God, do you? Well bully for you! The demons also believe, and are shitting themselves."
(The text here invites us to believe in demons as well, as do many parts of the Bible, and such a belief is put into the mouth of Jesus himself. But that's another story.)
The text does however highlight the essential inanity of Pascal's argument, though, which as he has worded it seems to indicate this is almost the only thing required for 'eternal salvation'. I'm sure most Christians would admit this is only the first essential, and a bit more than that is required, though Luther of course made 'Salvation by Faith' the whole foundation of his reforms (And the Epistle of John tells us that "Anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved"). Mr Scrivener in his video made much of what an intellectual genius Pascal was, and that because of that we should take his dictum seriously. Well, Newton was also a titanic intellectual genius, but spent half his labours on trying to prove the validity of astrology. One can be a genius and still be pretty stupid.
To the video itself. This requires something of a preamble from me on the matter of "Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point" I do not know whether Pascal formulated this dictum and his Wager before or after his notorious mystic experience: it would make sense to think they followed it, given the emotional nature of that profound shock to his system. (For those unaware of this, it seems that Pascal kept this experience a purely private matter right up to his death, when the details were found on a sheet of paper sewn into his coat. During a period of illness he experienced for several hours what he called "Fire - Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel - not the God of the philosophers". It is significant that he didn't mention this to be God the Son, Jesus, the second person of the Trinity) Now that was an emotional experience par excellence, but no matter how profoundly it moved him, it still remains resolutely subjective. Bertrand Russell was brusquely dismissive of such experiences, precisely on this basis. I used to think this was incredibly short-sighted, but when you consider the volcanic experiences of the Lakota indians, for example, you realise that monotheistic belief systems have no monopoly on matters of this kind.
NearlySane and Enki have both analysed the main failings of Scrivener's thesis: the attempt to make an intellectual argument from standpoint which denies that humans are capable of making such a detached position, since emotions govern everything (Le coeur a ses raisons...) He goes on to say that everyone of us every day are continually making a wager on our status in the universe and presumably our fate (not sure I understood this). I can only say that ultimately my own
disbelief was indeed finalised by emotional circumstances, and rationalised afterwards. It would certainly take some earthquake of emotional upheaval to reverse this, and make a rational explanation thereafter.
