You have come out and stated that you would like to see the UK return to traditional Christian values. At the same time you have said that you are a mostly non-practicing Christian.

My questions to you then are:

1) In what way are you practicing and non-practicing?
2) What kind of Christian are you? CoE? RC? Episcopal? Greek Orthodox? Pentecostal?
3) What exactly do you think the UK could benefit from a Christian Ethic that it could not gain from a secular utilitarian ethic?
4) Do you actually realise that Church attendance is on the wane? Do you realise how large the proportion of the country is that is non-Christian (not even how large the proportion of non-believers are!).
5) You were not elected on a religious agenda (heck you weren’t even elected…). What gives you the right to speak out on religious issues?

A friend sent me a link to an article on persuading Atheists to become Christians. I had a quick read through and I had to point this paragraph out:

An atheist will want definite evidence, not just a rehearsal of your faith. You’ll have to provide concrete facts and scientifically thought out arguments, although do not focus on those too much; our beliefs based on faith, Christian love and joy of worship (all immaterial things), are not evidence to the unbeliever. In fact, a reliance on faith may be evidence to the atheist that you aren’t relying on facts.

No shit Sherlock!!

Plenty more nonsense through the link.

I made it clear when they asked right at the start that I was an Atheist who had once been a Christian so we had a solid understanding of our starting points. Their first question to me was how I felt about the recent comments from scientists about God in the media. I immediately felt that they did not actually know what was being said by whom especially when they couldn’t remember Richard Dawkins’ name and for the fact that it was actually Hawking who made the press this week with his belief that M-Theory closes the gaps that he said MIGHT exist in ‘A Brief History of Time’. So I didn’t lambaste them for this I merely stated that I broadly agreed with them.

So instead they asked me why I didn’t believe in God. I decided to go with something simple and stated infinite regression as one reason. Unfortunately they couldn’t grasp the idea that if you decide to complicate matters by requiring a God to create a universe then you can equally require a god to create the god and so on… They were quite sure that the God who created this universe doesn’t require a creator. I was getting nowhere so I didn’t even try invoking Occam’s Razor which would just have confused them further.

The lady who was leading the conversation from ‘their’ side pressed me on the fact that God’s word is there for you to see in the bible. I did not mention that their God only represents a tiny proportion of the people on the planet although when pressed I did point out that their version of truth is only as old and only as reliable as the versions espoused by other people. However I did point out repeatedly that this bible was concocted by the Roman Catholic church during various councils from a MUCH larger canon that already existed at the time. They both seemed entirely unaware of the existence of other forms of christianity and neither of them had read any of the other gospels which exist.

In fact they went so far as to say that through God’s influence the proper content of the bible had been formed despite being ignorant of the fact that other versions had existed. I even told them that gnostic christianity seemed much more appealing to me. A religion based on enlightenment seems far more appropriate than one based on sin. Again they had no answer.

When I pressed them on contradictions in the bible they demanded that I find one. Since I didn’t have one at my immediate recall, although there are dozens, I turned the conversation to rules in the bible. I asked if they ate pork or shellfish and when they said yes I pointed out that both are disallowed in the old testament. They said that times had changed and that the bible had to be interpreted in the times we live in. I pointed out that the bible doesn’t say ‘Thou shalt not eat shellfish until such time as you have invented the refrigerator’ and they seemed to shrug this off as inconsequential. They made some mention of the ‘law on blood’ hasn’t changed because it was ‘renewed in the new testament’ and therefore ‘is valid’. In which case why not ignore the WHOLE old testament???

I was really close to asking whether they went to church when they had their periods since the same parts of the O.T. mention not allowing your women to go when they are menstruating but I didn’t want to be offensive to that degree!

I asked them by what mechanism that hypothesised God could work in the Universe since he is outside of it. Indeed I challenged them. They claimed that God works in the world so I claimed that therefore there must be a mechanism that he does so by. Therefore one can hypothesise what that mechanism is and scientists can test it. They quite simply did not understand, even when I promised that if they came up with this hypothesis and proved it then I would accept everything they said.

To move things on a bit I then suggested that in order to be a Christian one would have to have genuine free will. I told them that I was a materialist and that they must be dualists or pluralists. Therefore a simple proposition for them would be to provide a testable hypothesis by which the mechanism of dualism or pluralism could be proven. By this point both looked ready to leave.

And with a few words about how no-one can do anything without hope and how we were clearly ‘coming at the debate from opposite sides’ the Jehovah’s Witnesses gave up and left me to my sin and my damnation.

Next please!!

25CE : Since 150 BCE, Jews called Essenes have denounced the Jewish majority as apostate and temple worship in Jerusalem as polluted. They describe the majority of Jews as the “sons of darkness” and themselves as “the sons of light.” They live in communes, share, and look forward to Armageddon — God’s day of judgment.

28 CE : Like the Essenes, John the Baptist has seen perversity in Jewish society and has envisioned the coming of an Armageddon that will bring a new Israel under God. But rather than stay separated from others as have the Essenes, John joined various others who traveled about Galilee preaching. John made verbal attacks on the Judah’s king (who is subservient to the Romans), Herod Antipas — the son of Herod the Great. John around this time, give or take a year or two, is imprisoned and executed.

30CE : A young man whose name in Greek is Jesus has created a following of his own, while recognizing there is none greater than his former leader, John the Baptist. This year, give or take a year or two, he goes to Jerusalem for Passover and there creates a disturbance. He is executed — by stoning if convicted of blasphemy and by crucifixion for some other offense.

37CE : Followers of Jesus keep his movement alive. Among these followers, John the Baptist has been relegated to second standing. The followers continued to worship at Jerusalem’s temple, “the House of the Lord.” They call themselves the “The Poor” or “The Saints.” They look forward to Jesus returning and bringing a New Order. Some among them draw attention to themselves by arguing with other Jews. Some are expelled from the city, and one of them, Stephen, is executed.

I had not heard before that Jesus considered John to be his leader and I’m not sold on the evidence that Jesus even existed but given the amazing amount of information on this site that, in my casual browsing, otherwise appears to be correct to the best of my knowledge, I thought it bore pointing out.

Interesting indeed.

The Pope will never stop being head of state as he will remain in office until death and he hasn’t committed any war-crimes (other than joining the Hitler Youth) so it would seem nigh on impossible that blame would ever be laid upon him in a court of law.

Until now! Dawkins and Hitchens are investigating whether or not they could have the Pope arrested during his state visit to the UK. I think it’s still highly unlikely to happen but it’s more critical news in the media which can only encourage him to get his house in order.

Imagine that… A mentally unstable person managed to get close enough to afront an 82 year old man in the richest most well guarded city in the world!? Begs so many questions!

Like doesn’t it seem convenient that the person who assaulted Silvio Berlusconi last week also happen to be mentally unstable?

Actually I should not cast dispersion on what may or may not be their mental state without any evidence but it would seem awfully convenient to label people who attack heads of state as mentally ill because then they can be locked up with a minimal trial for EVER.

It also begs the question as to why all popes are so old. Could it possibly be that the Vatican is so embroiled in politics that it doesn’t want any ruler to rule for too long? Could it be that it takes 82 years to become the representative of God on earth? One would imagine that a God would be powerful enough to impart the needed knowledge to you at birth. And that he would make it so frigging obvious that a life as a cleric and a vote by others who aren’t God’s chosen representative on earth wouldn’t be needed.

And let’s not forget that the Pope was a member of the Hitler Youth. What is it that those bracelets Christians are so fond of say? “What would Jesus do?”?

Yes I’m sure Jesus would join the Hitler Youth.

Really.

Sure.

Of course I’m against all religion on principle but I found it quite upsetting that a government can ban one religion’s activities (publishing bibles with the word Allah in them) because it might upset another religious group. And that’s just the first story.

The Swiss story I find mildly amusing because of how the Swiss are perceived word-wide as this credible, safe, stoic place/people when in fact they are ultra-conservatives. It’s kind of hard to know from any experience or knowledge that I’ve ever been exposed to whether they are just really hard-nosed old-fashioned conservatives or whether that’s a veneer under which lies pretty extreme fascism. I’m not accusing them of the latter I just don’t see how one can discern which they might be from the press they get.

And for the Italian story, together with the mentions of the US and Germany and the implications for the entire EU now that the Human Rights Bill is enshrined into their law through the signing of the Lisbon Treaty, well…

The Italians should put up or shut up. Quite simple. Displaying a Crucifix has NOTHING to do with ‘tradition’ that is not tied to religion. They chose to sign up to Lisbon.

The German law that you can only display religious paraphernalia in a classroom if a parent does NOT object is likewise bullshit. The law is that you shall not discriminate, not that you may discriminate until someone objects.

You can be sure that when I have school-attending children I shall be absolutely certain to ensure their rights under the Human Rights Charter of the Lisbon Treaty are adhered to, including campaigning for the removal of the legal requirement for state-funded schools to provide a ‘broadly Christian’ assembly each day.

I am so glad that the UK does not have a Constitution that people can throw in the faces of the law makers. Of course that brings its own issues up in that it makes it easer to change what may be natural human rights but I think this could be an interesting topic for another post so I’ll stop there.

I wish all of you a really great holiday. Call it what you will… Christmas, Yuletide, Noel, Getting Drunk Time, Saturnia, Winter Solstice or any of many other names.

I thought I might rewrite the Wager using ‘a deity’ and ‘The Supreme Being’ but being a maths geek I thought a matrix (or spreadsheet!) might be better (and then went silly with Integration). In the table below I’ve illustrated what happens to you after death based on:

I actually reworked all the above as equations that I integrated over the P(Supreme Being Exists) from 0 to 1 and I’ll post the work at the bottom of this article purely for mathematical amusement.

I’ve argued before as to the un-likelihood of any actual God sending good people to Hell. In which case True Faith is irrelevant but where True Faith is not required Atheists are better off because the the price for misplaced Atheism has to be less than that of misplaced Belief – they didn’t waste any effort cowtowing to the wrong god. A minor point once you’re dead and in Heaven anyway but it could be quite a price during life.

However the important point is that where True Faith is required things are complicated. On the one hand it depends on how much value an Atheist would give to an afterlife in Heaven versus validating their Atheism. More importantly though it all comes down to whether the person of Faith has the true faith. Even if you only consider the main religions of the world the chance of you being in the right one is no more than 1:5 or so. If you consider the various interpretations of that religion to be important then it’s more like 1:20 or 1:50. If you consider all the deities that have ever been worshipped – and many of them still are worshipped by small numbers of people – then you have a snowball’s chance in hell of finding the right one.

That is to say that when picking apart Pascal’s wager the most important ‘variable’ is whether or not a Deity demands True Faith in him/her/it. If they do then you might as well just pick the one who’s notion of an afterlife you like the most. If you’re in the armed forces I’d go for Odin if I were you!

As the number of potential Supreme Beings rises the value of having faith diminishes and the value of being an Atheist rises – where True Faith is required. Where it is not required the value of faith still diminishes and the value of being an Atheist remains the same.

This leads to an interesting tangent. At some point religions changed. They changed from accepting that other people had other gods and the belief was simply that these were your ‘local’ gods and possibly that yours were better than anyone else’s; and they changed to stating that yours was the only real god and everyone else was simply deluded. And from this we simply conclude that religion is about power and control (and wealth). There is no other reason that I can come up with for why this change would occur. Any argument that the true faith became apparent is fallacious because there is no explanation as to why it didn’t exist beforehand nor any explanation let alone proof of which this true faith is. Christians love to talk about events prior to Christ being the Devil’s handiwork to confuse the believer. This is such unbelievable poppycock as it can be applied just as easily as to their own religion!

Anyway there’s my little exploration of Pascal’s Wager, now here comes the silly maths.

We can make an expected value of ‘belief’ from integrating the outcome values over a probability of the Supreme Being existing from 0 to 1. This is a sum of all possibilities along the P(Supreme Being) spectrum.

For most people V(Hell) and V(Misplaced Belief) will be negative which is why all solutions are additive not subtractive.

For an Atheist where the Supreme Being demands true Faith we can say:

Value = Integral of [ ( P(Supreme Being) * V(Hell) ) + ( P(!Supreme Being) * V(Valid Atheism) ) ]

The result is:

Value = ( V(Hell) + V(Valid Atheism) ) / 2

For an Atheist where true Faith is not required:

Value = Integral of [ ( P(Supreme Being) * V(Heaven) ) + ( P(!Supreme Being) * V(Misplaced Atheism) ) ]
Value = ( V(Heaven) + V(Misplaced Atheism) ) /2

For a Deist where True Faith is required:

Value = Integral of [ ( P(Supreme Being) * V(Heaven) * P(Belief in Correct Deity) ) + ( P(!Supreme Being) * V(Misplaced Belief) ) ]
Value = ( V(Heaven)*P(Velief in Correct Deity) + V(Misplaced Belief) ) / 2

For a Deist where True Faith is not required:

Value = Integral of [ ( P(Supreme Being) * V(Heaven) ) + ( P(!Supreme Being) * V(Misplaced Belief)) ) ]
Value = ( V(Heaven) + V(Misplaced Belief) ) /2

Plug in your own number is you like!