At 05:06 PM 10/31/2000, you wrote:
>In a message dated 31/10/00 21:23:16 GMT Standard Time,
>ralphkru@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU writes:
>
><< I'm always
> surprised when
> religionists drag this bit of reasoning out. >>
>
>It's a last resort when they can't think of anything else to say ; it
>is basically a threat.
>
>If you look at something like the Internet Infidels mail (esp.
>before they started removing the nonsense) a staggering
>number of arguments are simply "watch out, my Goddie
>will get yooooooo".
Chris
For an incredibly funny version of this argument (and some others as well),
read "Kissing Hank's A__," by Jim Huber, at:
http://www.angelfire.com/pq/fratre/atheism/kissingass.html
This is perhaps the best set of refutations of several arguments for God's
existence that I have ever seen, as well as being very funny.
>Paul
>It's staggering how stupid they are ; how can someone be
>threatened by something one doesn't believe exists. The
>real function of this "argument" is kicking wobbly theists
>back into the pews.
Chris
Or wobbly agnostics ("I'll go just in case").
What always gets me (and apparently Ralph) is that *anyone* thinks that
this category of argument is sound. I suppose it's implicitly based on an
analogy with a valid game-theory conclusion that would support such a
conclusion given a suitable imbalance of consequences for acting rightly
and wrongly in each case. In such a situation, there are four
possibilities, and we already have knowledge that limits them to these four
(or some similar variation):
Possible consequences
Action If Right If Wrong
------------------------------------------------------------------
A Very Good Very Mild Bad
Not-A Very Mild Good Very Bad
Obviously, in this kind of situation, action A is the correct action
(assuming about equal chances of each being right). Since, in reality, as
far as we could tell, there are millions of possibilities, and no way to
make the resulting table come out so that the risk-analysis favor of
theism. As I say, I suppose this is the implicit type of reasoning (if any)
going on, but, still, it's so clearly inappropriate that it is indeed
surprising that some theists still use it.
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