Pascal’s Wager is a lie

Pascal’s Wager is a lie. Here’s the issue: the wager is essentially a gambling matrix, with two options in reality and two options that you can believe in. The two possible realities are Christianity or Atheism (if you’re a Muslim, the options are Islam and Atheism ― continue to substitute your own God in as…

Are theism and science incompatible?

It’s a long standing argument: can theism be justified within scientific thinking? There have been attempts to bypass the argument, by calling the two concepts “non-overlapping magisteria”: the claim that the two concepts simply answer different questions and therefore are never justified by each other and never in conflict (Gould, 2011). However, that is not…

If the majority of people stopped believing in God, what would stop the world from falling into anarchy?

I watched ‘12 Years a Slave’ the other day. To be honest, I don't know whether I like it. I think there is a certain art in film making which includes being able to tell the story without the graphic and overwhelming demonstrations ‘12 Years a Slave’ relied on. However, there was a conversation between…

Is religion a delusion?

A few weeks ago I posted on my blog to state that Richard Dawkins was actually wrong and religion is not a delusion. My argument was that the term “delusion” belongs to psychiatry (it is also a clinical and judgement-free term; if others bandy it around as an insult then they are being unkind), and…

What Colour is Allallt’s shirt?

Imagine being at the pub and hearing two people talk about the colour of Allallt's shirt. The man is convinced the shirt is purple, and the woman is convinced the shirt is pink. They quibble over different sentences from different posts on my blog and build convoluted arguments about how my syntax unambiguously informs them…

How is Western Civilisation is Evidence of Jesus Christ?

Whether or not Jesus Christ existed is not that important a claim. After all, Muslims believe a historical character called Jesus existed, as do the Jews. Evidence that Jesus existed is not important, and without evidence of miracle it doesn’t begin to support any religion. I happen to believe that the Jesus narrative is a…

Good God! (don’t you wish there was one?)

There is no agreed definition of God. Some say He is infinite, others say He is maximal, others say He’s just powerful. Some say God is the creator and don’t elaborate at all. But the one characteristic that many religious people do seem to agree on is that God is good. It is not that…

Do you believe that science and religion are in opposition of each other?

I believe faith and evidence based reasoning are in opposition to each other. Science is the self-cleaning machine that tries to know as many true things as possible, where religion is the machine that cannot clean itself and is no different to how it was at conception. There is a religious response which asks why…

Created in His Image?

One of the claims of the Big Three religions (and many other religions that claim to have a perfect God) is the claim that God made us in His image. That is patently absurd on the basis that God is immaterial and has no image, whereas I do have an image (my Facebook photos prove…

Bookie’s Hidden Options: Pascal’s Wager.

Pascal’s wager frames belief in a god as a simple bet. It’s magic is in being so simply presented. And like any good bookie, not all the odds are clear and it’s stacked against you. The wager is presented very simply: you can bet on either God does exist or God does not exist. You…