Saturday, April 10, 2010

Question to Dinesh D'Souza on Pascals Wager

During the Q&A of D'Souza's debate with Dan Dennett a questioner completely stumps D'Souza with regards to the Pascal Wager argument he had put forward during the debate. Watch here. I swear that the exact same question popped in to my mind when I heard D'Souza formulate his argument during the debate.

To the untrained eye D'Souza may not appear stumped, because he responds with a tone that would suggest he knows what he's talking about. But in fact what he offers was a total non answer. His response basically had almost no contact with what the questioner had asked. I call that a score.

3 comments:

Vinny said...

My guess is that he has been similarly stumped in the past and he knows that most people won't notice that he is just bluffing his way through an answer.


Lately I have been wondering whether the best answer to Pascal's wager isn't the Parable of the Talents. If there is a God, he gave me a brain with which to try to make sense of the world. If I decline to use the brain he gave me, would he not be as displeased with me as the master was with the servant who buried his talents in the ground? How could a God who gave me a brain be pleased if I forsake it in favor of an arbitrary magic book?

Jon said...

I have a similar rebuttal. And this is actually true too. As I was leaving Christianity part of what pushed me was biblical atrocities. I was afraid that if I faced God he would ask me if I was willing to attribute wickedness to him by affirming the Bible. I didn't want to have to say that I was too comfortable with my Christian friends and family and too afraid to stand up for what is right and reject the attribution of wickedness to God.

Maybe these Christians are putting themselves in danger by reading I Sam 15 and acting like God really ordered the killing of infants for the sins of their long dead ancestors. Maybe God will be pissed at them. So committed to their religion over God they can't even in the very least reject the book of I Samuel.

jason said...

Vinny's example sort of reminded me of a bumper sticker I saw today on a car in front of me. It read:

"Who are you to question why your god doesn't want me to believe in him?"