Flip of a Coin

In response to “Is there a true religion?” by Dallas Roark

Pascal, although a brilliant person in his day, had no more answers to the mystery of god anymore than Mohamed, Jesus Christ, David Koresh, Joseph Smith or any of the millions of other self proclaimed prophets and other promoters of religion.

Pascal’s criteria for a “true religion” and Pascal’s wager are both based on fallacious arguments and are extremely sophomoric as a test for the existence of god.  The answer cannot be had by the flip of a coin and the issue is not simply a wager that god exists or god does not exist. 

There are as many gods as there are people on the planet that believe there is a god.  And it is not as easy as saying there are just a few gods like the god of Islam or the Jewish god or the Christian god.  It is really simple to distinguish that the gods of these three denominations are not the same – Allah never had a son named Jesus and the Jewish faith does not believe Jesus Christ is their lord and savior.  The gods representing these religions are absolutely not the same.  The god representing the Methodist church on Polk Street is not identical to the god representing the Catholic Church on Main Street.  It is so easy to see that the god of Westboro Baptist church, the one that rejoices at the death of American soldiers, is not the same god as Pat Robertson’s, who’s god slaughtered tens of thousands of Haitians in an earthquake, is not the same god as ….. – and the list could go on ad infinitum.  Add to this the fact that the god representing two people sitting in the same church is not even the same.

So, I will gladly flip a coin to determine the outcome of Pascal’s wager but realize that the coin cannot have only two sides but will require a few billion sides.  Most likely your parents did not flip a coin but chose a god for you.  Upon reaching retirement age, you realize your parents made the wrong choice and now huge segments of your life have been wasted attending the wrong church, abstaining from pleasurable experiences and donating wads of money to build ever bigger mega-churches.  I hope you have chosen the correct god because worshipping the wrong god may piss off the real god, if there is one. J

The above mentioned tests, requirements, arguments, wagers and specific criteria are too cumbersome so I have devised a simple test for the existence of a god that I might believe in:

• The god must actually exist and be known to me

• The god can never have in the past or any plans in the future to harm any living being 

There have been no gods at this point in my life than have met these very simple requirements and time is getting short for one to appear.