"I wonder if Mr. Dawkins understands the implications of his admittance..." Ray Comfort on Richard Dawkins' statement regarding Pascal's Wager:
"...when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong."
Ray, not only does Dawkins understand it, you're the only person in the entire universe above the age of 5 who could conceivably be amazed by the entirely obvious implications of the statement.
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I think Dawkins was talking about two sides of an argument, not Pascal's wager.
ReplyDelete"What if I'm right and you're wrong" is only one side of the argument. The other side expresses the fallacy of a false dichotomy.
The truth is not necessarily in between both sides - one side may be right and the other completely wrong.
But it seems like Ray took Dawkins out of context to imply his statement reflects only the Christian argument of Pascal's wager.
I wouldn't call this quote mining though.
@Kaitlyn - and you are surprised because?
ReplyDeleteI agree though not quote mining, just twisting it to fit his meaning, but it wasn't really taken out of context.
ReplyDelete@Rocky
ReplyDeleteYou wrote: "and you are surprised because?"
Best Buy is having a 5% - 15% sale on their cameras and camcorders. Are they out of their mind!?
Thanks Kaitlyn for making me laugh. :)
ReplyDeleteKaitlyn,
ReplyDeleteThat's one of the funniest things I've seen you say :P
just thought i would say hello!
ReplyDeletei didn't know this blog existed, but i'm glad it does
"It is possible for one side to be wrong"
ReplyDeleteIt is also possible for both sides to be wrong.
I still can't figure out what that post has to do with Pascal's Wager, but trying to understand Ray is often beyond me; Thicky McThick indeed. Reverend Dumbass O'Dumpster of the Church of Our Lady of Dumbville.
Hi Mudley, welcome to Raytractors!
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHi Mudley!
ReplyDeleteRelating to Pascal's Wager, the dichotomy is manifold. The crucial thing about the Wager is that both sides may be wrong; we may have an entirely different god, or a group, or a family of gods. They may desire us not to believe in them without evidence we find acceptable, they may value self-honesty and self-esteem before anything else. If he/she/they are not the Christian God - the one of several that pulled through in the beliefs of a small people in an insignificant region - there is no indication that anything like sin and salvation even plays a role in the evaluation.
Kaitlyn, you're right; it wasn't from Pascal's Wager, it's from this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/sep/01/schools.research
So, it's not a quotemine. Just out of context. ;-)
However, that doesn't change the point that the implications of the statement are incredibly obvious and that of course Dawkins understood them - which I appreciate you agree with too.
Yeah, I also wonder if a scientist with a distinguished career and a shelf-full of bestsellers just might know what he's talking about, or if he could be bested by a guy who never bothered to attend college (not even bible college).
ReplyDeleteI just wonder.
Kaitlyn said: But it seems like Ray took Dawkins out of context to imply his statement reflects only the Christian argument of Pascal's wager.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I think this is a perfectly reasonable/logical conclusion (about what Ray's implying by that post).
But given his history of ignoring logic until it suits him, I'm tempted to suggest there's no reliable way to know for sure what he's thinking.
We're more likely to overturn the uncertainty principle than we are to understand how Ray thinks.