>In 1955, von Neumann was diagnosed with what was either bone or pancreatic cancer.[189] He was not able to accept the proximity of his own demise, and the shadow of impending death instilled great fear in him.[190] He invited a Roman Catholic priest, Father Anselm Strittmatter, O.S.B., to visit him for consultation.[18] Von Neumann reportedly said, "So long as there is the possibility of eternal damnation for nonbelievers it is more logical to be a believer at the end," essentially saying that Pascal had a point, referring to Pascal's Wager. He had earlier confided to his mother, "There probably has to be a God. Many things are easier to explain if there is than if there isn't."[191][192][193] Father Strittmatter administered the last rites to him.[18] Some of von Neumann's friends (such as Abraham Pais and Oskar Morgenstern) said they had always believed him to be "completely agnostic."[192][194] Of this deathbed conversion, Morgenstern told Heims, "He was of course completely agnostic all his life, and then he suddenly turned Catholic—it doesn't agree with anything whatsoever in his attitude, outlook and thinking when he was healthy."[195] Father Strittmatter recalled that even after his conversion, von Neumann did not receive much peace or comfort from it, as he still remained terrified of death.[195]
The most intelligent person in history died religious, have atheists been btfo?
In 1955, von Neumann was diagnosed with what was either bone or pancreatic cancer...
>he still remained terrified of death.
I would be if I were a jew...
>The most intelligent person in history died a coward
ftfy
That's the shittest Wikipedia copy paste hackjob I have ever seen, you didn't even attempt to remove the citation numbers.
Oh and religion is just a way to brainwash people into paying you with either money or time
>There probably has to be a God
You can't prove or disprove god anyway, so that's a null statment.
>Using religion and the concept of an afterlife to help yourself come to terms with your own death
Nothing to see here
It's pretty disappointing, desu.
>Oh and religion is just a way to brainwash people into paying you with either money or time
Hey buddy you got the wrong door, /r/atheism is two blocks down
>Pascal's Wager
The Christian God wants you to believe in Him because you are genuinely convinced and not because of whatever odds you work out in your head. Even if you were the least sinful of all mankind, if you only believed in Him because you feared the alternative, He would still dispatch you to purgatory.
It is interesting how von Neumann, considering how intelligent he was, did not consider this. Or perhaps he did but he was also hoping that God was a mathematician.
He remained a brainlet to the end.
being exceptionally intelligent doesn't imply moral integrity, while other scientist wanted to detonate the bomb at the sea, to demonstrate its power to Japanese, he opted for Kioto (cultural significance, large population, universities) and continued with thermonuclear bomb and ballistics apparently.
>Pascal's Wager
It's retarded because it only considers a Christian god when there's infinite possibilities. So the wager is really: if you believe in the RIGHT god, out of infinite possibilities, and he's real; you'll go to the right's god's heaven. If you don't, and the 1/infinity chance happens, you'll go to hell.
lim (x --> infinity) 1/x = 0
0 = 0
pascal's wager is retarded
why you have only one shot?
why there are infinite possibilities?
why beliefes must be mutally exclusive?
>you are genuinely convinced
That's not what having "faith" is boss. Christian God wants his followers to have faith in him.
Are you really this autistic?
you think you're smarter than Gödel, kiddo?
The way I see it there's three cases:
Case A:
God exists and is evil and nothing you will do can save you.
Case B:
God exists and is good and won't send you to hell eternally unless you actually deserve it. A good God will not torture you for eternity if you're a good person that doesn't believe in him because he isn't evil. So just don't be a bad person and a good God can't send you to hell.
Case C:
God doesn't exist and nothing you do will save you.
newton believed god was talking to him through the bible, nothing unusual here
RIP boy next door, he will be missed
Case D:
God exists and punishes people for believing in him.
Case F:
God exists and rewards people for eating strawberry ice cream.
Case G:
God exists and punishes people for not being atheist.
Case H:
God exists and punishes people for not being agnostic.
...
You can come up with infinitely many things for which god would punish/reward, but you have no way of knowing which one of these is true, hence Pascal's wager is wrong and pascal's argument was retarded
God rewarding and punishing people for arbitrary reasons implies that he's unjust, and therefore evil because God is all powerful and can be just if he wanted to. This is Case A.
I'm not arguing for Pascal's Wager, btw. I'm just explaining how I see things.
Does 'God exists but punishes you for believing in another god' fall under case A?
Exactly. Good way of putting it. It is exactly these uncertainties that make Pascal's Wager not valid.
what about "god exists and does not give a rat's ass about humanity" ?
Yes, no one has perfect knowledge and can make a well reasoned decision about who to worship. That would be punishing and rewarding people for an arbitrary reason.
God, an omnipotent being, would be evil for choosing to not give "a rat's ass about" humanity in spite of the fact that he has nothing to lose doing so. An infinite God who would only have to invest a finite amount of itself "giving a rat's ass about humanity" but doesn't is a dick. Case A.
The legitimacy of the claims of the Bible should be taken into account. There is the possibility that through the dogmatic assertions of contemporary scientific understanding you have haughtily presumed the world is older than it actually is. And perhaps God did create us and the world.
You have never observed natural selection, remember.
>You have never observed natural selection, remember.
What?
you need to take your meds
Don't listen to this guy. The lizards are trying to keep you stupid so you don't catch on to their plan.
You haven't. You have observed artificial selection.
>pharmaceutical psychotropics
Nice try, big pharma.
God is shitposting in /b/
Whether you believe this statement or you don't, that doesn't change anything in your life. What changes is the intention you'll put in your life acting religiously or not acting that way, the existence or the non-existence of a God doesn't change anything in the fact that you're all morons.
sage this thread up
Except he never claimed atheism.
He was agnostic.
>You have never observed natural selection, remember.
Except we have retard. Besides the huge body of evidence. Genetic drift is easily observable in several species. Get out of here Bible thumper.
>Oh and religion is just a way to brainwash people into paying you with either money or time
So is communism, democracy, capitalism, cooperation, marriage, employment and a wide range of other forms of interaction. Religion, if supported with proper arguments, can alleviate a lot of problems that currently plague mankind
>The stories are true because my parents told me so
Rather i did something not many people try doing...reading the actual religious texts instead of listening to the memes on the internet.
>The stories are true because muh fedora told me so
What he said is true, organized religions as institutions generally try to convince people to give them their money and time. This has nothing to do with belief in a higher power.
>God, an omnipotent being, would be evil for choosing to not give "a rat's ass about" humanity in spite of the fact that he has nothing to lose doing so. An infinite God who would only have to invest a finite amount of itself "giving a rat's ass about humanity" but doesn't is a dick. Case A.
You are assuming God has nothing other than his creation. What if he lived a life like everyon else, and we were just a pet project of his? Perhaps we are simply an ant farm; God spends most of his time shitposting and hating himself because of how shitty his life is and then looks down on us to feel powerful.
>God rewarding and punishing people for arbitrary reasons implies that he's unjust
>he thinks he can dictate justice to God
good luck with that kiddo
MUH OCCAM'S RAZOR
kill yourself.
>Or perhaps he did but he was also hoping that God was a mathematician
He clearly is.
You're all assuming the characteristics, personality, aims and capabilities of something you don't know or comprehend by definition.
You can't prove or disprove the existence of God.
You're all arguing about nothing.
Damn...
He probably was desu. Newton is the closest thing to a god humanity has seen since Jesus
leave this board
Daily reminder to all the "if gud is omnibunivolant den y teh saferin" memesters that mammals are wired so that random rewards/punishments feel more loving than systematic rewards.
Or God exists and manages an infinite complexity of a reality in which we play a small yet crucial role. God's not just managing 8 Billion people. God's managing trillions of insects, plant life, planets, galaxies, whole forces of nature and the universe. Imagine being the computer to process the entire universe. Every atom of it.
God is the Universes supercomputer. Really its processor. As such think if how much there is to process. And start at the subatomic particle level. Or a couple deeper really. We are not unimportant, but have some perspective, man.
leave this board
>be scared shitless
>in very poor mental state
>intrusive thoughts about hell and eternal damnation
>converts minutes before dying to die a happy (or rather releaved of psychosis) man
or
>4d chess mastermind
>knows God exists, doesnt care
>about to die, officially converts
>die a happy chad
>pascal's argument was retarded
Fun fact: Pascal states his "argument" to proceed to show it is retarded.
Absolute brainlet reasoning.
There's also the possibility of eternal damnation for not raping and killing, are you gonna do those too because some sand people 2000 years ago made some shit up and your cuck ancestors chose to propagate it until the present?
dirichlet > neumann
>Pascal named something nobody said before him to show it's stupid
>Millions on butthurt Atheists now use it to strawman the shit out of Theists
Appeal to authority (x smart person was a catholic) is not a legitimate argument.
>he converted out of fear
What a fag.
Not only this, but you can also include infinite other possibilites such as a god that damns you to hell for believing in any god, or for belief in a set of specific gods, for being a believer during a given period of time, or a god that grants varying levels of reward and punishment for arbitrary belief criteria etc. It's impossible to make a probabilistic wager about an infinitely diverse, boundless set of outcomes that are impossible to empirically assign a probability vs utility risk factor for. Tl;dr disregard metaphysics.
One can easily reject any and all of Gödel's axioms
>>Millions on butthurt theists now use it to strawman the shit out of atheists
Ftfy
None of the cases you mentioned cover the Christian god though. He's clearly evil (case A), because he sends people to hell for arbitrary reasons (not believing in him without proof), but there is something you can do that will save you, which is believing in him (not case A).