I care about truth if there is a God. But why should I care about truth if there is no God? In fact if there is no God, maybe I shouldn’t care about truth because it would be too sad to know…I’d rather live out my life with the illusion of happily ever after in that case.
Two thousand years ago, someone echoed those sentiments:
What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
Paul of Tarsus
1 Cor 15:32
There was an exchange between KeithS and I in another thread, and he fired off this comment:
Your comment epitomizes one of the biggest problems with Pascal’s Wager. It doesn’t ask the question “What is most likely to be true?” It only asks, “How can I get the best payoff?”
That’s anathema to anyone who truly cares about truth.
To which I responded:
But why should I care about truth if there is no God? In fact if there is no God, maybe I shouldn’t care about truth because it would be too sad to know…I’d rather live out my life with the illusion of happily ever after in that case.
Why, logically speaking should an atheist care about truth in a meaningless universe? Perhaps the logical answer is no answer. If you say, truth has a better payoff, well, then you’ve just put payoffs ahead of truth! Right back where you started.
Further KeithS wrote:
Because the value of truth doesn’t depend on the existence of God.
To which I responded:
Value means PAYOFF! What is the payoff if there is no God?
I recall Dawkins in a debate with Lennox was asked about how humans can live their lives in a meaningless world. Dawkins said, “we create our own meaning”. Other atheists have repeated that statement such KeithS:
Life is full of meaning even without God. We create our own meanings, whether you realize it or not.
to which I responded:
[the phrase] “we create our own meaning” is pretty much to me “we concoct our own unproven falsehoods to make us feel better”.
…
this whole “we create our own meaning” is worse than the religious ideas you are criticizing. You “know” there is no meaning, but you’ll pretend there is anyway. Reminds me of Coyne who “knows” there is no free will but he’ll pretend there is anyway.
And that is what continues to puzzle me about the atheistic variety of Darwinists (not Christian Darwinists). They seem to find much purpose in life in proving life has no purpose!
[posted by scordova to assist News desk with content and commentary until 7/7/13]