Astathḗs (ασταθής) is Greek for “prone to change, fail, or give way; not stable.”
This is a concept I came up with where one should always believe in their “best guess” version of a logical God that is completely congruent with what we know about reality, while remaining flexible and willing to let the latest evidence refine our views and guide us towards the end state of positive atheism or religion.
In essence, until we have compelling final answers on the nature and purpose of existence that confirm whether God is or isn’t, it chooses Pascal’s wager in favor of the most logical, reality-coherent God we can imagine over agnosticism, which lacks any possible theological benefit.
The logic goes like this:
* A supernatural God *might* be a possible explanation for existence, matter, life and natural law, presuming existence is not simply the random self-organization of purely natural forces
* If reality *is* the result of random self-organization of purely natural forces, our existence on a beautiful life supporting planet in a vast void of lifeless nothingness, as a species that evolved from primitive microorganisms into the current product of all our living ancestors meeting, breeding and surviving as they did is probabilistically impossible luck.
* Considering Pascal’s wager, even if God does not actually exist and everything is pure luck after all, we lose nothing by erring on the side of belief in God. Either we are thanking God for our existence, or we are thanking our unbelievable luck from nature.
* The problem with Pascal’s wager is, considering there are countless divergent religions, sects and interpretations of God that have emerged over human history, it is clear that whatever God there may be did not make itself and its intentions universally and coherently understood.
* It could eventually become logical to accept and believe in a religion that can provide:
* extremely compelling, scientifically confirmable evidence for their claims of a God or God’s representatives defying the laws of nature
* proof beyond anecdotes of divine interaction with humanity
* coherent explanations for why God created the reality it did and why God did not reveal itself to all people in universally understood fashion.
* Likewise, it could eventually become logical to reject all theism and Pascal’s wager, and become a positive atheist if new scientific discoveries close the major gaps in our knowledge and prove everything in reality actually did happen through random, naturalistic forces.
* Until either the claims of a religion or the claims of pure naturalism are able to be confirmed, it is most logical and beneficial to believe in a God or gods that exists in perfect coherence with the known laws of nature and reality. Whether this is deism, pantheism, Taoism or something else entirely is completely up to you, but at least take your best guess that makes you happy and hopefully adds to your enjoyment of existence. We can hone and refine these beliefs over time based on new evidence and logical debate.
* If you die and it turns out a different religion’s interpretation of God is correct after all, at least you can honestly claim you made a good faith attempt to seek the true God based on the best evidence God provided you with, and did not reject the possibility of God’s existence. A benevolent God would give you benefit of the doubt and forgive your noble minded ignorance, and a spiteful God should at least be less angry at you, right?
>presuming existence is not simply the random self-organization of purely natural forces
That’s a big presumption.
>If reality is the result of random self-organization of purely natural forces, our existence on a beautiful life supporting planet in a vast void of lifeless nothingness, as a species that evolved from primitive microorganisms into the current product of all our living ancestors meeting, breeding and surviving as they did is probabilistically impossible luck.
It is not probabilistically impossible luck for SOME form of life to evolve. Some of the building blocks of life appear to self-organize. Given the right conditions and enough time, it may be that the formation of some form of life is not “impossible luck” but rather inevitable. While humans could have evolved differently, we could simply have been different and considered the problem the same way.
>Considering Pascal’s wager, even if God does not actually exist and everything is pure luck after all, we lose nothing by erring on the side of belief in God. Either we are thanking God for our existence, or we are thanking our unbelievable luck from nature.
The numerous flaws in Pascal’s wager have been pointed out so many times I’m not going to repeat them here, other than to disagree that you lose nothing by believing things that are not true.
>Likewise, it could eventually become logical to reject all theism and Pascal’s wager, and become a positive atheist if new scientific discoveries close the major gaps in our knowledge and prove everything in reality actually did happen through random, naturalistic forces.
An atheist might argue that time has already come, as many aspects of what major religions teach has simply been proven false and that the “gaps” in our scientific knowledge are small enough that there’s no reason for an ever shrinking God of the Gaps to fill them.
>Until either the claims of a religion or the claims of pure naturalism are able to be confirmed, it is most logical and beneficial to believe in a God or gods that exists in perfect coherence with the known laws of nature and reality. Whether this is deism, pantheism, Taoism or something else entirely is completely up to you, but at least take your best guess that makes you happy and hopefully adds to your enjoyment of existence. We can hone and refine these beliefs over time based on new evidence and logical debate.
What is the basis for thinking that you in any way benefit from believing in a God which you already acknowledge ” it is clear that whatever God there may be did not make itself and its intentions universally and coherently understood”? Why would you think you would benefit from either believing in it or worshipping a God when that is clearly NOT what it wants from you (othewise it wouldn’t have concealed itself)?
I didn’t know that YOU exist until you made your posts, are you offended by that? Why then would a God be offended by it when it went out of its way to NOT reveal itself?
>If you die and it turns out a different religion’s interpretation of God is correct after all, at least you can honestly claim you made a good faith attempt to seek the true God based on the best evidence God provided you with, and did not reject the possibility of God’s existence. A benevolent God would give you benefit of the doubt and forgive your noble minded ignorance, and a spiteful God should at least be less angry at you, right?
You have absolutely no way of knowing whether this is true.
Either way you have allowed yourself to believe in untrue things if the God you worship does not exist, which could come with any amount of “baggage” religions normally come with as well as serving as an impediment to learning true things.
How can you make yourself believe in something that isn’t compelling on it’s own rights? For the life of me, I simply can’t do it.
>This is a concept I came up with where one should always believe in their “best guess” version of a logical God that is completely congruent with what we know about reality, while remaining flexible and willing to let the latest evidence refine our views and guide us towards the end state of positive atheism or religion.
It’d an interesting term, but wouldn’t everyone be under this? Everyone is always using their best guess on God. I think it’s an interesting starting place for anyone’s discussion about God, but I don’t think it’s useful for grouping people, if that’s your goal of course.
>In essence, until we have compelling final answers on the nature and purpose of existence that confirm whether God is or isn’t, it chooses Pascal’s wager in favor of the most logical,
So instead of waiting until we have good evidence, we should use a terrible argument to just assume there is a God?
>If reality is the result of random self-organization of purely natural forces, our existence on a beautiful life supporting planet in a vast void of lifeless nothingness, as a species that evolved from primitive microorganisms into the current product of all our living ancestors meeting, breeding and surviving as they did is probabilistically impossible luck.
There are a ton of problems here, most just don’t hold up to current data.
1.) The idea of “random self-organization of purely natural forces” is extremely reductive, might not be accurate, and is just a stand in for people who haven’t taken the time to study the theories and mechanics in place. The universe, life, and all that we know might be the result of a random event that brought about everything, there also might be entirely different mechanics at play that work completely differently and aren’t random. Point being, a random force is not the only natural explanation out there.
2.) “probabilistically impossible luck” is utterly meaningless. Every single thing that ever happens is “probabilistically impossible luck” if you take into account enough parameters. It’s just a lazy way to say “I don’t understand what is going on so it seems impossible”
>Considering Pascal’s wager, even if God does not actually exist and everything is pure luck after all, we lose nothing by erring on the side of belief in God.
OK, Pascal’s dumb wager. This argument is utter trash and has been destroyed ever since it came out. For one, it only works when you are considering a single religion against another, as soon as you have more it really starts falling apart. Which means if you are converting the argument to be about God and not religion, then you have to assume that God cares about you believing in it, which is a baseless assumption at best.
Secondly, people who look at pascals wager never consider the actual life of a person, the argument only applies to the last moment of a person’s life. If you “lose nothing by believing in god” then talk to the members of extremist religions who have lost family, friends, and their own lives as a direct consequence to their beliefs. Believing in God has consequences, it’s not devoid of effects. But a theist would never consider this when using Pascal’s Trash Wager.
Thirdly, Pascal’s Trash Wager does absolutely nothing to show that a god actually exists. You can replace “god” with anything that gives you a benefit of believing in it and it doesn’t make that thing real. It also works in its exact opposite: if there is a God and it only accepts people into heaven that don’t believe in it, then by believing in god you’re losing the wager and by not believing you’re winning. Argument still holds up, it’s still valid, but does absolutely nothing otherwise.
Since the rest of this “argument” is built on bad arguments, I don’t really need to go any further. The foundation of the argument is awful and does not fit reality.
It basically seems to be a way of saying ‘I WILL believe in a god no matter the evidence, if the god idea doesn’t fit the evidence known, change the god idea so it does’ then throw it into the mixer with Pascal’s wager.
>Until either the claims of a religion or the claims of pure naturalism are able to be confirmed, it is most logical and beneficial to believe in a God or gods that exists in perfect coherence with the known laws of nature and reality.
I have yet to come across any idea of a god or gods that exists in perfect coherence with the known laws of nature and reality, if you know of one, it should be its own topic.
>Whether this is deism, pantheism, Taoism or something else entirely is completely up to you, but at least take your best guess that makes you happy and hopefully adds to your enjoyment of existence
Not believing in any gods makes me happy and adds to my enjoyment of existence, so why do I need to ‘believe’ in something I currently do not believe exists?
Even if it *did* make me happier, how on earth do I ‘believe’ something I do not believe?
>A benevolent God would give you benefit of the doubt and forgive your noble minded ignorance, and a spiteful God should at least be less angry at you, right?
I you are going to bung very human emotions and reactions into a god, how do rule out pure maliciousness?
>probabilistically impossible luck
I hate this argument with passion.
Look, I just took my DnD die and tossed a d20 10 times. I got 7, 2, 6, 18, 1, 15, 4, 10, 4, 17. The chances of me getting that combination is one in 10240000000000.
Should I assume someone telekinetically or magically influenced my rolls to achieve this specific result? Isn’t it more probable than this incredibly low probability of it happening just by naturalism and chance?
Pascal’s wager is the dumbest thing ever, and it’s usually a special pleading fallacy.
Proof:
I am actually the prophet of a mighty god who will cast you into hell unless you Venmo me 5000$.
Let’s think about this logically using Pascal’s wager. If you Venmo me 5000$, then you avoid going to hell. For a finite investment, you have avoided a possible infinite punishment.
If I’m lying about being a prophet, well, that’s really no big deal. It’s just 5000$.
The choice is clear.
Your reasoning breaks down with stuff like Azathoth, all of reality is just its dream.
How do you even assess something so unfalsifiable.
You’d be better going for Millican’s and Thornhill-Miller’s second-order universalist religion based solely on the Fine-Tuning Argument if you want your please-all religion, or Salamon’s Agatheistic version of their religion.
I don’t think the pascal’s wager argument works here.
Note that all of the three examples of gods you give (the deistic watchmaker, the pantheistic universal consciousness and the Tao) *don’t actually give a shit* whether you believe in them or not. You’ll get exactly the same reward in the hereafter whether you’re a believer or not, so Pascal’s wager doesn’t apply. Believer and non-believer get exactly the same payout in both situations.
Given this, and the fact that such Gods tend to be more common in religion then not (the Christian and Muslim god’s obsession with being believed in is actually pretty rare), this seems a slightly pointless add on to just normal reasoning. Why not simply believe in whatever god claim best fits the evidence- and if the god claim that best fits the evidence is *atheism*? So be it. An atheist until good reason to think otherwise shows up.
>A supernatural God might be a possible explanation for existence, matter, life and natural law, presuming existence is not simply the random self-organization of purely natural forces.
Agreed.
>If reality is the result of random self-organization of purely natural forces, our existence on a beautiful life supporting planet in a vast void of lifeless nothingness, as a species that evolved from primitive microorganisms into the current product of all our living ancestors meeting, breeding and surviving as they did is probabilistically impossible luck.
“Impossible” is too strong a word. Let us rather say that the probability is tiny. Like many things in this world, the probability of it happening in just this way is incomprehensibly small, but we should remember that things with incomprehensibly small probabilities are not impossible. They actually happen every day all over the world.
>Considering Pascal’s wager, even if God does not actually exist and everything is pure luck after all, we lose nothing by erring on the side of belief in God.
How can we know that we lose nothing? Believing in God has serious costs in this life, and there could be some sort of afterlife where the costs of believing in God are far greater. Maybe people who believe in God are eternally mocked for their foolishness in an afterlife where no God exists.
William K. Clifford wrote an excellent article on why we should take seriously what we are willing to believe: [The Ethics of Belief](https://www.people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/Clifford_ethics.pdf)
>The problem with Pascal’s wager is, considering there are countless divergent religions, sects and interpretations of God that have emerged over human history, it is clear that whatever God there may be did not make itself and its intentions universally and coherently understood.
That is one among several problems.
>It could eventually become logical to accept and believe in a religion that can provide: extremely compelling, scientifically confirmable evidence for their claims of a God or God’s representatives defying the laws of nature.
In science, the laws of nature are our attempt to describe the regularities in how things behave in the world. If in some particular situation some result always follows, then we call that a law of nature. If we ever had scientific confirmation of any other result, then it would not be a law. No rule can be a law of nature unless it is absolutely universal.
>Proof beyond anecdotes of divine interaction with humanity.
What sort of proof are we talking about? It is easy to imagine proof that someone talked to a burning bush, but how could we prove that the burning bush was divine?
>It could eventually become logical to reject all theism and Pascal’s wager, and become a positive atheist if new scientific discoveries close the major gaps in our knowledge and prove everything in reality actually did happen through random, naturalistic forces.
God-of-the-gaps arguments have never done anything to support theism, so closing those gaps in no way removes whatever support theism may have. The whole concept of God-of-the-gaps is just a sadly fallacious desperation attempt to find reason to believe in theism despite the scarcity of evidence.
Even if everything in reality actually did happen through random, naturalistic forces, that would not indicate that no gods exist. The gods might simply prefer random, naturalistic forces instead of intervention.
>Until either the claims of a religion or the claims of pure naturalism are able to be confirmed, it is most logical and beneficial to believe in a God or gods that exists in perfect coherence with the known laws of nature and reality.
Why is that more beneficial than not believing in any gods?
I still see no basis or need to affirm belief in ‘god.’ Just picking “whatever makes sense” and then believing “just in case” seems like it would have no probative value. It’s just an ass-covering exercise in wordplay.
>A supernatural God might be a possible explanation for existence
That presupposes that “supernatural” and “God” even have substantive meaning. Per [ignosticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignosticism), I don’t consider that all that clear. Nor is it clear to me that existence must have an explanation. Or that existence could have not existed, i.e. whether or not non-existence was even an actual option for reality. Those are not known, and I see no need to assume them to be true.
>our existence on a beautiful life supporting planet in a vast void of lifeless nothingness, as a species that evolved from primitive microorganisms into the current product of all our living ancestors meeting, breeding and surviving **as they did** is probabilistically impossible luck.
That’s like marveling at one particular deal of the cards. But the cards had to be dealt in *some* way. If the world wasn’t this way, it would have been another. And a world supporting the existence of observers is the only possible world one could observe. There are no other possible observations.
>we lose nothing by erring on the side of belief in God.
I think one loses quite a bit by signing up for Boko Haram. There are quite a number of formulations of god-belief that I would consider deleterious to my quality of life. Plus many variations of god-belief are actively harmful to other people in the world.
>Until either the claims of a religion or the claims of pure naturalism are able to be confirmed, it is most logical and beneficial to believe in a God or gods
“You can’t prove gods don’t exist” isn’t an argument for God. There are tons of things I don’t believe in, but which I can’t prove are false. Some aren’t even religious, like [Roko’s basilisk](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko's_basilisk). I need a basis for belief other than “well, you might be punished if you don’t, and you can’t prove this thing isn’t real, so…”
>but at least take your best guess that makes you happy and hopefully adds to your enjoyment of existence.
But I’ve already done that, and it doesn’t include any god-belief. I guess I could, since I already consider such affirmations of belief to have zero probative value, assent to the most vacuous, vague God I can formulate. One that is indistinguishable from one that doesn’t exist. One that never intervenes in the world, doesn’t care how we act (or at least is congenial with values I already hold), doesn’t threaten hell, etc.
But these would be empty words, and I’d be assenting to essentially nothing. This is a “but at least he’s not an atheist anymore” type of victory some believers might find gratifying, but which really doesn’t mean anything.
>If you die and it turns out a different religion’s interpretation of God is correct after all, at least you can honestly claim you made a good faith attempt to seek the true God
But I can already honestly say I tried to engage the world as best I could, and saw no basis or need to affirm belief in God. If some being, regardless of whether or not it goes by “god,” tortures me for disbelief, that’s no different morally than being torturd for believing in the wrong being, or praying the wrong way, or wearing the wrong kind of hat.
>A benevolent God would give you benefit of the doubt and forgive your noble minded ignorance
A benevolent God would look at how we live our lives, and not care that we “believed in” him. And a benevolent God wouldn’t have made hell, and eternal torment wouldn’t be a thing. I’m fine with [annihilationism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annihilationism). But of course I don’t need God for that.
This just feels like a naïve version of Pascal’s wager (which is already naïve).
What if god turns out to have a sense of humor and sends all believers to hell if such a thing exists?
The logic for this argument presupposes the attributes put forward by today’s religions. That god is in *fact* benevolent. Why rule out a trickster god? Or a malevolent one?
What if the key to heaven is non-belief, and the god of this world only permits skeptics? Why would I give up that possibility and my current stance for one equally likely and equally substantiated?