(no subject)

[baloonworld]

I am absolutely delighted that Tortoise* is a meta-agnostic. He is uncertain as to if he is uncertain about the existence of a deity. Meta-agnosticism, and its bottomless recursions, are my new favorite religious position, and they lead to an omnipotence paradox-based variation of Pascal's wager:

Can Tortoise (or Pascal) produce a religious position so recursive that God can not reach the end of it? thus saving Pascal (or Tortoise) from the trouble of believing and from hellfire for not-believing, should god prove to exist and care about that sort of thing?

* sorry almosthonet /O\

Comments

[almosthonest.livejournal.com]

-pokes hands out from hiding to keyboard- I was going to comment on your genius creation of the "ágnostic" (feeble attempt at the recurrance dot above the 'a', there), but alas, my mortal terror overwhelms such cogitation. Damn it.

[baloonworld.livejournal.com]

Not my creation. I am delighted by it though.

[dantarian.livejournal.com]

I'm not convinced the religious position defined above makes sense in terms of Pascal's wager, as the wager assumes a sole and vengeful but slightly-less-than-omniscient god. If such a god exists, then any position other than belief results in eternal damnation, and if the god does not exist, then no position makes any difference to the result.

(Also, agnosticism is the belief that the existence of God is unknowable, rather than mere uncertainty as to the existence of God. Thus meta-agnosticism would be the belief that it's impossible to know whether it's possible to determine the existence of God. And meta-meta-agnosticism becomes the belief that it's impossible to know whether it's possible to know if it's possible to determine the existence of God. Pascal's wager can be applied equally to all recursions of this.)

[baloonworld.livejournal.com]

Pascal assumed that god was "sole, vengeful, slightly-less-than-omniscient" or non-existant. My work is towards extending it to cover the additional possibility of a "sole, vengeful, subject to halting problems and slightly-less-than-omniscient" god. I will admit that this is a less interesting problem than extending the wager to cover the possible existance of a god who rewards athism.

(My ignorance of the meaning of 'agnostic' shames me deeply.)