http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwiadQ
Although I cant remember the name of it, this is a horridly stupid logical argument used heavily on and off throughout societies across the world to try and convince people to believe in God and serve the church. It's still in use to day, what a shame. (Edit, it's called "Pascal's Wager". Look it up)
E.G. "If you believe in God and he exists, you go to heaven. If you don't believe in God and he exists, you go to hell. If he doesn't exist, it doesn't matter if you believed, but again; if he does and you don't worship, you go to hell. So why not just believe in God and serve him?"
And it was this same reasoning that got us into the Iraq war. "What if Saddam doesn't have WMD's? But then again what if he DOES? If we look at the dreary outcome we could expect if the latter were true then we should disregard the former possibility. If he doesn't have WMD's, we get a typical war. If he does have WMD's and we don't take him down, we could experience a tragedy beyond any of that ever known to humanity. So then, why shouldn't we go to war?"
This is a disgrace to logic and seeing all the thumbs-ups and comments here on SU for this video just reminds me how and why I long ago lost faith in life and humanity. Even people who think they are intelligent and are probably well educated are still too stupid to spot what is so obviously poor logic. Take this guys same argument and begin applying the logic he uses to everything in life and see what happens. ... Idiots.
It's no wonder that comments and ratings are disabled here and almost everywhere else this video is posted. It's herding dumb sheep.
As I think about it, it doesn't surprise me that the "global warming" - or as we say now "climate change" - alarmists would use this. Pascal's Wager has always been used to try and just slice through any reasonable debate and scientific discovery in order to just end the issue and get people on board the ship. This actually is the most terrifying video I've ever seen, at least it lived up to its title.
As for the major flaw in Pascal's Wager as a logical argument to form an opinion on or even worse take action with is that you don't know if there truly is a God or even if there is if there is any unavoidable danger in not believing in him. Same with climate change. The climate of the Earth has never been consistent, it has always been changing even long before us and we have no proof that we are the cause of any current changes nor do we have any assurance that anything we can do is capable of modifying the climate for the future. This also reminds me of the Lake Nyos incident where thousands of people died because of a volcano under a still lake that leaked carbon dioxide into the water which later turned to carbonic acid and seeped out. The natives believed the incident was caused by evil spirits as legends had told of it occurring in the past in their village, but beyond that even scientists all over the world were stunned and had no idea what caused it UNTIL THEY INVESTIGATED. But what if they had just let the locals use Pascal's Wager to instead - even just for the time being - begin sacrificing virgins to the lake, ya know, just in case it was evil spirits?
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