Pascal's Wager

[SouthernFriedInfidel]

To be honest though, someone IS going to be wrong. Either God does exist, and all the atheists are going to hell, or God doesn't exist, and you spent the only existence your going to get pineing away your precious moments on some make-believe story. Either way, someone IS wrong.

This is a false dichotomy, and one of the biggest problems with Pascal's Wager. To assume that atheists go to hell if God exists plays into the Christian view of how God does things. But what if the supernatural exists, but it's more like the Hindu view? Or the ancient Greek view?

What if God exists, does his level best to hide his existence, thinking that only those who see that there's no evidence of his existence and live life accordingly are worthy of reward?

What if the "God of Deists" exists, and having created the universe, made no provision for infinite existence beside its own, so that we all die anyway?

There are an infinite number of possibilities lurking behind this question of "what if you are wrong?" One can be driven mad if that question is explored without care.

But in my mind, the real question is "Why should I base my beliefs on a cost-benefit analysis?" Would it not be far wiser to base them on the facts?

[BecauseHeLives]

But in my mind, the real question is "Why should I base my beliefs on a cost-benefit analysis?" Would it not be far wiser to base them on the facts?

Hmmm...I wonder how that strategy would play out in the stock market.

And Liv... you are certainly correct. Some of us will be wrong. However, this is NOT a game that you can hit reset if you mess up. Its something that should be approached seriously and heart felt. Once you die the "game" is over.

[BecauseHeLives]

Concerning Pascal's Wager. Here is an interesting related web page.

http://www.answeringinfidels.com/index. ... view&id=59

I'd be interested in your response to that author's statements.

[SouthernFriedInfidel]

Hmmm...I wonder how that strategy would play out in the stock market.

So you're saying that we should believe in something only because it might be to our personal benefit, and just ignore any evidence that might come to light, is that it? You know, that's a pretty selfish, petty way to live a life. Makes one wonder why a god would set up a system that encourages such an attitude.

IMO, of course...

[BecauseHeLives]

Hmmm...I wonder how that strategy would play out in the stock market.

So you're saying that we should believe in something only because it might be to our personal benefit, and just ignore any evidence that might come to light, is that it? You know, that's a pretty selfish, petty way to live a life. Makes one wonder why a god would set up a system that encourages such an attitude.

IMO, of course...

It would only be arrogant to believe that YOU have ALL of the evidence and to leave cost/benefit out of the equation. You wouldn't last very long in any business if you only looked at the facts and not cost/benefit.

[SouthernFriedInfidel]

Concerning Pascal's Wager. Here is an interesting related web page.

http://www.answeringinfidels.com/index. ... view&id=59

I'd be interested in your response to that author's statements.

I wrote long ago my thoughts on Pascal
I see no reason to change my mind.

[BecauseHeLives]

Concerning Pascal's Wager. Here is an interesting related web page.

http://www.answeringinfidels.com/index. ... view&id=59

I'd be interested in your response to that author's statements.

I wrote long ago my thoughts on Pascal
I see no reason to change my mind.

So no comment I suppose. Imagine if the world's scientists discarded any new ideas.

[A Person]

Seems to me he did make a comment. If you read the link he provided he explains his position clearly.

As he said: it's a false dichotomy. There are many religions with mutually exclusive beliefs and requirements. There is no way to objectively determine which is true. So the value payoff is indeterminate.

As for wondering how that would play in the stock market Pascal's wager is like saying: I can invest in IBM or not. If I don't invest my money will not appreciate.

This is also a false dichotomy. There are many other investment choices. You don't know that IBM stock will increase in value.

[RebelSnake]

http://home.earthlink.net/~jehdjh/pascal.html

J. Eric Harrington:
I often think that Christians who try using Pascal's Wager have a pretty low opinion of their religion. After all, the very nature for the Wager is as a benefit/risk assessment. In other words, it tells people to decide what they believe based on the benefit or risk to themselves. The heck with searching for the "truth." I can't help but wonder what God, if it existed, would think of people who converted simply to keep from ending up in hell? Yet, this bit of reasoning encourages this thought - becoming a Christian merely as a matter of "fire insurance."

Pascal's Wager is the one thing christians decry the most in human behavior. Self-centeredness. "I don't know if hell is real or not so I guess I'd better play it safe." This sort of thinking leads to another quote I know of:

http://www.ushistory.org/paine/reason/singlehtml.htm

Thomas Paine:
But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.

And the potential cost of this line of reasoning?

Thomas Paine:
It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. He takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and in order to qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive any thing more destructive to morality than this?

First and foremost we must be honest with ourselves.

[A Person]

Pascal's Wager is so defective as a logical argument that it's difficult to believe that it actually came from such a noted mathematician, scientist and logician.

I think it worthwhile to remember that it was published posthumously from notes. It's also worth remembering that his notable mathematical and scientific achievements were made before he reached the age of 31 when he inherited money, started gambling and womanizing, had a near death experience and witnessed a 'miracle'. After that he became a committed theologian.

[BecauseHeLives]

Pascal's Wager is so defective as a logical argument that it's difficult to believe that it actually came from such a noted mathematician, scientist and logician.

I think it worthwhile to remember that it was published posthumously from notes. It's also worth remembering that his notable mathematical and scientific achievements were made before he reached the age of 31 when he inherited money, started gambling and womanizing, had a near death experience and witnessed a 'miracle'. After that he became a committed theologian.

Sounds like he became wiser as he got older.

[A Person]

It's a shame he picked a heretical sect and didn't therefore make it to heaven.

[BecauseHeLives]

It's a shame he picked a heretical sect and didn't therefore make it to heaven.

Nobody knows the heart but God. You shouldn't pretend to know anybody went anywhere.

[A Person]

Which defeats the basic premise of Pascal's Wager.

[BecauseHeLives]

J. Eric Harrington

You can't believe anything that guy says....




(all in jest)

I just thought it was funny that he would include SFI in one of his quotes of the day.

[SouthernFriedInfidel]

(all in jest)

I just thought it was funny that he would include SFI in one of his quotes of the day.

Well, I felt honored, FWIW.

[RebelSnake]

I just thought it was funny that he would include SFI in one of his quotes of the day.

Why?

[A Person]

In fairness to Pascal it should be noted that his wager was not intended to be sufficient reason to believe, rather that it should be a sufficient incentive to 'seek Him sincerely'.

Pascal was a believer in the doctrine of 'Deus absconditus' - the hidden God.

God has set up in the Church visible signs to make Himself known to those who should seek Him sincerely, and that He has nevertheless so disguised them that He will only be perceived by those who seek Him with all their heart

Pascal's Pensees (thoughts)

This is similar to Luther's position that God can only be perceived by revelation not by reason or philosphy.

Since I feel that to abandon reason is to abandon my humanity I have to agree with

I do not feel obligated to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reasons, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

[RebelSnake]

http://richarddawkins.net/article,898,The-Empty-Wager,Sam-Harris-On-Faith

The Empty Wager
by Sam Harris, On Faith
Reposted from:
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfa ... faith.html

The coverage of my recent debate in the pages of Newsweek began and ended with Jon Meacham and Rick Warren each making respectful reference to Pascal's wager. As many reader's will remember, Pascal suggested that religious believers are simply taking the wiser of two bets: if a believer is wrong about God, there is not much harm to him or to anyone else, and if he is right, he wins eternal happiness; if an atheist is wrong, however, he is destined for hell. Put this way, atheism seems the very picture of reckless stupidity.

But there are many questionable assumptions built into this famous wager. One is the notion that people do not pay a terrible price for religious faith. It seems worth remembering in this context just what sort of costs, great and small, we are incurring on account of religion. With destructive technology now spreading throughout the world with 21st century efficiency, what is the social cost of millions of Muslims believing in the metaphysics of martyrdom? Who would like to put a price on the heartfelt religious differences that the Sunni and the Shia are now expressing in Iraq (with car bombs and power tools)? What is the net effect of so many Jewish settlers believing that the Creator of the universe promised them a patch of desert on the Mediterranean? What have been the psychological costs imposed by Christianity's anxiety about sex these last seventy generations? The current costs of religion are incalculable. And they are excruciating.

While Pascal deserves his reputation as a brilliant mathematician, his wager was never more than a cute (and false) analogy. Like many cute ideas in philosophy, it is easily remembered and often repeated, and this has lent it an undeserved air of profundity. If the wager were valid, it could be used to justify any belief system (no matter how ludicrous) as a "good bet." Muslims could use it to support the claim that Jesus was not divine (the Koran states that anyone who believes in the divinity of Jesus will wind up in hell); Buddhists could use it to support the doctrine of karma and rebirth; and the editors of TIME could use it to persuade the world that anyone who reads Newsweek is destined for a fiery damnation.

But the greatest problem with the wager—and it is a problem that infects religious thinking generally—is its suggestion that a rational person can knowingly will himself to believe a proposition for which he has no evidence. A person can profess any creed he likes, of course, but to really believe something, he must also believe that the belief under consideration is true. To believe that there is a God, for instance, is to believe that you are not just fooling yourself; it is to believe that you stand in some relation to God's existence such that, if He didn't exist, you wouldn't believe in him. How does Pascal's wager fit into this scheme? It doesn't.

Beliefs are not like clothing: comfort, utility, and attractiveness cannot be one's conscious criteria for acquiring them. It is true that people often believe things for bad reasons—self-deception, wishful thinking, and a wide variety of other cognitive biases really do cloud our thinking—but bad reasons only tend to work when they are unrecognized. Pascal's wager suggests that a rational person can knowingly believe a proposition purely out of concern for his future gratification. I suspect no one ever acquires his religious beliefs in this way (Pascal certainly didn't). But even if some people do, who could be so foolish as to think that such beliefs are likely to be true?

I don't think using Pascal's Wager, playing it safe in other words, is ever a legitimate reason for beLIEving in anything. If there actually is a god, and that is one big if, does anyone really think he couldn't tell the difference between a true beLIEver and someone choosing to just "play it safe", just in case? Religious beLIEf isn't something you can choose like you can choose what shoes to wear. You either beLIEve, or you don't. It's that simple.

[BecauseHeLives]

Good post.

You have been given faith by God or you have no faith. All faith is dispensed by God.

[RebelSnake]

Good post.

You have been given faith by God or you have no faith. All faith is dispensed by God.

So you're saying we have no choice in the matter. Your god has already chosen who goes and who doesn't and there's nothing we can do about it.

[BecauseHeLives]

Good post.

You have been given faith by God or you have no faith. All faith is dispensed by God.

So you're saying we have no choice in the matter. Your god has already chosen who goes and who doesn't and there's nothing we can do about it.

I think its more along the thinking that God KNOWS the choices you will make. Not that he has pre-determined your choices. God is not willing that any should perish.

Even you don't know what choices you will make tomorrow.

[RebelSnake]

It's like I said though, religious beLIEf is not a choice.

[BecauseHeLives]

It's like I said though, religious beLIEf is not a choice.

Sure its a choice. Just because God knows the choices you are going to make doesn't mean that He is making the choices for you.

I know that when I get home today my dog will need to use the bathroom. I didn't make that choice for the dog. Think of that scenario but with a bit more certainty.

[RebelSnake]

It's like I said though, religious beLIEf is not a choice.

Sure its a choice.

Then choose to beLIEve in Santa Claus.