Pascal’s Wager concludes that it is a safe bet to believe in God and heaven and hell and all the Biblical stuff. If all is false, if there is no God and no heaven and hell, then the believer is no worse off than the non-believer, according to Pascal. Both will be dead, and that will be that. However, if God does exist, then the believer has everything to gain, and the non-believer has everything to lose. The believer, according to this way of looking at things, really has nothing to lose and everything to gain, while the nonbeliever has nothing to gain and everything to lose.
Problems:
First, it is important to note that this is not an argument or proof for the existence of God. It makes no knowledge claim. It is purported to be a reason for believing. That is all.
Second, most religious people who believe in God authentically do not respect people who choose to believe because it is a safe bet. It’s like marrying for money and not for love. Gamboling and betting is generally frowned upon by religious people, and believing just to insure one’s reward of salvation is not an authentic reason for believing. It is phony.
Third, there are negative consequences to subjugating one’s self to a supreme being which doesn’t exist and positive things about living for one’s self authentically, standing on one’s own two feet. When it is factored in that living one’s own life freely and participating in creating one’s own nature is preferable to living as an object of someone else’s design, it is no longer the case that the believer is better off, or no worse off, than the non-believer.
“I was in the death struggle with self: God and Satan fought for my soul those three long hours. God conquered - now I have only one doubt left - which of the twain was God?” ~Aleister Crowley.
Three hours? I took 3 weeks… And neither God nor Satan gained my soul.
I thought that I would die, literally, and I did not feel well at all…
It was like being unpluggede from the matrix, it was like being born, so cold and shocking…
If one is lordless – one must become his own lord at the same time.
Far slower, far harder, far longer, far better: independance.
Pascal is just one of a billion opinion-preachers wishing to turn you.
God and Satan both disgust me, and yes, they are “real”, but so drastically misunderstood…
Pascal’s Wager is probably the most compelling reason to make a leap of faith, hence threads about it are always to be welcomed.
The first given comment about it is the most important one, namely that the wager says nothing about the liklihoods; we should remember that if the bookies offer us ridiculously good odds, then the event is highly unlikely to happen.
Of course, the main problem with the Wager- which God/god/Goddess(s) should we believe in? If we trust in “God” and “Allah” turns out to be the Big Kahuna, we’re as fucked as a non-believer. Ditto if Sufiasm, Hinduism, Buddhism, or any of the other ‘isms’ turn out to be true instead of J/C mythology.
The biggest logical flaw in Pascal’s Wager is the False Dichotomy. Other posibilites exist that aren’t accounted for in his premise.
If we do live our lives and then go either to a type of hell or paradise forever, then the aim actually reversed.
For instance, if you’re sitting in Heaven not only do you not have a concept of ‘bad’ as things would naturally be good for all eternity, but because of the loss of that diachotomy, you also don’t even see the ‘good’ as good because you have nothing to compare it to. Likewise for Hell.
In this sense life is the sought after commodity that we should be afraid of wasting away. It’s the brief period of time where you have the bodily senses and a perspective to match such. Really, people should be doing whatever they want during life as once it’s over… you’re going somewhere for eternity anyways. It really doesn’t matter where because it’s eternity.
It’s like planning your day before you go to work for the overnight shift that doesn’t end. You could have a wicked job… you could have a shitty job, once you’re there it doesn’t matter… you’re working. What you do in your free time is what matters because sooner or later… both those jobs equate to the same thing.
It’s important to note that Pascal’s Wager was addressed to a particular sort of skeptic- the skeptic who sees something admirable in the religious community that surrounds him. The atheist who wants to believe, but can’t find in himself the reason to do so. When you consider this, the ‘which religion do I choose’ problem fades away- you choose the one that is already compelling you.
Also, Pascal viewed this as a step towards legitmiate faith- in other words, the plan is not for the Atheist to become a sort of selfish believer for the rest of his life. The plan is for him to acknowledge that it is to his advantage to believe (possibly because Pascal believed selfishness is the only thing that could motivate the skeptic, I don’t know), and to enter into the practise of religious service and ritual. The hope is that sincere belief will result from the practice - it was Pascal’s view that the best way to become a believing Christian was to live like one first- he thought skeptics like those he was addressing resulting from trying to take things the other way around- waiting to believe before adopting the lifestyle.
EDIT: To put it simply, the Wager is not an argument for the existence of God, but it’s also not an argument for the reasonability of religious belief. It’s an argument for the benefits of striving to attain religious belief.
To the rest. Why would Pascal’s Wager have anything to do with Religion?
Belief in a Religion to safe guard your soul is not really believing in the religous. To just run around and say “I believe” so that your soul will not die or fry makes no difference at all! There has to be real faith behind that belief. Pascal is just hoping for suprise converts out of guilt or low brow reasoning!
There is no application of Pascal’s Wager to any religion! There must a REAL belief not a safety blanket belief!
So, it’s pretty obvious that nobody here has read pascal, except maybe Otani, there’s just a lot of spouting off on what some guy on the internet said Pascal’s Wager was supposed to be. Does anyone have any interest in reflecting on the explanation of I put out (because it is, in fact, the truth about what Pascal was trying to say) or are these fantasies good enough?
I mean, I don’t mean to toot my own horn here, but every four months or so, a bunch of skeptics drag out this ‘Pascal’s Wager’ myth and trample all over it like it’s some sort of accomplishment, and every time I clarify what was actually meant, and everytime the topic dies. (:
Yes, I know that Pascal recomended that people go through the motions, pretend they believe until, at some point, they will believe sincerely. I don’t respect this. I think people should be authentic.
Pascal’s reasoning assumes that they want to believe but don’t. I don’t want to believe.
Yes, I know a person can have problems if he or she does not fit in with a community, does not follow the conventions. Still, if the rest of the community wears swatikas to identify with a Nazi movement, I’d be glad not to fit in.
People should not sell out. They should be themselves. They should live for themselves, not for a supreme being or a society.
I have heard a bit about this before, you can sum it all up in a few words: better safe than sorry.
Even if you want to be on the safe side there is still that shred of doubt that you originally started out with. So maybe you’ll only get stuck in limbo.
I'm not sure if I agree with Pascal or not. I think I could, if I took Christianity's goodness as a given- if some people can only come to believe by living the life for a while first, well then, that's just what they ought to do. If we are allowed to question whether or not becoming a Christian is a good thing in the first place, then it doesn't work.
Yep, in which case Pascal's wager isn't[i] for [/i]you. That's the main thing I wanted to stress- it's not a universal theistic argument that anyone should be moved by when exposed to it, like the Ontological argument was trying to be. Not because it fails, but because that was never the objective. I think Pascal's wager works to give the envious atheist (and there are such persons!) good reason to take the step into the Christian life, without having belief yet.
I'd have to agree with Chesterton that the only people really 'living for themselves' are people in nuthouses who think they are Napoleon, or think they are made of glass. The rest of us only make sense of our lives, and make sense of each other's lives, because they take something greater than themselves for granted (meant in no particularly religious way this time).
The point plain and simple is this. Pascal said in a long way to.
Just give it a shot to see if you like… If you dont… what did you lose?
Go through the motions, act as they tell you and see if you catch a zinger!
but like I said. Just going through the motions while you really dont have faith is too unreasonable to expect proper results! How can you experience a faith by just going through the motions! There must first be a desire to seek out its truth!
