Everyone here should be familiar with Pascal’s Wager prior to reading this.
This is how the wager is portrayed. Pretty straight forward.
If your goal is to go with what is right, and since neither side can be proven, then really you should go for believing that there is a god right? Heaven sounds like a nice place.
But of course this assumes that there is only one god to believe in. Theists seem to think that it is possible to choose between yes-god and no-god, but not possible to choose between godA and godB and godC. Given the myriad of religions and ideas of various gods, there is necessarily at least one party who is wrong.
Because it is a binary reality (either there is a god or there is not) and also since neither option can be proven true or false by any means, it is necessary to maintain 50/50 proportions for the probability of yes-god and no-god. However, the “yes-god” part is where it gets complicated. Pascal’s Wager does not account for the different “types” of gods. This is what I think it really should look like:
Seems to me that this would be a dead give away for those “middle of the road” agnostic types. If you really want to base your decision on what’s most likely, how is it rational to justify going with God A? Its slice of pie is so tiny. In fact the slices in the “yes-god” section should be infinitesimal, given the ability to instantly claim the existence of an entirely “new” god.
The flying spaghetti monster, the invisible pink unicorn are examples of “made up” gods of recent years. They are equally as likely to be existent as gods A, B, and C.
But the god that seems to be the most popular on Earth is not a fan of people not believing in him. Its one of his commandments I think.
It would be like Pepsi not caring if you drink Coke. You can’t benefit from Pepsi if you don’t drink Pepsi. Sure there’s a possibility that Pepsi wouldn’t care, but that to me doesn’t seem likely.
Have you ever done a lot of work on a project and then someone else who did nothing on the project gets praised for doing all the work?
If there really was GodA (that does in fact exist) that did not care if you believed in GodB (which did not exist) how would people ever find out about the real god if there were not consequences for not believing in GodA.
Which one sucks more: Being conscious in a place that really sucks (hell) but having lived a good ~70 so years on earth doing what you want, or ceasing to exist (death as materialists thinks it) and having lived a terrible ~70 or so years on earth following the orders of old virgins.
Thezeus,
You are very right in your treatment of Pascal’s Wager (PW). PW only makes sense within a society that has only one religion, and where that religion contains the feature that God demands that we believe in him and submit to his will. If we lived in that kind of society, then PW would be awfully compelling. Think of it: All you have to do is attend church once a week, and devote a little time to prayer, and you guarantee avoiding a nightmarishly horrible afterlife. Good deal. But as you point out, we have too many options, and they can’t all be right. How can we choose based only on PW? We can’t, of course. The only recourse for Pascal would be the following argument, presented formally: (Decide for yourself if its compelling)
P1 - God is loving.
P2 - Love implies understanding.
C1 - God would possess understanding for the uncertainties inherent in its children’s life. [P1, P2]
P3 - There is uncertainty as to which religion is correct.
C2 - God would understand our uncertainty in the face of a plurality of choices in religion. [C1, P3]
P4 - Understanding implies making allowances.
C3 - God would only expect a general belief, expressed culturally in the form of any given religion. [C2, P4]
P5 - The requirement of Pascal’s Wager is to have appropriate belief in God.
C4 - Belief in any given religion is sufficient for Pascal’s Wager. [C3, P5]
C5 - Pascal’s Wager is not damaged by the range of religious options. [C4]
PART of pascal’s wager is correct if you reference a NON SPECIFIC god… “i.e. I believe a higher power exists, but I do not believe he/she/it is revealed in any holy text / all holy texts are the works of men, god is found in the record of nature… etc, etc.”
But that one part is only a question: Does a higher power exist?
It does’t reference life after death, morality, how to live your life, etc, because it is not tied to any holy book.
Are there any deities that command that you simply believe in the possibility of any arbitrary god? That’s not how Christianity works i know that one for sure. You have to bring into your life a very specific deity. If Christianity was true, but you lived your life not being a Christian, yet all the while saying “yeah there is a god but i don’t know which one” what good could come from that?
The whole reason PW is even worthy of discussion (at least in its bare bones form) is because it is based on the idea that you will either have eternal bliss in heaven, eternal damnation in hell, or nothing at all and simply die. It is the idea that since no harm can come to you if you “believe in god” you might as well believe. Because afterall you can not prove what god will or wont do until it actually happens, so you might as well play your cards right and believe.
The problem is that the idea of “belief in god” is so mind bogglingly NOT standardized so you have the potential for there to be millions of different gods to believe in and only one can be the right one (that is of course assuming that there is one at all). Given the current personalities of all the ideas of the gods portrayed in today’s society, it is unlikely that any real god would act kindly toward a follower of a god other than himself. Because of this, Pascal’s wager makes no sense because if you spin the wheel and land in the “there is a god” section, you still have to pick a god from the hundreds of thousands of possibilities.
Even within major religions like Christianity there are numerous examples of DIFFERENT personalities of the same god Yahweh. Each personality is alleged to have laid out certain commandments in varying degrees of strictness. If Yahweh ended up being the god that really did exist, only the small fraction of Christians that believed in the CORRECT personality of Yahweh would benefit, and the rest would burn in hell.
Think about all the homosexuals that claim to be devout Christians. According to the bible, upon admission and/or discovery of his (not “her” for some reason) homosexuality then he should be put to death. If you don’t believe me, open that bitch up to Leviticus 20:13. Are all the Christian homosexuals going to go to heaven simply because they believe there is a higher power? “That’s just the Old Testament” you say? “I don’t believe in the old testament” you claim? Well what about those who do? Are they going to hell? They believe in the existence of a higher power also. The First Commandment states “You shall have no other gods before Me.” Hindus and pagans break this commandment all the time; constantly in fact. Yet they believe in the possibility of a higher power. According to pascal’s wager they are A-OK and will goto heaven assuming that there is in fact a higher power of some kind no matter what it is.
The point I’m trying to make here is that Pascal’s Wager is bullshit and an extremely incomplete depiction of the reality of the “god choice dilemma”.
I don’t think Pascal’s argument is really undermined, considering the qualitative benifit of being right, and the qualitative consequence of being wrong. Though the graph seems to show it is a more rational decision to be an atheist, it is based on quantative reasoning.
Pascal would argue, I think, that even a .5% chance at eternal Heaven, is a far better wager than a 50% chance of eternal damnation. The whole thing about his argument is that it is based on the fact that one doesn’t lose anything in believing in G, which is where it fails for me. Much of Nietzsche’s work seems to be precisely directed at undermining that idea, with whom I agree.
The probability that you choose a path that will correctly lead to eternal heaven is almost if not exactly equal to zero due to the fact that there is no limit to the number of wrong choices one can make. By choices i mean all the gods.
Its similar to not buying a lottery ticket, versus not buying a lottery ticket. It is true that buying a ticket will give you a non-zero probability for winning the jackpot. But because there are so many combinations of numbers that are wrong, if you do play you’re bound to not win statistically speaking, so you might as well not play at all.
Well, there wouldn’t be a lottery if the tickets were free. Rather, it would be entirely HIGHLY improbably to have a lottery if the tickets were free. The money has to come from a renewable source. The source is the price of the tickets. Granted if the lottery were free then yeah go nuts. But its not free.
But this idea of belief in a deity is not something that is free either. It costs something. Mainly time and brain power (sometimes money). Making a conscious effort to believe in something takes time an energy. Time is our most valuable commodity. Wouldn’t it be rational to spend it on something that has been cut the thinnest by Occam’s Razor?
There are too many poorly concieved words in pascals argument. First of all, you must QUALIFY the statement, are there any inconsistencies in pascals argument? YES if you argue for a SPECIFIC god, with SPECIFIC characteristics with SPECIFIC doctrines and assertions about an afterlife, in a specific location. All those specifics change the probabilities exponentially, every specific a god you believe in gets wrong automatically DISQUALIFIES HIM FROM GODHOOD. When carefully and adequately weighs the conditions claimed.
God as an entity cannot violate the logic of his own essential nature.
God is eternal (perpetual power source, cannot be created or destroyed, like pure energy)
IS everywhere present by his power (energy, god then and the energy of our universe would be god or an extension OF god, we being just a part of god or his power, depending on monotheism or pantheism, they both logically cohere for me anyway)
Now the CHRISTIAN god claims he is INCAPABLE of lying, now if we are to qualify his statement, this means he cannot make any inaccurate scientific claims that would go against the very universe that he is claimed to have created, and would not intentionally decieve or lie, or hide information.
Any god caught in inconsistency (contradiction) has ZERO probability of existence, unless he is a god that can lie, and at that point, its pointless because one has NO WAY TO MEASURE what god is, who he is, or what he says, because it would take a GOD of equal or greater power then the first god, to know if one was being deceived or not.
Basic logic of early humans:
I don’t know any human that is smart or powerful enough to create a universe.
I experience the universe.
The universe must have been created by something that is not human.
I will use my imagination to call this creator God.
This was the start - all religious beliefs are dependant on imagination - then and now - logic doesn’t apply.
This attempt to explain the universe only opens the door for more unexplained things. Making an assumption that the universe was “created” implies an higher consciousness of some kind. There is no evidence to support the “creation” of the universe.
