Pascal’s Wager promotes the idea that if you believe in God you have infinite gain and finite loss, and if you disbelieve in God you have finite gain yet infinite loss.
I offer my Wager, which is that if you disbelieve in God, your acts of kindness come from an infinitely pure place, and if you believe in God your acts of kindness come from a finitely pure place… and that if God existed, God would be MORE interested in sacrifice from an infinitely pure place than a finitely pure place. Thus the atheists who act well go to heaven and the theists go to hell. And If God is GOOD, my wager works better than Pascal’s.
Because God would be the infinite comparative, our efforts are measly little mortal and finite ones. ‘the word’ [of God] barely even allows for individual thought and action.
And the kingdom of heaven is within! A more ‘Tao’-like ‘god’/divinity would not manifest via a construct like the absolute word. Then everything would be infinitely shared.
Embedded in your statement was the idea that there is ‘a fruit bowl’. Embedded in Pascal’s wager and your wager is the concept that there is a judgement where an infinite reward is given out or taken away. If there is no reward or if everyone gets the reward, then the wagers are meaningless. Just as it is meaningless to talk about the contents of a fruit bowl without a fruit bowl.
Laugh all you want, that was the intent of my fruit bowl analogy, and you used the fruit bowl analogy as a red herring. Do you have an orange in your hand or not?
It’s interesting that so many people here believe that everything can be represented as a simple dichotomy. And that logic is simply the act of making statements about dichotomies.
Yes, it’s interesting that we have eyes and assholes… when maybe we couldn’t. But that’s besides the point the we have eyes and assholes and that you either do or don’t have an orange in your hands. Perhaps you’ll pull the same trick and say you don’t have hands, and then I’ll say do you see an orange or not, and then you’ll say you can’t see, and I’ll ask if you can touch the orange with your chest… and then you’ll say you have no feeling in your body… but you have a mouth, so I’ll say, is there an orange in your mouth, and you’ll say I have no taste buds… and then I’ll say “whatever” because I can’t win that debate. But then I’ll ask you, because I can win the debate… so you have no hands, eyes, feeling or taste… and you’ll have to say one way or the other… Unless you don’t understand language, but oddly enough we’re conversing in an internet chat group, so I already know that you understand language.
The wager is not that everyone gets a reward or not… if you don’t believe in God, you get finite riches, but get sent to hell FOREVER. If you believe in God, you might not get shit here, but you get HEAVEN FOREVER.
That’s Pascal’s wager.
My wager is that if God is good, you go to heaven forever for being an atheist and not a theist.
You cannot think of anything but the two possibilities which you present to me. When I point out that there is a third possibility, then you claim that I am ‘pulling a trick’.
Pascal could have also said that the reward/punishment is limited. But then he would have had to quantify it and he is unable to do that. The punishment may exactly balance the ‘sins’ of life. And where would the wager be then?
Instead he presents only two clear possibilities and asks you to choose.
You also only give us two possibilities although clearly other possibilities exist.
Huh?
An “infinitely pure place”?
Since an infinitely pure place is very probably a place that doesn’t actually exist, I would hazard to say that no one would qualify for that condition and thus no one acting with kindness would actually disbelieve in God (by your theory).
Again, Huh?
What finitely pure place would that be?
And at least a finitely pure place is far more likely to be real, thus anyone acting in kindness is far more likely to be one who believes in God (again, by your theory).
Thus so far, by your theory, everyone should promote the belief in God so that the acts of kindness become far more real.
The idea James, is that theists believe (in a world where bad gets you the best stuff) that there is a being who ultimately squares all of this morality off… so they are acting under a finite compassion when they are good. The atheist doesn’t believe this, so they are acting of an infinite compassion when they are good.
