JPD

The most sensible decision being that no course of belief/action is a guarantee should God exist/reward belief etc or not and should not be embarked upon until some actual evidence is made available. Until that happens everything is uncertain.

JPD

I don't think that Pascal's wager should be in the believer's arsenal. Faith and scripture yes. One step removed with dodgy rationale? No.

HRG

There is a simple logical argument which kills the Wager stone dead:

For any X, and for every God who will torment you eternally unless you do X, there is a God who will torment you eternally if you do X. The contributions of both to your eternal fate cancel each other. IOW, I cannot do anything which is guaranteed to escape eternal torment.

There is a pragmatic argument which then desecrates the corpse:

I cannot decide to believe X. I can only decide to act as if X was true.


regards, HRG.

Alf

Since Pascal wager doesn't help you in that decision it - the wager - does not matter.

It doesn't help how much important the decision is - if the wager cannot help you either way the wager does not matter. The decision might matter - we don't know but we can know for certain that the wager does not matter.

If the wager were to matter it should be possible to use the wager to make a decision that allowed you to escape or at least minimize the chance of eternal torment. Since it does not do that - as we have demonstrated - the wager does not matter. It is impossible to use the wager to make a decision that allows you to minimize the chance of eternal torment.

The chance of eternal torment stays the same whether you believe or not.

Alf

Sauron

Pascal's wager says nothing about emotion; that is merely your wishful attempt to classify disbelief as emotionally based. That particular error has already been demonstrated to you.

Sauron

The problem, as Johnny and others have pointed out, is that Pascal (and you) define self-interest too narrowly, and exclude other possibilities that are ALSO rooted in self-interest.

Incorrect. The rational decision in the face of uncertainty is to disbelieve. As HRG said:

Since extraordinary entities - like disembodied minds, or invisible pink unicorns - are presumed not to exist, lack of belief in them is a very rational response in the face of uncertainty.

Moreover, any belief in God that was based in such a cynical calculation ("well, I'm not sure, so I guess I'll believe") does not qualify as actual religious faith. Since it still has a significant element of doubt, and since it is not undertaken out of a sincere heart, it doesn't even meet the standards necessary.

Pascal's wager says nothing about emotion; that is merely your wishful attempt to classify disbelief as emotionally based. Several people have already pointed out the flaws in that reasoning.

Sauron

Says who?

1. Multiplicity of deities;

2. Alternate interpretations of the judeo-christian belief about hell that do not end in torment;

3.

Nonsense. The basis for disbelief is totally free of emotion. How long will you try to assert that without addressing the counter-examples provided to you?

Wiploc

He may have understood and just been uncandid. Columbus lied to his ship's log, and Mendel lied to his records about his peas; Pascal could have lied about his wager. The real purpose of the Wager is to get you to stop worrying about whether you have strong enough evidence and just believe without it. The evidence for Christianity can be summed up semi-facetiously as, "Mom told me it's true." That's no reason to actually believe (unless you have a separate reason to believe that mothers are generally right about religion), but it often makes people want to believe.

The "Mom said" argument makes people want to believe, but the desire not to be irresponsible creates cognitive dissonance. The job of Pascal's wager is to silence that dissonance, to quash the feeling that responsible adults ought not go around believing absurdities without evidence, to let people be comfortable believing on the basis of "Mom said."

But if Pascal had admitted that, he would have destroyed the effectiveness of his argument's misdirection.

crc

Wiploc

Hey, everybody, I think we've gotten as far with Rhutchin as we can hope to in this thread.



He has admitted that rational belief in god must be based on things other than the Wager. I'm happy to admit that if some other argument made it seem likely that I could avoid eternal torment by believing in gods, smashing acorns, attacking people with pitchforks, contemplating my navel, or whatever, then the Wager might push me over into belief if the other argument was nearly strong enough to make me believe without the Wager.

I think that's all he can ask of us in this thread, and all we can ask of him. He has said that he really believes because he thinks the bible is accurate, but he doesn't want to debate the accuracy of the bible in this thread, which seems fair to me. So I think we've actually reached agreement here, which is unusual enough to please me greatly.

crc

rhutchin

Pascal could not have lied about his Wager. It describes a simple risk analysis. There is nothing to lie about. The "Mon said argument" that you now raise is bogus. The Wager relies only on the logic of an argument that addresses decision-making in the face of uncertainty. It has nothing to do with that which Mom said or anyone else (with, of course, the exception of that which the Bible says regarding the possibility of eternal torment without which there would be no uncertainty and no Wager).

Stick with the Wager and argue against its conclusion -- the rational decision for a person to make is to seek to escape eternal torment.