enemigo

What you are telling me is to skip Pascal's Wager. You're saying that by assuming that all positions are tenable, then the only thing left to do is to evaluate based on evidence. That is exactly what I've been arguing this whole time. I can't prove with absolute certainty that any one position is untenable, so for the sake of argument, I assume that that they all are. As you've admitted, the only thing left for me to do is to evaluate the evidence.

And since the Bible carries no more weight to me than the proposition of the Professor's God or Mageth's claims, then I will stick with nonbelief until I find sufficient evidence to believe in a god.

wyzaard

Hold on here, mister... all we are talking about here are possibilities from the infinite array of hypotheticals, not knowables. As it is possible that nonbelief is a requirement for escaping punishment and reaching paradise, then choosing an agnostic position is a immenently favorable choice, as it is also the default position.

As anything is possible metaphysically, I have reason to choose the default position both out of a rational admission of unverifiablity AND a rational admission that I might get a reward for being agnostic in the first place!

I win, sort of!

What about a one in INFINITY chance of winning? The limit approaches zero with that one... and I've still have the default position as a valid ticket number anyways. AND... you have not shown that this small chance of being the winning ticket outweighs the value of spending your money on something else entirely...

You're not getting anywhere with Pascal's mistake... so why do you persist?

wyzaard

And again, you miss our point... that nonbelief might be a requirment to escape eternal torment for one or more of these possible gods... along the same vein, your choice of belief could be just the thing that damns you in the eyes of one or more of these gods!

In short, there's nothing you can do to better your chances between any of these possibilities... the only logical solution then is to return to the default position of nonebelief that also serves as a possible 'escape'.

Got it yet?

Barefoot Bree

One problem as I see it is that are assigning waaaay too much weight to the possibility of eternal torment.

I don't see nonbelief as a way to "escape" such, I simply do not believe that eternal torment exists!!! Probability = 0. You seem to be separating the concepts of God and eternal torment, taking the second for given, and trying to determine the possibilities of the first from there.

You're also continuing to ignore the fact that most people I've talked to have not viewed their belief or lack thereof as a "choice". I've never talked to anyone who consciously CHOSE what to believe - it welled up naturally from the evidence (or lack of it) and experiences that they had.

For me, the Wager fails utterly on those two points, even before we get to the "which god?" problem.

Wayne Delia

rhutchin has posted a list of four criteria by which one is considered a "True Christian." He failed to qualify on two of the four criteria, by breaking the Ninth Commandment ("Thou shalt not bear false witness") by calling all atheists "thieves", failing to acknowledge, apologize, and repent for doing so, and misrepresenting Jesus's words in an attempt to defend himself against that charge. He has never disputed the fact that he doesn't qualify as a True Christian by those criteria.

That's already been brought up to rhutchin, and his response was that Hurricane Katrina was permitted because not everyone in New Orleans got down on their knees and begged God for help. It is just as stupid as it sounds, particularly to those of us who lost good friends in the disaster. Our fraternity patriarch died in the evacuation. He was deaf and completely blind, but was a devout Christian. rhutchin's reaction to that was essentially "Oh, well." As Dave Barry says, "I am not making this up."

WMD

Sauron

I don't see why. Nor do I see where it much affects the problem of selecting a deity from among thousands.

The same is true of Islam. So unfortunately, there are other gods that have mutually exclusive claims. The problem for Pascal's wager is that any other exclusivistic religion can use it also.

enemigo

rhutchin,


I'll try to lay this out as explicitly as possible.

You say that only positions that offer potential escape from eternal torment are to be considered valid options.

By a "position that offers potential escape from eternal torment," you mean, essentially:

A position that would provide a means of escape from a given threat of eternal torment were a situation to exist where that threat is real.

In other words, if there is a possible situation in which a given position (of belief or nonbelief of any kind) could result in escape as described above, then that position shall be considered to provide "potential escape" and is therefore a valid position to be taken into consideration in risk analysis.


So, given that definition of what it means for a position to provide "potential escape":

The position of, "belief in God Y," has the potential to provide a means of escape from God Y's punishment if God Y exists in reality.

Just the same, the position of "nonbelief in any gods" has the potential to provide a means of escape from God Z's punishment if God Z exists in reality.


Do you understand now why nonbelief is not to be dismissed a priori? There exists a possibility for nonbelief to provide escape in at least one possible reality, it is therefore not a "zero potential option," and therefore cannot be excluded from consideration a priori.

So, what that leaves us with, is to consider nonbelief alongside every other possible non-zero potential options. This is the point that we are supposed to enter risk analysis, to decide which position is the least risky. But rather than doing the risk analysis at this point, you are saying that we should instead look at evidence. It seems you are saying not to bother with risk analysis at all.

Now, if you are instead referring to the preceding identification of positions offering potential escape as the risk analysis, then unless you can prove with absolute certainty that any particular possible position offers no potential for escape, then I'm going to assume that that position has the same potential as every other position. My basis for that assumption is that for any position that you say has zero potential, I can posit a god or other potential situation in which that position would provide escape. So if the identification of positions offering potential escape is your idea of risk analysis, then risk analysis fails because it can't eliminate a single option.

And again, don't bother bringing up your Bible as evidence of God. The moment you try to make evidence of existence, in any amount or of any type, a requisite for a position's consideration in risk analysis, then you aren't relying on your uncertainty principle anymore.

Sauron

But as this thread as shown, Pascal's analysis is built upon assumptions that have not been proven. And the binary nature of this model has not been adjusted to take account for multiple choices and outcomes.

Whoa, slow down and stop making this up as you go.

1. The price you would pay for this depends upon a hell of a lot more. For example, I would not pay any amount of money that I was not willing to lose. So for me, I might not pay more than $2000. I would be ecstatic to win the $1M, but if I lost $2K, perhaps the negative impact would be so great as to not make it worth taking the chance. So depending upon the person, their aversion to losing $2K could be stronger than their desire to win $1M - so they fail to take the wager. At least they are making a meager living right now; the wager puts that in jeopardy.

2. Other people might be willing to pay far more than the 50% that you claim; for example, there was a recent account of a group of investors in Australia (I believe) that pooled their money on a large lottery (say, $20M). They bought up 60% of all the tickets, which (I gather from the math) gave them a much higher certainty of purchasing the winning ticket than a mere 50% did. Of course, this gets into the rules and nature of how the lottery itself was conducted: was there a guaranteed winner? Or was it random chance, and no guarantee that each drawing would produce a winner?

3. What if there were twenty lottery tickets, and they all promised a $1M reward? How much would you be willing to pay for each one then, knowing that any money you spend buying Tickets #1 will reduce your chances of wnning Tickets #2 through #20? I predict a change to your scenario coming.

4. And, of course, in any prizewinning scenario, the amount one is willing to wager also depends upon how certain a person is of the payout. It's rather like investing in stock: you discount the price of a stock for the uncertainty of the return. In the lottery, if the lottery is being run out of Nigeria, I wouldn't wager one thin dime on a $100 billion dollar payout, because there is no evidence that Nigeria has ever run anything except a crooked scam.

These objections 1-4 illustrate one of the key mistakes in pascal's wager and rhutchins position: neither one factors in any opportunity costs for engaging/failing to engage other alternatives, or seeks to explore other possible outcomes. Attempts to artificially restrict the choices are special pleading designed to save pascal's wager from the scrap heap of bad logic.

Increasing the payout does not remove the problems listed above.

Johnny Skeptic

That is correct.

That is irrelevant since the New Testament says that salvation is a free gift.

As I said previously, “That is irrelevant since the New Testament says that salvation is a free gift.�

“An infinite prize� unnecessarily complicates the issue. Let’s stick to the New Testament since Christianity is the world view that Pascal chose to accept. Consider the following scriptures:

The reward:

Revelation 21:1 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.

2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

3 And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.

4 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

The punishment:

Revelation 14:9 And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand,

10 The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb:

11 And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.

Revelation 21: 8 But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

“An infinite prize� doesn’t have anything to do with accepting the Bible or not. We don’t know how literal those scriptures are, but they are plain enough that most people would choose to go to heaven instead of hell if they believed that the evidence for the existence of both was sufficient.

The point is, whether the prize is infinite or not infinite, if self-interest is a rational basis for accepting even chances, then it is also a rational basis for accepting a one in one hundred trillion chances. What you are essentially suggesting is the following:

“God of the Bible, if you are out there, I believe that the chances that you exist are only one in one hundred trillion, but since I can’t find any better odds to accept another God, I will pretend that you exist, and I will pretend to love you. If you exist, you are well aware that I can’t will myself to accept your existence and love you in the manner that the Bible says that you require based upon such small odds, so on second thought, I choose not to become a Christian. I prefer to take my chances that a possible creator is benevolent and not a murderer of innocent babies like the Bible shows that you are.�

Rhutchin, I will be happy to debate you regarding what God requires for a person to go to heaven in addition to believing that he exists. Among other requirements, Christians must love God in order to go to heaven, and Christians most certainly cannot love God based upon a one in a hundred trillion possibility. You have made a mockery out of the New Testament, and as such, you cannot possibly be a Christian.

Dregs

:notworthy

My thoughts exactly.

You’ve conflated decision and belief—they are not synonymous. Citing unspecified situations where a person may be pressed to decide on this or that course of action without reasonable assurance that he has made the correct decision doesn’t even begin to address the substance of my objection. Is belief a choice, or isn’t it? I maintain that it is not, that the only way to rationally arrive at a belief is by way of evidence, or experience. You’ve gone on about the “risk� involved in disbelieving in a god that promises damnation for anything short of absolute obedience as being reason enough to choose to believe. What I’m saying to you is that if belief is not a choice, if it can, as I suspect, only be rationally arrived at experientially, or by exposure to some sort of corroborating evidence, then Pascal’s Wager is a wash.

My position has not changed; either evidence supports belief, or that belief is irrational. Saying that “People are constantly forced to believe and to express their beliefs without the necessary proof to buttress those beliefs� is to say that people often hold irrational beliefs.

Prove that one can choose to believe, I mean, truly believe something, and I will accept Pascal’s Wager.