Johnny Skeptic

Message to Rhutchin: In addition to my previous post, at http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...ism/wager.html, ancient historian Richard Carrier says:

“In the seventeenth century the mathematician Blaise Pascal formulated his infamous pragmatic argument for belief in God in Pensees. The argument runs as follows:

‘If you erroneously believe in God, you lose nothing (assuming that death is the absolute end), whereas if you correctly believe in God, you gain everything (eternal bliss). But if you correctly disbelieve in God, you gain nothing (death ends all), whereas if you erroneously disbelieve in God, you lose everything’ (eternal damnation).

“How should you bet? Regardless of any evidence for or against the existence of God, Pascal argued that failure to accept God's existence risks losing everything with no payoff on any count. The best bet, then, is to accept the existence of God. There have been several objections to the wager: that a person cannot simply will himself to believe something that is evidently false to him; that the wager would apply as much to belief in the wrong God as it would to disbelief in all gods, leaving the believer in any particular god in the same situation as the atheist or agnostic; that God would not reward belief in him based solely on hedging one's bets; and so on.�

At http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...y/p_wager.html, Graham Oppy, Ph.D., says:

“…….there is every reason to think that it [Pascal’s Wager] provides no motive at all for atheists and agnostics to make the bet on God. In particular, it seems incredible that one might think that atheists and agnostics think that there is a straightforward choice between two lone alternatives: the traditional Christian God and nothing. Given the reasons for non-belief to which atheists and agnostics will typically advert--the lack of good evidence, the weakness of positive arguments, the scope for wishful thinking, etc.--it is natural for atheists and agnostics to claim that there is every bit as much reason--or, at the very least, hardly any less reason--to believe in alternative deities (or to hold a non-standard conception of the traditional Christian God) as there is to believe in the traditional Christian God. Moreover, this claim is not an ad hoc response generated by the argument of Pascal's wager; rather, it is more or less a constitutive feature of traditional atheistic and agnostic worldviews. Consequently, it is plain in advance that the prospects for Pascal's wager are utterly dim: to think otherwise is simply to misunderstand what it is that atheists and agnostics typically believe.�

Rhutchin, consider the following hypothetical scenario: An alien arrives on earth. He follows his own religion, and he tries to convince you to choose his religion by using his version of Pascal's Wager. What would you tell him?

Johnny Skeptic

Message to Rhutchin: In addition to my two previous posts, if Jesus returned to earth, how would you identify him?

rhutchin

Pascal/s Wager has two basic premises—

1. If the Christian God exists, then…
2. If the Christian God does not exist, then…

The rational response to the Wager is for the person to believe. However, you posit that Point 2 is true and that there are other gods out there who are more powerful than the Christian god. I think the logical response would be for the person to investigate whether Point 2 is true and there are other gods more powerful than the Christian god. You then pose an interesting speculation, but until that speculation becomes reality, I think the conclusion to Pascal’s Wager still stands.

rhutchin

If an alien arrives on earth with a claim to believe in his god, then one would have to do the risk analysis described by Pascal. This is essentially what every other religion presently on earth requires that one do. Pascal was aware of other religions, so they are included in the argument under the premise that the Christian god does not exist. What Pascal said was that the risks faced by people were not materially affected by the other gods and beliefs that existed. Even after consideration of all other gods, one would still reach the conclusion to believe in the Christian god. This is the same position that atheists find themselves in.

rhutchin

According to the Bible, when Christ returns to earth, every eye shall see Him and everyone will know Him. Given the circumstances described in the Bible regarding the return of Christ, I don't see a problem identifying Him.

Johnny Skeptic

Your arguments are not vaild. Even though Pascal was aware of some of the religions in the world, he was not aware of all of the religions in the world, and even more so he was not aware of many possible alien religions.
Pascal would not have been able to do a credible risk analysis even if he had met an alien because he would not have had any way of adequately evaluating what the alien claimed. For instance, an alien might have claimed that his God has supernatural powers, can predict the future, always heals sick people, and is always available for personal consultations. Let's assume for the sake of argument that the alien's space ship was damaged beyond repair and the alien was not able to take Pascal back to his planet so that Pascal could check out his claims. Even if Pascal had been able to go to the alien's planet, the alien might have been right, and even if he wasn't right that would still have left all of the other possible inhabited planets for Pascal to visit and check out.

As far as I know, Pascal was not considering aliens, and that assumed that the Bible was true, or that we become dust in the ground. If so, Pascal's assumption is questionable.

Consider the following from the Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2004:

"Pascal espoused Jansenism and in 1654 entered the Jansenist community at Port Royal, where he led a rigorously ascetic life until his death eight years later. In 1656 and 1657 he wrote the famous 18 Lettres provinciales (Provincial Letters), in which he attacked the Jesuits for their attempts to reconcile 16th-century naturalism with orthodox Roman Catholicism. His most positive religious statement appeared posthumously (he died August 19, 1662); it was published in fragmentary form in 1670 as Apologie de la religion Chrétienne (Apology of the Christian Religion). In these fragments, which later were incorporated into his major work, he posed the alternatives of potential salvation and eternal damnation, with the implication that ONLY BY CONVERSION TO JANSENISM COULD SALVATION BE ACHIEVED [emphasis mine]. Pascal asserted that whether or not salvation was achieved, humanity's ultimate destiny is an afterlife belonging to a supernatural realm that can only be known intuitively. Pascal's final important work was Pensées sur la religion et sur quelques autres sujets (Thoughts on Religion and on Other Subjects), also published in 1670. In the Pensées Pascal attempted to explain and justify the difficulties of human life by the doctrine of original sin, and he contended that revelation can be comprehended only by faith, which in turn is justified by revelation. Pascal's writings urging acceptance of the Christian life contain frequent applications of the calculations of probability; he reasoned that the value of eternal happiness is infinite and that although the probability of gaining such happiness by religion may be small it is infinitely greater than by any other course of human conduct or belief. A reclassification of the Pensées, a careful work begun in 1935 and continued by several scholars, does not reconstruct the Apologie, but allows the reader to follow the plan that Pascal himself would have followed."

© 1993-2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Rhutchin, notice that the article said that "he [Pascal] reasoned that the value of eternal happiness is infinite and that although the probability of gaining such happiness by religion may be small it is infinitely greater than by any other course of HUMAN [emphasis mine] conduct or belief." Possible aliens are not humans, but if they exist they probably have religions too, but it seems that Pascal discounted a reasonable possibility that aliens exist. Do you discount a reasonable possibility that aliens exist?

Regarding "he [Pascal] posed the alternatives of potential salvation and eternal damnation, with the implication that only by conversion to Jansenism could salvation be achieved," the encyclopedia says:

"Jansenism, in Roman Catholic church history, a movement of religious reform especially important in 17th and 18th century France.

"The name of the movement is taken from that of the Flemish theologian and bishop of Ieper, Cornelis Jansen, whose ideas were summarized in the treatise Augustinus (1640). Relying on the strictest possible interpretation of one aspect of St. Augustine's philosophy, Jansen defended the doctrine of absolute predestination. All individuals, he argued, are incapable of doing good without God's unsolicited grace; THEY ARE DESTINED BY GOD TO BE EITHER SAVED OR DAMNED [emphasis mine], AND ULTIMATELY ONLY A CHOSEN FEW WILL RECEIVE SALVATION [emphasis mine]. In this respect, the doctrine closely resembles Calvinism, and Jansen and his followers were accused from the start of being Protestants in disguise. The Jansenists, however, always proclaimed their adherence to Roman Catholicism and announced that no salvation was possible outside the Roman Catholic church. As Jansenism was taught in France, especially by Jansen's friend Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, known as the Abbé of Saint-Cyran, it also entailed an austere form of piety and a strict rigoristic morality. Thus, it was in sharp opposition to the more tolerant ethics and the opulent religious ceremony favored by the dominant factions within the church, especially the powerful Jesuit order.

"Beginning in the 1640s, the spiritual center of Jansenism was the convent of Port-Royal-des-Champs near Paris, where numerous nobles, royal judges, and intellectuals sympathetic to the movement made religious retreats. Almost from its beginning, Jansenism aroused the hostility not only of the Jesuits but also of the French government, which associated the Jansenists with various political opposition movements. In 1653 five propositions relating to predestination, supposedly found in Jansen's writings, were condemned by the pope. Led by the theologian and philosopher Antoine Arnauld, Saint-Cyran's protégé, and by the scientist and religious philosopher Blaise Pascal, the Jansenists vigorously defended themselves, claiming that the five propositions were not actually found in Jansen's treatise; at the same time they launched a counterattack against the Jesuits. Finally, in 1713, under pressure from King Louis XIV, 101 propositions in a treatise by another French Jansenist, Pasquier Quesnel, were condemned by the papal bull Unigenitus. (The king had already closed Port-Royal-des-Champs and had had the convent razed in 1709.)

"During the 18th century, Jansenism maintained a strong appeal, especially among the French parish clergy. Hundreds of clergymen refused to accept the bull Unigenitus, calling instead for a church council to examine the issue independently of Rome. The movement also spread to other areas of Europe, including Spain, Italy, and Austria. In the royal courts of France, the Jansenists increasingly allied themselves with the Gallicans, who also disliked the Jesuits and who were opposed to all papal intervention in French internal affairs (see Gallicanism). The civil courts defended the Jansenists when certain bishops, supported by the royal government, attempted to deny them the last rites. A major political clash between the courts and the government developed over the issue in the 1750s. The greatest triumph of the Jansenist-Gallican faction came in the 1760s, when the courts forced the expulsion of the Jesuits from France. Thereafter, the movement declined in importance, although small groups of Jansenists survived into the 19th and 20th centuries."

© 1993-2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Regarding Calvinism, the encyclopedia says:

"As did the German religious reformer Martin Luther, Calvin denied that human beings were capable of free will after the Fall of Adam, but he went farther than Luther in elaborating a doctrine of predestination—that certain persons are elected by God to salvation, while others are rejected by him and consigned to eternal damnation."

© 1993-2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

It seems to me that Pascal did not believe in free will. If he didn't, why did his write Pascal's Wager?

Regarding "I think the logical response would be for the person to investigate whether Point 2 is true and there are other gods more powerful than the Christian god," it is impossible to investigate Point 2. That is why your arguments are not valid.

Regarding "Pascal asserted that whether or not salvation was achieved, humanity's ultimate destiny is an afterlife belonging to a supernatural realm that can only be known intuitively," if intuition is valid, then the intuition of skeptics is most certainly as valid as anyone else's intuition.

Johnny Skeptic

"According to the Bible" is not good enough. All that a sufficiently advanced alien would need would be the ability to use advanced physics to deceive Christians.

Johnny Skeptic

Message to rhutchin: Consider the following from http://www.update.uu.se/~fbendz/nogod/pascal.htm

“The main problem with Pascal's wager is that it suffers from the fallacy of bifurcation. It only calculates with two options when there are, in fact, at least four alternatives: The Christian God and afterlife, some other god and afterlife, atheism with afterlife, and atheism without afterlife. Therefore Pascal's wager is invalid as an argument.

“Because of the multitude of possible religions, if any faith is as likely as the other, the probability of the Christian being right is P=1/n where n is the number of possible faiths. If we assume that there is an infinite amount of possible gods (i.e. ideas of gods), the probability of you being right is infinitely small. [Johnny Skeptic: Like the odds against winning a national lottery but much greater]

“Because Pascal's wager fails to tell us which god is likely to be the right one, you have a great probability that you picked the wrong religion and go to some other religion's version of hell. This is referred to as the ‘avoiding the wrong hell problem’

“Pascal's wager is the product of the gain from a certain belief and the probability that it is the correct one (in Pascal's reasoning 50-50, but as mentioned above the probability is much less.) such as Win=Gain*P. This leads us to the conclusion that we should pick the religion with the worst hell and the greatest heaven. In that case we should chose to worship the Invisible Pink Unicorns (IPU) because they have an infinite bad hell and an infinitely wonderful heaven, unless, of course we can show that the probability of the existence of an IPU is exactly zero, i.e. you can prove for certainty that they don't exist. If it is only close to zero we still have infinite gain/loss since infinity times any positive value is still infinity.

“The argument is based on the false assumption that atheists don't gain anything after they die. Most atheists don't believe that they do, but there are other possibilities than just going to heaven versus ceasing to exist, such as progression to a better plane, or hanging around as ghosts. Neither of those require the existence of gods to be possibilities.

“An example of a widespread atheist view on life after death is the Buddhist belief in reincarnation. Personally I would suggest that this is the bet that gets the most gain, since it lets you play again, and again, and again... for eternity.

“Theists may say that the gain from heaven is greater than the gain from life on earth, so their faith is a better bet than belief in reincarnation. But they miss the point that living for eternity will give you infinite gain as long as the gain is positive, because infinity times any positive number is still infinity. Even infinity times infinity is still infinity, so the only possibility that would give theists better gain than Buddhists is if the gain from life on earth is negative or exactly zero. Therefore you have to detest life and the world for the argument to be valid.

“Believing in the wrong god has one additional problem. Most religions assure you that blasphemers will be more severely punished than un-believers. Once again, if we calculate with the rest of the possible gods, the chance of you being wrong is P=1-(1/n) so you both run a bigger risk than the atheist of being punished and risk the greater punishment.

“Pascal also made the incorrect statement that you would lose nothing from believing if you are wrong. This is not true either. Assume that you are wrong in being a theist. You will waste a lot of time and energy on going to church, praying and religious rituals. Imagine if all the energy that, throughout human history, had been wasted on such activities had been used to improve the world instead. Then maybe we would have had heaven here on earth instead.

“Imagine if all that energy had been used for science, arts and music. OK, there have been many Christians who have devoted their life to that, but imagine how wonderful things they would have been able to do if they hadn't wasted their time on prayers and rituals. Imagine what Pascal could have done for mathematics and physics if he hadn't left science for God.

“Considering what religious belief has done to the world, it would be better if there was no religion. Religion is like a virus that changes people's minds into dogmatic thinking, rule following, and blind faith, qualities which do no good for the well-being of mankind. Consider how many people who have been burned, mutilated and tortured in the name of religion. Wouldn't it be better if we left the Dark Ages for once!?

“The process of belief is not a bet, not based on hope for reward or fear of punishment. Normally you believe in something your senses tells you is likely to be true. No intelligent person would be convinced that god exists from Pascal's wager, and I question that this argument really was the reason why a genius like Pascal believed in god. I rather see it that he had lost the basis for his faith and that Pascal's wager was the last thread to keep him hanging on to Christianity.

“Pascal thought that theism and atheism were equally likely - that is, we cannot know which of the philosophies is correct. This is non-information, and, according to information theory, it is impossible to get information from non-information without any cost. Therefore it is impossible to conclude, from the assumption, that theists will gain more than atheists and the statement that if god exists you gain from believing in him must also be an assumption - not a conclusion. So what Pascal's wager basically says that ‘If you believe in God, you will believe that you gain from worshipping him.’ Not a very convincing argument for atheists.

“The Christian god is supposed to be omnipotent. If so, he will know who are the true believers and who worship him only to be on the safe side. Therefore it is not likely that a person who worships God because of Pascal's wager will go to heaven. This is sometimes called the Atheist version of Pascal’s wager, since it says atheists will be better rewarded than theist hypocrites, and thus if you do not believe in god, you shouldn't lie and say you do.

“Now if there is a god, and he is just, he would not send kind atheists to hell only because they can't believe in him. A just god judges people for who they are, not for what their minds tell them is likely to be true or not. Therefore a just god would still save atheists if they were good people.

“Like someone once said, ‘I would love to go to hell and meet people such as Einstein, Darwin, Russell and Voltaire.’ Is it really likely that these people were sent to hell, only because their great minds didn't find any evidence of the Christian god? In that case the word ‘just’ is not applicable to god, and such a god is not even worth worshipping. To worship such a god would be like worshiping your worst enemy because you were afraid of his revenge if you didn't submit to his power.

“I don't think there is an agenda in Christianity that you are being rewarded for mere worshipping god. I think it is far more common among theists to believe that god rewards you for what you really are. In other words, God won't reward you for helping people if you do it only to please God, but he will if you do it out of compassion. Therefore it is quite likely that false people, who only worship god because they fear hell, or because they think it is the bet that gives the most gain, will go to hell. So believing in god and being a bad person will be as bad as being an atheist, if not worse because God mightn't like being surrounded for eternity by cringing hypocrites.

“The original version of Pascal's wager fails to handle probabilities, since it states that both theism and atheism are equally reasonable. The problem with that approach is, as stated above, that it makes information out of no information, and hence is invalid as an argument. For the argument to be valid you will have to consider the probabilities of theism being right and the loss/gain from holding a religion.

“In order to convince an atheist, with Pascal's wager, theists need to convince him that there probably is some supernatural force, and that that supernatural force probably doesn't treat atheists the same as people of his religion, that that supernatural force probably doesn't treat people of his religion worse than atheists, and that either the probability of theism being right or theists reward is high enough to overcome the cost of following his religion in this life.

“Pascal's wager alone just doesn't cut it - you need to provide evidence of the supernatural, and reasons to think that the supernatural significantly rewards people of your religion, if you really want to convince people with the Pascal's wager logic.�

References:

Anders Aspegren, Finns Gud?, Human-Etiska Förbundets småskrift Nr 14

Kunskapens bok (a swedish encyclopedia from the 60:s)

An E-mail posted to alt.atheism, by Abner J Mintz

Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith - From preacher to atheist

Links:

Voltaire's notes

Invisible Pink Unicorns FAQ



Your conclusion is not valid because it is based only upon what you believe you know about planet earth. Alien beings might be making similar arguments regarding their religious beliefs.

It is interesting to note that there is not any credible evidence at all that the God of the Bible ever claimed that he created the universe, or even that he claimed that he was a God.

Rhutchin, in your opinion, what makes the God of the Bible’s authority legitimate?

rhutchin

OK. You can say something to the effect that, "I have faith that the Christian God does not exist (i.e., I believe that it is possible for there to be an advanced alien, a pink unicorn, or no God at all)." You can frame the argument for rejecting the premise that the Christian God exists and accepting the premise that the Christian God does not exist in any way that you want. It still breaks down to an analysis as described by Pascal. You can accept the premise that the Christian God exists and be right/wrong or you can accept the premise that the Christian God does not exist and be right/wrong. Pascal's analysis basically argues that one would not be justified in believing that God does not exist because the potential for loss is greater than that loss one might incur in believing that God exists and being wrong. Given the information available to a person concerning the existence of God (encompassed primarily by the Bible) and that information on other gods, pink unicorns, advanced aliens, or in support of the no God position, Pascal's analysis leads a person to the conclusion that one should logically decide to believe in God.

What you are essentially throwing out on the table is the potential for new information. If an advanced alien were to appear (or someone claiming to provide new information relevant to the issue - a Mohammed, a Joseph Smith, etc.), then we would take that new information and incorporate it into the analytical framework proposed by Pascal and see if it generates a new conclusion. At this point in time, with the information currently available to a person, Pascal's Wager leads the person to the conclsuion that the logical course of action is to believe in God.

rhutchin

When you state that it is impossible to investigate Point 2, I think you mean that you do not have as much information as you might want to have regarding Point 2 (e.g., you want to know if advanced aliens exist). As I mentioned in another response, Pascal's Wager takes the information available to a person at a point in time (i.e., right now) and works through a risk analysis based on that information. If one were then able to investigate further the possibility of Point 2 being valid and produce new information, then one could then re-run Pascal's analysis using the new information.

I agree with you that the intuition of skeptics is most certainly as valid as anyone else's intuition. That can be factored into Pascal's analysis. I don't see that it changes the outcome of that analysis.