Technos

I've been very close to death twice. One time I was unconscious, and the other time I was thinking both "I've had a good run" and "Damn this straight board is hurting my back" but the thought of an afterlife never crossed my mind. Maybe it's because I wasn't raised as or by theist?

Tercel

I don't consider this a rehash of Pascal's Wager since most of the articles dealing with "Pascal's Wager" in the II Library either present a version that I would reject and proceed to tear that to pieces and/or present valid criticisms of Pascal's Wager that do not seem to apply to the question of belief in the afterlife and/or engage in various fallacies. (Often all 3 in one article)
eg Writer@Large's point that there are other religions is completely irrelevant. (Why does it take a biased anti-Christian "freethinker" to confuse generic belief in an afterlife with Christianity?)

I'm a very experienced poster: I know the standard objections with Pascal's Wager so I don't need them repeated parrot-like at me as if I'm new. (Repeating them doesn't make them any more sound either) I can appreciate the ban on Pascal's Wager is there in an attempt to stop every crazed fundamentalist from doing a drive-by "Believe in God or else you'll burn!" post. However it's surely not to much to allow the actual long-term posters one thread now and then to seriously discuss the topic?
(Unless -as I suspect- part of the reason for the ban on Pascal's Wager is to attempt to avoid discussion of a very valid argument for belief)


Now, back to the point. Most of the (valid) standard complaints against Pascal's Wager (ie other religions) don't seem to apply to a basic question of a working assumption of the existence of an afterlife. Nobody's going to argue that Game Theory itself is wrong I hope. So surely (okay I've been here long enough to know not to expect reasonableness, but I can hope) it can be appreciated that such an argument might have some merit - however distantly it might be related to the infamous Pascal's Wager.

BD-from-kg has made the typical, if predictable, anti-Pascal's Wager type suggestion that there might exist some sort of God that does nasty things to people who believe this sort of argument. But this is irrelevant of course: since there is no reason at all to think this to be the case there is an equally chance that the deity might do equally nice things to people who believe this sort of argument. We can invent possibilities all we like, but they'll be balanced by equal and opposite possibilities.
The argument itself is valid however because we are left with the one unbalenced probability that experience indicates that correctly believing the truth is benificial (when one is alive to benifit from it of course). And hence induction suggests the working assumption of an afterlife to be a good one.

Oh and BD, if God really wants be to use my mind and likes a good argument then he'll probably say "Wow I was really impressed by that terrific argument you came up with. If I wasn't omniscient I'd have never have thought of it myself!"

Oh and BD, I already have a working assumption that the physical world exists (I can't get any evidence for it of course, it could equally be a dream or a Matrix) based on similar Game theory logic (pleasure and pain being the inducements), so if God's going to be mad at me for accepting this type of argument then he's already mad at me.

How on earth 99Percent manages to think that the idea that "everything that humankind achieved and is won't be absolutely forgotten and as if it had never been in a few quintillion years" somehow "debases and denigrates" life, I really don't know... But the logic of it seems to be way beyond me.

Jobar, does "arguing for a different thing" or "making it sound" count as "doing something novel with it"?

lcb

excellent question.
i'll keep it very simple though. lets forget about pascal for a moment. Lets talk about "risk averse Lorenz" strategy: l.game player (GP) wants to play to win desirable things, but also wants to avoid the worse case scenario of the game.
2. lets play green light/red light God/no God: GP looks at the game board, Gp knows he doesnt have "perfect knowledge" of God/no God...but he does know that on the board "God" is represented by several possible analogs loosely grouped into "religions"..
3. GP studies the religions, he sees that most of the religions' worst case scenarios can be avoided by doing good works and refraining from abject evil (Hinduism, Islam,Budhism ,Deism,etc), but then he studies Christianity, Christianity requires accepting Jesus Christ as savior, to avoid the worse case scenario.
4. So Gp determines that he can manuever through the game board(life) and gain things he desires, while doing good works and refraining from abject evil and accepting Jesus Christ as savior, thus avoiding all the worst case scenarios with the possible exception of "outland" ones such as (RA, the Egyptian Sun God who requires sacrifice of an umblemished cat to get into Ra heaven and avoid RA hell..etc)....
5. with this strategy, GP has maximized his chances of getting desirable things, while minimizing his chances of getting the worse case scenario...within the level of knowledge he has of the game, and "amortizes" his risk of unknown consequences in that "set" of consequences only an entity with "perfect knowledge" could know.

Writer@Large

Why not? Blaise Pascal:

"Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then without hesitation that he is."

Tercel:

"So if there is nothing to be gained from disbelief in the afterlife (you won't even know you were right), nothing to be lost by belief in the afterlife (after all you won't even know you were wrong), and quite possibly something to be gained by correctly believing there is an afterlife:

Then who on earth (who wasn't insane) would live their life without the working assumption of the existence of the afterlife? "

Other than the fact that you're dressing up the Wager into Game Theory, and trading "God" for "afterlife," it seems to be the same argument.

It is entirely relevant. If all you're advocating is "generic belief," what's the point? What good does believing in a generic afterlife do? What do I gain?

Besides: name a single religion that will let you into their brand of Heaven with "generic belief." If I'm going to waste my time believing in a generic afterlife, why waste my time at all? How does that gain me?

The answer, of course, is that I would have to pick one. And it's Pascal's flawed Wager all over again, because one I follow the logic of your "game theory" Wager to its conclusion, I am faced with the choice of HUNDREDS of possible afterlives.

No the ban is to avoid beating dead arguments into the ground that have been rehashed over, and over, and over, and over.

No, but it can certainly be overdone. After slogging through Robert Wright's Nonzero, believe me, it can be waaaaayyyy overdone. And as I've already pointed out, belief in a "generic afterlife" is NOT beneficial, from a game theory standpoint.

Okay, so I believe in a generic happy-place. What do I have to do to get there? What do I have to avoid to keep my ticket in? Who's in charge? How does belief in a generic happy death place positively affect my life NOW?

--W@L

Vorkosigan

3. GP studies the religions, he sees that most of the religions' worst case scenarios can be avoided by doing good works and refraining from abject evil (Hinduism, Islam,Budhism ,Deism,etc), but then he studies Christianity, Christianity requires accepting Jesus Christ as savior, to avoid the worse case scenario.

Alas, this won't work, for in many Asian religions, including some strains of Hinduism and Chinese Buddhism, Jesus and Jehovah are considered demons and thus, your acceptance of them would constitute demon-worship, definitely not a meritorious act. There's a lesson: you can't be good and accept Christ as your savior. It's one or the other.

Vorkosigan

tergiversant

Let me see if I understand the argument correctly:

1) There is nothing to be gained from disbelief in the afterlife.

2) There is nothing to be lost by belief in the afterlife.

3) There may be something to be gained by correctly believing there is an afterlife...

4) :. It is in one's interest to believe in an afterlife.

Assuming a game theoretic perspective on how we act in our own best interest, it would seem that the conclusion (4) follows from the premises (1-3).

Now, let us look at the premises themselves:

Re: (1)
From disbelief in an afterlife, one may gain many things, e.g. intellecutal integrity, cessation of pulpit-induced nightmares resembling a movie version of Dante's Inferno.

Re: (2)
Such things as these may be easily lost by belief in (some particular) afterlife, not to mention a host of other enjoyable activities which may be labelled as "sinful" by whomever one believes will be running the afterlife, e.g. masturbation, poker, dancing, and alcohol.

Re: (3)
The third premise assumes that there is something to be gained by believing there in the generalized concept of an afterlife, whereas no religious worldview of which I am aware conditions "salvation" upon such a belief.

Finally, even if conclusion (4) were true, it would not imply Tercel's stated conclusion, that
is, that one would be insane to live their life without belief in the afterlife. Merely because it is in one's best interest to believe something does not mean that one may choose to do so.

[ August 18, 2002: Message edited by: tergiversant ]</p>

Vorkosigan

[b]So if there is nothing to be gained from disbelief in the afterlife (you won't even know you were right), nothing to be lost by belief in the afterlife (after all you won't even know you were wrong), and quite possibly something to be gained by correctly believing there is an afterlife:[\b]

As other posters have noted, it is just Pascal repackaged.

(1) Your position says nothing about what kind of afterlife one is supposed to expect; judging from our lives on earth, it may well be one in which there is a great deal of suffering.

(2) No religion I know claims belief in the afterlife alone is enough; all mandate certain behaviors, ranging from restrictions on who one can get off with to wearing the right undergarments to lcb's quaint reminder about cats and Ra, to having a personal relationship with mythical saviors. So on the face of it, there is nothing to suggest unaccompanied belief will be efficacious in this regard.

(3) Since nearly all belief systems oppose each other and unbelievers, belief may have consequences for the earthly life, not only for oneself, but for one's children. One need only consider the abuse leveled at atheists and non-Christians by Xtians in the States to understand this point. I should not like my son to get his ass kicked by the children of facist Christians because his father elected to become a Buddhist. This is not an idle question for me either; my son goes to missionary school here, as do the children of several local atheists and non-Christians I know. Thus, your idea that a belief could have no consequences is false.

Vorkosigan

PS How have your explorations of Orthodoxy been coming?

Thomas Metcalf

I would not be happier if I believed in an afterlife, because I would feel as if I were lying to myself. So no, it would not benefit me. I have a feeling this is the case for many naturalists here.

Kantian

That one could access the afterlife by a mere psychological trick, which is the easiest of all activities, indicates the utter depravity of Christendom, that to be a christian all one has to do is to "accept Jesus Christ as the Lord Savior."

Rather, to be a Christian ought to be Jesus Christ, or specifically, share a similar instinct, outlook, mindset, characteristics, inclinations, etc, and walk the walk. Since this is nearly impossible for all but select few, this leads me to the conjecture that there are no true Christians today.

A mere psychological trick is the reason why there are so many phony, hypocritical Christians, and a main reason why i am inclined to believe that a person can be a "Christian" and not necessarily believe that Jesus was the Son of God.

[ August 18, 2002: Message edited by: Immanuel Kant ]</p>

Devilnaut

Why do you say things like this?

His "biased anti-christian "freethinking" "point was that christian tenets preclude anyone without full devotion to Jesus Christ from receiving the reward of eternal salvation. Were you not aware of that? Or was there a different reason you refused to deal with his actual point?

edit to remove my hasty assumption

[ August 18, 2002: Message edited by: Devilnaut ]</p>