Gundulf

While I've never read it from Pascal himself, I understand 'Pascal's Wager' more or less to be something like:

'Might as well believe in / worship God - if you're wrong, you'll never know, but if you're right, you're safe. After all, with the alternative (not believing) - if you're right, you'll be equally clueless, but if you're wrong....'

I've noticed the rather insightful rebuttal to this on this page. I've seen it worded in different ways, but basically, I think it comes down to the observation of Homer Simpson:

"But what if we're going to the wrong church? Every week we're just making God madder and madder...!"


I think this rebuttal works in theory, but I'm curious how well it actually functions in practice - that is:

If Judaism is right, I'm not sure how much I have to worry about - Does present day Judaism promise destruction for me as a Christian? I'm a bit ignorant of this, but from discussions I've had with various Rabbis, I don't believe so.

If Islam is right, I'm pretty much safe as a Christian - I might not get all the virgins, but I am considered part of the group refered to as 'people of the book' in the Koran - so at least I'm not in danger of hell there, either.

If Buddhism is right - well, its atheistic anyway - though there is the possibility in Buddhism of some kind of reincarnation; after all, most Buddhists accept Jesus as a guru of some sort...

If Hinduism is right, well, I just get another chance to try again. Most Hindus I have talked with (granted, hasn't been many) are willing to say that Jesus could well have been an incarnation, etc. Granted, I might be a cow by that point - but I'll probably be a rather apathetic cow....

If Shintoism is right, then I'm more or less not worried about an eternal soul in any tangible way;

There are many others, but most of them don't seem much of a threat to me if I am mistakenly believing in the wrong thing... This is where someone might correct me if I'm glaringly mistaken, of course - I am overgeneralizing.

But, basically, if any of the other world religions is right, I seem to have little to fear after my death for being a Christian. Certainly if atheism is right, I have little to fear after death.

So while the rebuttal to Pascal's wager is significant, I'm not sure how well it functions practically - you have every other religion in the world, seemingly (as I overgeneralize it) suggesting that Jesus is 'a way' to be right with God, and you have Jesus saying he is the 'only way' to be right with God - Still, just playing the odds, it seems like there's still some merit to Pascal's idea...

Now, I await your insightful thoughts.... (Gundulf braces himself for impact.....)

dancer_rnb

Well, don't JWs believe other Christians follow false teachings,
and so will be destroyed on Judgement Day?

And what if God only destroys misbelievers,and considers the claim that
there is a hell blasphemy?

aa5874

Pascal's Wager is obsolete, Heaven is already full.

Wiploc

Pascal's wager assumes that believing in god is safer than not believing in god. That assumption has to be justified by means other than Pascal's wager. It never is justified.

It would make just as much sense to assume that believing in god gets you Hellfire, and not believing gets you heaven. But, if we make that assumption, then, according to Pascal's idiot logic, we should decline to believe in god.

Thus, Pascal's logic works exactly as well in defense of non-belief as it does in defense of belief. Any argument that is no stronger than its opposite is a worthless argument.

crc

RAFH

I believe you have grossly misrepresented most of the religions. Islam for instance, you are an unbeliever, as such, you are toast.

In many of the others, you simply don't exist spiritually so, well, bye-bye.

Actually, your biggest threat are the Abrahamic derivatives, and I think if you really study it, you'll find in Judaism you are not going to heaven because you are not worshiping the Judaic god but rather some cult figure. Within xianity, you face worse fates, many will consider you an unbeliever and thus, BBQ fixings.

In any case, I was a god and found folks chosing their faith on a wager, they'd be toast for sure, even if they were worshiping me, just for their cynicism.

Church Decorator

yes. pascal's wager is stupid on so many levels it hurts my brain.

aa5874

Yes, it's so illogical.

Janus

What RAFH said.

Also, you assume that only the gods that humans believe in might exist. In reality, there's a near infinity of possible gods that might exist. To name one example, for all you know the real God might want His children to be sceptics, and therefore anyone who believes in something on faith, including someone who (by the sheerest luck, since there's no evidence) happens to believe in Him, will suffer in A Really Bad Place for eternity.

It's as if someone were to tell you that a mini blackhole will appear in the exact spot where your head is at the moment in 10 seconds, but fortunately you can avoid death easily by moving one or two steps from where you are. Of course there is no evidence that this will happen, and it's just as likely that the mini blackhole will actually appear in the area where you've just stepped by following the person's advice. Not only that, it's exactly as likely that the black hole will appear anywhere you can possibly move to in the next 10 seconds, whether or not someone has claimed that this is a possibility. Without evidence, nothing you can possibly do can increase your chance of survival, so you might as well choose to not waste your life thinking about it, particularly since you know that the likelihood that any such claim is true is tiny anyway.

fishbulb

What if god is real but he punishes those who believe and rewards those who have the good sense not to, based on sheer lack of evidence?

At any rate, the wager asks us to treat belief as something you can choose to adopt or not, as you see fit. We know it doesn't work like that. You can choose to act as though you believe, but you cannot simply will yourself to believe that something is true; you must be convinced. If you already believe, you can choose to remain willfully ignorant of any evidence that, if you openly evaluated it, might challenge your belief, and you can try to brainwash yourself by simply professing belief over and over again in the hopes that one day you will manage to fool yourself into believing, but that's about as close as you can get to choosing to believe something.

Church Decorator

i always wondered why a god would be angry at those who didn't believe in him. it would be like me being angry at not winning a competition i didn't enter