Pascal's Wager: A Perspective

[atheistcatman]

Pascal's Wager a Perspective

Pascal's wager was conceived by mathematician Blaise Pascal. It in a nut shell says believe in God and you have nothing to worry about, do not believe and face eternal damnation. The problem I see with this is which God can you believe in the first place, if you were born in India you would believe in the many Hindu deities, if you were born in Saudi Arabia, you would believe in the Islamic form of God, if you were born in the west you would more than likely be led to believe in the Judeo/Christian God.
Another problem I have is this throws all intelligence and freethinking out the window. It instills you to say, hey I don't believe in the supernatural, but I am going to throw all common sense out the window and prostate my, self before a deity that cannot be proven, and anyone with a rational mind would not believe most of the claims and so called miracles in the Bible texts of Christianity.

here my youtube version of this post please comment on the video too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1_rgMGPEqI&context=C4b57113ADvjVQa1PpcFPhIH3-2bjIRR6JEIuVgFOA7-RXOXo9vrs=

 

[Inferno]

I'll reply when sober, but my thoughts can be found in my blog post and the debate thread with me in it, "Bible vs Atheism", which can be found in the blog post.

 

[Dogma's Demise]

This argument can be turned against itself. It is entirely conceivable that if a god exists he will send all non-atheists to Hell. This statement has about as much credible evidence as the statement that non-Christians will go to Hell. (i.e. none)

 

[Frenger]

How can you force yourself to believe anything? It's not that simple. If you hold a gun to my head and tell me to say the sky is green I will probably say it, but I won't believe it, and if it IS an all knowing god, how are we supposed to fool him/her into believing that we believe?

 

[CosmicJoghurt]

You either believe or you don't. You can't force yourself to believe in anything, an almighty god would pick up on you lying and send you to eternal hell.

 

[scienceguy8888]

well he used a mathematical "equation" to prove his point but i can do the same here goes:
Pascal's premise (all probability the same)
1) believe in god, and god exists = good outcome (1)
2) believe in god, and no god exists = who cares (0)
3) athiest and no god = bad outcome (-1)
4) athiest and no god = who cares (0)

my addition
1) believe in wrong god, and god exists = bad outcome (-1)

now lets do the equation with just the abrahamic religeons

if you don't believe, theres only a 50% chance nothing happens, and a 50% you go to hell
if you do believe, there is a 50% chance nothing happens, 17%chance you go to heaven and 33% chance you go to hell
not bad for the thiest

but then add the other religieons and quickly the chances to go to heaven start approaching 0

then add other clauses (like being sin free or dieing in battle)
and the chance of actually getting to heaven is 0% or there abouts where as athiests actually start getting 1~2% chance (hey not all religeons say you need to believe to go to heaven)

then you can factor in the harm done by being religeous in the equation and things look very different
1) you believe there is a god and there is = +1
2) you believe there isn't a god and there isn't = -2 (since it affects more than one person over many generations)
3) you don't belive and there is a god = -1
4) you don't believe and there isn't = +2 (since strong concentration on science will bring prosperity, health ect to many ppl over many generations)
then you are looking at a reversed Pascal's Wager

 

[BlackLight]

Hitchens's point on this was that Pascal is specifically addressing "those who are so made that they cannot believe," and he's essentially advocating that these people fake it. And Hitch's point was to question whether such a God is worthy of worship that he's so dumb or egotistical as to let disingenuous pseudo-believers into heaven.

 

[atheistcatman]

@blacklight

I think Hitchens was 100 percent right on this subject. Also Dawkins made some good points on this in the god delusion.

 

[Gila Guerilla]

You either believe or you don't. You can't force yourself to believe in anything, an almighty god would pick up on you lying and send you to eternal hell.

I think that you can irrationally say that you are going to start believing - mainly because you want to. I think the religious would call it: 'Opening your heart!'

Then you indulge in a process of indoctrination and self-indoctrination which over time leads you to believe in "God" - you convince yourself. This process would be helped by going to church, synagogue, temple or mosque. Praying may help, but you'd need to be irrational about any failures, or rationalise failures in some way. Once on the path, you can adopt confirmation bias.

I suppose that this is not forcing yourself to believe, but being willing to let your mind go from a state of unbelief or uncertainty, to a state of belief, over time.

Some people claim to have an epiphany, but I'm not convinced by them, in that they are probably prejudiced in favour of the meaning of said epiphany before it occurs. Such epiphanies are in the heads of those who claim to experience them, and I have found them not open to investigation in a rational and scientific manner. Basically the person says: "I know what I experienced, and that's that."

Pascal's wager sets up a dichotomy, which is founded on the acceptance or rejection of a particular god, with a particular set of properties. As a philosophical tool I find it unsatisfactory, because of all the equally unlikely, alternative logical possibilities which it ignores.

 

[Gila Guerilla]

You either believe or you don't. You can't force yourself to believe in anything, an almighty god would pick up on you lying and send you to eternal hell.

I think that you can irrationally say that you are going to start believing - mainly because you want to. I think the religious would call it: 'Opening your heart!'

Then you indulge in a process of indoctrination and self-indoctrination which over time leads you to believe in "God" - you convince yourself. This process would be helped by going to church, synagogue, temple or mosque. Praying may help, but you'd need to be irrational about any failures, or rationalise failures in some way. Once on the path, you can adopt confirmation bias.

I suppose that this is not forcing yourself to believe, but being willing to let your mind go from a state of unbelief or uncertainty, to a state of belief, over time.

Some people claim to have an epiphany, but I'm not convinced by them, in that they are probably prejudiced in favour of the meaning of said epiphany before it occurs. Such epiphanies are in the heads of those who claim to experience them, and I have found them not open to investigation in a rational and scientific manner. Basically the person says: "I know what I experienced, and that's that."

Pascal's wager sets up a dichotomy, which is founded on the acceptance or rejection of a particular god, with a particular set of properties. As a philosophical tool I find it unsatisfactory, because of all the equally unlikely, alternative logical possibilities which it ignores.

 

[nemesiss]

the real problem with pascal's wager, is that it based on just 2 religious viewpoints.
in reality, it would need to take into consideration EVERY religion and cult). only then you would see how flawed it is. and i call this pascal's matrix.

basically it shows how futile it is to choose one religion over another.