Pascal's wager

Thought on Pascal's wager?

I'd say this is a very open topic, but to sum it up:

- Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, philosopher... Basically prodigy
- Pascal's triangle can be attributed towards the concept of the binomial expansion theorem
- Helped devise properties of fluids
- Developed theories on possibility/probability
- He believed God was a 50/50 chance, so if he chose to have faith he would gain everything and lose nothing if there was a god, and lose nothing and gain nothing if there wasn't. He basically figured that the benefit of believing in a God outweighed the benefit of not.

 

Apologetics is an interesting subject, though the only problem is that you are trying to quantify and rectify something of an illogical basis with logic which will be impossible. While I do agree with some points of Pascal's wager, if presented with the option of being theist and the possibility of gaining infinite happiness and being generally good morally, or the possibility of gaining infinite sorry and not have a real moral basis if you choose not to be a theist; the theist is an obviously better answer, but the question is that simple. You have to factor in all of the major religions and what God is correct?

 

Sorry, I don't know how that subject erupted on the other thread -_-

But if it is 50/50 chance, then you are nonetheless either winning, losing, or gaining/losing nothing.

You have to also take into account that reasoning does not fall into this factor of probability, and it is essentially a flip of a coin.

 

If it was a simple question of statistics of course it would be better to be a theist if you are offered all of these bonuses with no negatives, but it is not a question of statistics.

 

Hence there is no reasoning involved other than the factor of chance, in chance there is no reason if it is a 50% chance of either or, with unknown conditions set as the constant.

 

Making an argument on this subject all but useless.

 

Ah yes, an argument is useless, but it is open for discussion, and nonetheless, there is only one obvious answer, no matter if in belief or no belief.

For example, Pascal's faith was not based on faith, but rather probability, so is this his own fault in belief? So he is rather doubtful, but choosing better of the two of which he is not sure of, therefore negating his true belief?

 

It may make an interesting quotation, but it's poor logic. First of all, the existence of god is not a 50/50 chance. Yes, there are only two outcomes - either God exists or he doesn't exist - but the outcomes are not equally likely, since the probability of His existence is affected by the information we have on psychology and religion. (Ie, I doubt Pascal would say the existence of Bigfoot was a 50/50 chance, since there are so many reasons to doubt it: the fact that there's no fossil record of one, that footage always happens to be extremely blurry, that a giant monkey is kind of hard to miss, etc.)

Not only is there an error in the probability of God's existence, but also in the payoffs of believing or not believing.

What is really gained from believing in God? Yes, the possibility of a better afterlife, but also a source of meaning in life, a way to get through difficult situations, etc.

What is gained by not believing in God? Greater freedom in your own actions and morals, time saved from not observing religious obligations, etc.

In order to decide which is better, you'd have to place a value on the pros and cons of each, and then weight them according to probability.

 

I like the way you put it.
Pascal himself said that in wagering for god, it is not an option and that you must wager.
In the above statement, you are referring to the chances as "maybe god if I roll a die of six" or "maybe a god if my burger turns into a cat", and so on, which in actuality, anything could be a chance, and everything, in complete theory, has a chance for anything. However, this is the "wager" that Pascal referred to as the belief in which a person held onto(the chance of their belief being right or wrong).

While the concept of bigfoot and god remain one in the same, they differ on a different note; God remains a possibility put together only, and only, with the belief of no god.

You either pull an apple and a poisonous spider out of the bag with gloves or no gloves or simple no apple and no poisonous spider with or without gloves,

This purely only has to do with death; and therefore it is only a 50/50 chance due to the fact that God either is or isn't, therefore religion is or isn't, so we get rewarded/punished or nothing at all. We are, in the end left with three main points of win&believe=1, lose&disbelieve=-1, or nothing&believe/disbelieve=0. 1+-1=0, -1+0=-1

Rationality may not set God as a defined probability, but rationality does permit us to set an estimated probability from information we know of simply based off of belief/disbelief.

So, with our knowledge set at people on Earth believe & people on Earth disbelieve,we conclude that people on Earth either are in a religion or are not associated with a religion, so it is fair to say that either one or the other is right due to zero knowledge of after-death and logic vs. faith.

We cannot say that conventional logic applies to the afterlife, so there either is or isn't a God to say the least only, and only when looking at death.

So does that make it a fair game to say that I do not believe in God or that I do believe in God based off of the "database" of nothing other than perceived illogical statements and limited logical statements?

I cannot give a conclusion to that, but Pascal himself, I'm quite sure, has either figured out if he was right, but he'll never figure out if he was rwong if he was wrong

 

Pascal's wager was ultimately a false dilemma fallacy. He never factored in the possibility of an infinite number of Gods. Also, God being omniscient would know that you were a coward and a fraudulent believer.

Pascal's wager should not be taken seriously.

 

Quite the contrary; as I previously stated, the 1/x chance of choosing the correct religion, and then you can assume, if correct, that religions within the closest proximity to the "priority shipping to any form of a beneficial afterlife" religion may be included based off of the overall idea of a God.

And it was already stated that Pascal may have been a hollowed-out devotee towards faith because of the fact that he based his faith by a doubting mindset.

Now let us remove the idea & fact of an irrational number as our probability(we don't know, so therefore we are weighing known finite information by a possible infinite situation, note "possible"). Let us assume that we are taking into consideration that the chances of a higher power are minimal because of what we know(though this is impossible to determine as irrationality cannot be reasoned, but rationality still allows for such possibility). Even under the assumption that God’s existence is unlikely, the potential benefits of believing are so vast as to make betting on theism rational.

 

Pascal's wager is a poor attempt to rationalize otherwise irrational actions. The first that need be asked is this: why would a god who created man with rational facilities reward only those who believe without reason?

 

How can you assume that?

Doesn't mean anything to his argument.

No, let us not remove facts.

I love how you keep using the word 'assume'. Nevertheless, the evidence supports the existence of God is as strong as the evidence for the existence of invisible horses.

O, I know a perfect comparison to draw! Even under the assumption that winning the lottery is unlikely, the potential benefits of buying a lottery ticket are so vast as to make betting on the lottery rational.

The ultimate problem you have failed to address is the fact that this argument is a false dilemma. You can argue the validity of the premises as much as you want, the argument is unsound.

 

Yeah, it sounds good when you spin it in the direction of religion and when you say that religion has all these nice things to offer, but in reality it isn't that simple. The odds are nowhere near 50%, in fact I'd say the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of there being no God. Simply because there are two possible outcomes does not mean that there is an equal chance of the two outcomes occurring.

If I were to jump off of a cliff into a canyon 500 feet below me, there are pretty much two possible outcomes:

1) I fall to my death.
OR
2) I miraculously survive, most likely badly injured.

Knowing what we know about the force required to kill a human being, the odds are in overwhelming favor of me being killed on impact or shortly thereafter. This same logic applies to the God argument. What do we know about God? Virtually nothing, there is absolutely zero concrete evidence of his existence. Are we supposed to rely on a holy book that was written by a group of people who understood far less about how the world works? Better yet, most of which were not even written about until YEARS after the occasion supposedly took place. Ask any cop -- eye witness reports are VERY unreliable. Out of a group of 10 people who witness a crime, there will be like 7 different recollections of what took place. So if you're trying to tell me that I should take hand-me-down reports from a relatively unintelligent group of individuals as evidence of God's existence, I think you ought to rethink your strategy for debate.

Also, completely ignore the concept of an afterlife for a second and try to imagine how life would be different without religion. Ask yourself what would honestly be different. Do you NEED religion to keep you a good, moral person? If so, you were only moral out of fear of being smitten. This is not a fault of non-religion. Do you NEED religion to have a congregation of family and friends? If so, it is your own fault or the fault of others involved, not of non-religion.

I have lived without religion for like 10 years and I still enjoy my life to the fullest. There is not one single thing offered by religion that cannot be found in non-religion. To think that some God would pay some sort of special attention to a small planet occupying such a small space/time in the grand scheme of things is nothing short of selfish.

edit: Keep in mind, we're talking pure statistics here. Statistics rely on fact and tangible evidence. One may have an immense amount of faith that what is portrayed in the aforementioned holy books is the accurate description of what happened and that God does exist, but it does not mean anything in the context of this discussion.

 

Above is true, however, that cliff never had a point of view that had been passed down from many generations, and this is where the argument stops. I cannot argue to this, I conceit. I suppose this becomes inarguable to the extent of my relative belief.

 

If you think that passing something down through the generations is supposed to strengthen your argument/objective then you have failed miserably. See above, most of the books we consider "holy" were detailed from eye witness accounts passed down usually years after the event took place. Ask ANY cop how reliable eye witness testimony is... if a group of people witness an accident/crime almost everybody will have an entire different story to tell... and that's directly following the incident. As said previously, most of the stories in common holy books such as the Bible were not written down until years after the event took place and have been translated "x" number of times, most likely with the original meaning being completely taken out of context. What you think you know is most likely not at all even remotely similar to actuality. The cliff example was actually my way of giving you the benefit of the doubt, I honestly can't think of a bad enough example to use to accurately simulate your misplaced view on religion.

 

This idea fails. By Pascal's logic, there is a 50/50 chance that there is a big, purple unicorn in the room next to me, and therefore I must remain agnostic on that position. Furthermore, there indeed is a loss with the religion thing. Religion derives one's sexual desires, oppresses them to dogmatic laws, and has many other harmful effects. Also, what if you choose the wrong God? There's about 5 major religions I can think of right now, but what if that's wrong? What if Apollo is the true God? There are too many unincorporated factors.