Very good! The engineer in me likes to frame the following corollary:
If a believer is wrong, she will never know.
If a believer is right, she will reap a great eternal reward.
If an unbeliever is right, he will never know.
If an unbeliever is wrong, he will reap a great eternal disaster.
Now, assign whatever probabilities you like to the proposition of who is right or wrong...
Then compute the expected value of taking one of these positions.
For the believer it is always positive.
For the unbeliever it is always negative.
The problems with this line of logic is as follows:
First it contains a fundamental assumption that the God of the believer cares what the believer believes. It's possible there's a God, and that God doesn't care one whit about what humans "believe". So, it's not necessarily true that "if the unbeliever is wrong, he will reap a great eternal disaster."
Second, Pascal's wager suggests only that it's rational to believe in God, but it's incapable of advising us as to which God to believe. As you noted in one of your comments above, many religions made contradictory claims about God and the requirements for gaining salvation/nirvana/heaven. Even among those that require certain "beliefs", the exact nature of the required belief is disputed.
So, even if I were to conclude that believing in "God" had the most upside and least downside, which one should I accept? My chances of picking the right one by luck, or by divine inspiration, are pretty minimal once we consider all religions and not just the most popular ones.
Pascal's wager suggests only that one should believe in a God
Yes. I understand that all but one religion is a false religion and that false religions do their best to imitate true religions. The existence of 1000 counterfeits says nothing about the validity of the One.
Besides, the Pascal point is between Atheism and the Most Credible Religion. You still have to do your own homework to figure out which One that is. I view the Pascal point as an argument that everyone should do that homework, since Atheism is a dead end. No pun intended.
God is, or God is not. Reason cannot decide between the two alternatives.
A Game is being played... where heads or tails will turn up.
You must wager (it is not optional).
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. (...) There is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite. And so our proposition is of infinite force, when there is the finite to stake in a game where there are equal risks of gain and of loss, and the infinite to gain.
But some cannot believe. They should then 'at least learn your inability to believe...' and 'Endeavour then to convince' themselves.
Very good! The engineer in me likes to frame the following corollary:
If a believer is wrong, she will never know.
If a believer is right, she will reap a great eternal reward.
If an unbeliever is right, he will never know.
If an unbeliever is wrong, he will reap a great eternal disaster.
Now, assign whatever probabilities you like to the proposition of who is right or wrong...
Then compute the expected value of taking one of these positions.
For the believer it is always positive.
For the unbeliever it is always negative.
The problems with this line of logic is as follows:
First it contains a fundamental assumption that the God of the believer cares what the believer believes. It's possible there's a God, and that God doesn't care one whit about what humans "believe". So, it's not necessarily true that "if the unbeliever is wrong, he will reap a great eternal disaster."
Second, Pascal's wager suggests only that it's rational to believe in God, but it's incapable of advising us as to which God to believe. As you noted in one of your comments above, many religions made contradictory claims about God and the requirements for gaining salvation/nirvana/heaven. Even among those that require certain "beliefs", the exact nature of the required belief is disputed.
So, even if I were to conclude that believing in "God" had the most upside and least downside, which one should I accept? My chances of picking the right one by luck, or by divine inspiration, are pretty minimal once we consider all religions and not just the most popular ones.
Pascal's wager suggests only that one should believe in a God
Agreed. I wrote almost exactly that in response to your other post, before I saw this one.
You both make some good points, and there is nothing bad against belief...
Belief is good and thats what Pascal says.
I just thik that a person should, at the end of the day, relay on his own sences to undersantd his own feeling to feel the entity he beliefs
A biliver of whom thought )))
You must see that what Pascal is hsowing is the fact that each religion is saying this
Yes. I understand that all but one religion is a false religion and that false religions do their best to imitate true religions. The existence of 1000 counterfeits says nothing about the validity of the One.
Besides, the Pascal point is between Atheism and the Most Credible Religion. You still have to do your own homework to figure out which One that is. I view the Pascal point as an argument that everyone should do that homework, since Atheism is a dead end. No pun intended.
For the convenience of the readers of this thread:
Pascal's Wager uses the following logic: