Pascal's wager backwards

Gmilam's brain athrophies when he engages in philosophical discussion.

 

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aaqucnaona,

Belief in belief is a pointless exercise, and say's nothing about
the nature of Pascals wager.

With ''belief'' comes action, as with non-belief, and action in belief is better than action in non-belief if we are not sure of God's existence.

I guess he's saying in the interest of one's spiritual survival, it is more advantageous to believe than not, because non-belief yields nothing.

IOW, you're not serving your best interests.

Most believers in God aren't ''abortion dr. killer, jihadist, etc, so I guess that's the end of that add campaign. Don't you?

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jan.

 

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I like the OP. But both this wager and the original fail to count for a possibility: what if god exists but gets really pissed if you believe in the wrong god? This way just believing in god to cover your ass isn't enough, you also have to try to pick the correct god, that actually exists.

Now if we account for that, maybe not playing (guessing) is safer than picking the wrong god. If I were god, I would prefer an atheist (logical) to a wrong believer (idiot picked the wrong religion).

 

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So, who said I was a gambler? I find Pascal's wager to be fairly flimsy. IF god is omniscient, THEN she can see through false belief for the sake of covering one's ass.

 

Sure. But the point of the Wager is about what you will do with your life.

 

Hey you arent mad at me anymore! Yay!

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I get it, if you are not an extremist or fundamentalist, belief is better than non-belief. But if you have too much faith - if you get killed [someone insults your god, someone badies about their own god, you become an extremists, etc] and death really is the end, well, fine. But what if you believed in the wrong god and followed the wrong rules and ended up a massive rule-breaker?

I guess this is better -

Than -
Jihadist dies, meets God :

Jihadist - I killed them like you commaned. Now where are my 72 b*tches at?
God - You idiot, you killed my children and followed the wrong deity. Its hell for you.
Jihadist [angry] - OSAMAAAAA!

Ps. lol, dont take this seriously.

 

Why/How would belief [a philosophical stand] effect the life [practical choices]? I mean, we dont need the fear of god to stop us from murdering and raping others, right? Our belief and our choices can be independent.

 

:bugeye: :bugeye: :bugeye:

 

I live the best life I can. I try to treat people the way I want them to treat me - with honesty, respect and compassion. Sometimes I fail.

I do this not because I expect reward in another life, but because it's the right thing to do.

 

Thus the reward you expect is peace of mind (or something like that).

 

Peace of mind is desirable... is it not?

 

Bottomline, you wager that "doing the right thing" will bring you peace of mind.
Perhaps you are even so used to doing so that you don't even notice it.

 

Who said you haven't already laid your money on the table, so to speak?

Probably explains why an "all or nothing attitude" (ie the expectation that if one is religious one begins by performing on the topmost advanced level exemplified by saints etc) isn't advocated in scriptural commentaries.

I take it that if you don't criticize high school physics students for not engineering particle accelerators, you don't have a problem with this general principle.

 

Because the wager defines god as that which none is conceivably greater.

IOW a god that gets really pissed fro one choosing the wrong religion is lesser than a god that doesn't.

 

seconded

 

Innovation also requires faith, since no idea or innovation is fully assembled out of the box, but rather has an uphill battle. The faith gives one the vision to endure. All new innovation takes work and will induce the primitive fear of novelty. If man was meant to fly he would have wings. Those without faith need a sign or something tangible to see or else they get all nervous and upset. Without faith they can't see and tend to strike out in their darkness. The status quo also fears any change they can't control with innovation a wild card, except to the faithful.

Let us apply the Pascal wager to faith in innovation.


1. Innovation exists -

You believe - You live happily, go to the bank.

You dont believe - You live happily abusing the innovators all the way to the end, but you get forgiven since the innovation will still be available to you.

2. Innovation doesn't exist -

You dont believe - Its a non-issue since it was never around before. Man was never intended to fly since he lacks wings.

You believe - If you become a martyr trying to do good for culture, you blow your only chance to live a rich, fulfilling, long life for an idea. The abusive get to you and you give up short of the goal. There is no accountability.

See, pascal's wager cuts both ways - its just not an adequate argument for belief in belief but a way to justify the non accountable abuse.

 

That didn't make sense at all. We are assuming there is only 1 god (or one main god, the boss of the rest, if you will)

 

I think that Pascal has a point in kind of an existentialist sense. If evidence for transcendent things is absent, the agnostic condition in other words, then any decision that we make regarding transcendent things is going to be a 'wager' in some sense. If not a total shot in the dark, it's at least going to be probabilistic.

These kind of arguments do kind of collapse the Christian god together with Satan, don't they? The worse the consequences for disbelief are, the stronger the 'wager' argument would be. So the 'wager' seemingly directs us to choose to believe in the worst, craziest and most evil conception of god possible, since that's the deity whose wrath we would most want to avoid should "he" by chance exist. There's something faintly blasphemous about that.

 

That's how I look at it. It seems to me that if by chance there is a god, and if that god has anything to do with the way the universe is, then presumably that god has given human beings heads and hearts, and wants us to use them. That god has also thrown us into a basically agnostic situation, with no credible and unambiguous evidence of transcendent matters, but with countless competing religions all promising us that they alone possess the one Truth. Just from looking at that existential situation, it seems most likely to me that if there is a god, then that god wants to see us employing our intellectual and ethical sensibilities in the best way that we can.

The 'wager' is coming from a different conceptual place. It's implicitly assuming the god of a particular fideist strand of Christian myth as a given, a god who apparently isn't going to forgive people for sincere disbelief, and who will damn them for it instead. A god who only cares what propositions people say are true, with no interest in all in why they think so, or in the qualities of their decision.

If there aren't any negative consequences for sincerely and intelligently believing in what ultimately turns out to be the wrong thing, then the 'wager' loses all of its force. The more stark the imagined difference in salvational consequences between belief and disbelief in whatever god we are talking about, the more powerful the wager argument seemingly is.

So that's the thing. The 'wager' already presuposes a particular kind of Christian context. If, like myself, somebody wasn't raised in a Christian home, then the whole thing probably seems kind of clueless and wide of the mark, begging too many questions.

 

aaqucnaona,

I tried to stay mad, but you're too funny.

I think he means belief is better than non-belief, period.

Remember my part about belief with action, actual belief, not just pictures floating around your head, choosing the pretty one with all the lights because it matches your new top?

Well through action, one is able to discriminate, because everything is actual.
You grow from your mistakes.
Not holding a thought in your head, pretending to relate to it, meanwhile having contradictory desires, and eventually giving in to them. Because that is who you are at the moment.

I guess like most atheists, you have an atheists view of religion.
A complete lack of personal.

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I'll try my hardest.
I'm clenching my teeth as we speak.

jan.