Blaise Pascal was a mostly brilliant French mathematician who lived in the early 1600s. Among his accomplishments was his research in the principles of hydraulic fluids which some think may have played a part in the invention of the modern toilet. Pascal dealt with what he called “Newtonian fluids” which I think sounds very disgusting.
At one point in his life he had a bizarre mystical experience and hence afterwards decided to abandon scientific subjects such as physics to pursue theology.
One of the fruits of this pursuit was a concept that became known as “Pascal’s Wager.” Pascal’s Wager can be summed up as follows:
If God doesn’t exist and:
If you believe in God:
Not much difference
Else if you don’t:
Not much difference
However, if God exists and:
If you believe in God:
You don’t fry in hell
Else if you don’t:
lather up your body with egg whites and apply breading liberally
Or even more simply it’s all about being wrong:
Tis better to believe and be wrong than to not believe and be wrong.
Pascal’s Flaw (sacreblue)
Poor Pascal. A man who developed some of the first mechanical computing machines over 300 years before the invention of Donky Kong, dropped the ball with his wager.
The problem is that Pascal only considered the possibility of the God of the Bible existing or not existing. What if you are worshipping the wrong god?
You could spend a whole lifetime in Christianity or Judaism only to die and wake up in Islamic hell.
What if the Hindus have it right and because you’ve worshipped the wrong god, you’ve come back as a member of a herd of animals shepherded by a very lonely man?
What if Krishna really exists and you fail to achieve Karma?
What if Taoism is correct and you continue to unknowingly upset the balance of Yin and Yang your whole life?
What if you fail to commit suicide at the right time and miss that all important comet tail ride?
The bottom line is that contrary to what he asserted, there is really no safe bet in Mr. Pascal’s wager.
You haven’t dealt with his reasoning. The bet still stands. You have decided to gamble that God doesn’t exist because it’s all too complicated to find out which is the real God. You can do that. God has given all humans some choices. But you don’t have every choice like living forever on you own terms. The desire to survive is very powerful. The scriptures promise eternal life. Some sneer and some cheer. I tend to think that’s a pretty good deal just from a business sense. It seems worth giving it a long good look. I mean we will spend thousands and much effort on education that beneits us for 40 or 50 years. We don’t know if all that education and work will pay off. We might die on the way to the graduation ceremony. But chances are it will pay off. All of us invest in increasing our chances of surviving comfortably. You buy a better lock hoping to create a little peace of mind. I just want to survive more than you do. Perhaps you have been pre destined not to survive. Or perhaps you have decided through your own thought processes you life isn’t worth all that much. I think as CS Lewis says life is just good enough that we want more of it. So I’m just making a different investment, a different gamble in the game of life than you but we are all gambling. We don’t get the choice to escape that particular game.
Frank
But again you’ve simply ignored “Pascal’s Flaw.”
You are gambling also. As pointed out in “Pascal’s Flaw,” from a logical standpoint there are thousands of different possibilities and you are only covering one.
Funny… i don’t find not believing in God to be a gamble at all…
I find believing in God to be an absurd waste of time and life… i’ll spend my life on what REALLY matters.
That flaw may not be as big as one thinks. Christians will still go to heaven under Islam or Judaism, because they believe in the one true God. (note that Muslims and Jews go to Hell under Christianity)
As for Hindu, Buddhism, Mithra, Krshna and so on, these are all WORKS based religions, so a Christian who is truly following the rules should go to whatever their heaven happens to be because of his lifestyle.
In fact, Christianity is the only religion so specifically based not just on belief, but belief in the specific name of the son, that it stands apart even from the religions out of which it was born (in this case Judaism and Mithra). Some Christians place such an importance on belief that they say you can kill bus loads of children and burn down abortion clinics with the mothers in them and as long as you believe, you go to heaven.
there is, i think, a more fundamental flaw with Pascal’s wager. it assumes that you can reason your way into believing. i don’t think research into the nature of belief systems or reflection on your own experiences in life will support this assumption. Faith, like love, is essentially an emotion, a subconcious and internalized feeling that is not achieved through rational deliberation. Can you reason yourself into love, love of a person regardless of whatever desirable qualities they may posess? i think most people would say no. Love is an acquired feeling, an emotion which develops within you for reasons you can’t fully explain. Faith, similarly, is a part of your belief system the source of which is not clearly understood by religion or science. it is the result of the impingement of many forces, physical, mental, psychological, etc. on an individual. Pascal’s wager is flawed because regardless of how much you might “wish” to believe you cannot will yourself or reason yourself into believing anything.
Mr. Pascal wrote:
«If God doesn’t exist and:
If you believe in God:
Not much difference»
That is not entirely true. If your chosen deity doesn’t exist and if we assume there’s no afterlife, and you choose to believe in Him/Her, that means you will have «wasted» your life trying to live it like a good Christian, or Muslim, or Jew, or whatever. In the afterlife, there will be no difference, because there won’t be any afterlife. But then, our life would be the only life we have, and should an atheist choose to dedicate his or her only life to not only a God, but to a large theistic belief system, it is *wrong* to claim that it would make «not much difference»! Of course, just believing in this deity will not make too much of a difference except for the giving up your entire belief system for a gamble, but most Gods have a set of things you have to do to show respect to this God as well; some require time and money, most require doing drastical changes to one’s principles, many can be interpreted in a hundred different ways (and heck, what if you get it wrong), and all or about all the religions require forfeiting the curiosity every atheist is born with; the curiosity that tells us that instead of taking this information e.g. on how the world rose from God, we should try figuring it out on our own.
I believe that condoms are an important tool in the battle against deadly diseases rising in the world. I believe that gay people are born gay, and I have no problem with the existance of homosexuality at all. I believe that abortion is something very sad, and don’t think I would wish for my girlfriend to go through with one should that situation occur, but I respect that in some situations, it is way better than all other options, and I don’t think of it as murder. I don’t believe that a good and almighty God can exist in a world where so many people and so many children die every day from starvation or diseases or natural disasters. All of these beliefs and disbeliefs are things some Christians would say I needed to give up — or perhaps even worse, ask Jesus for forgiveness for because they make me such a terrible sinner, should I wish to call myself a believer in God. I don’t see how this qualifies as «not much difference».
It amazes me that people of faith have no problem when confronted with someone of an opposing religion who has faith equal to or more then their own. The contradiction never strikes them, nor the major control that geographical disposition has over what faith one becomes.
I have a counterwager (does this word exists?)
If God doesn’t exist and:
If you believe in God:
You´ll waste your life following a set of arbitrary rules that are going to limit your ability to enjoy life, hoping for an non-existent aftherlife.
Else if you don’t:
You´ll live your life free to do as you pleases if it harms no one, and seek your own hapiness and the hapiness of others.
However, if God exists and:
If you believe in God:
You´ll have to follow the rules, but in exchange you won´t burn in hell. Not a bad deal.
Else if you don’t:
If God is really the all-loving and infinetely good being most of religions say it is, he´s not going to send you to hell only for not believing in him if you had been a good person, and tried to do not evil to others.
So, providing you are an ethic person who try never to do evil, and do good whenever you can, not believing in God gets you to not to follow stupid rules, and go to heaven anyway if God is really good.
Of course there is ever the posibility God is not so good and prefers people believing and praising him like a gloryhound, instead of people doing the right thing. But as Maltheists say, I´ll proudly walk into hell before giving any credit to such a bastard.
The Dog.
Dogson, DAMB STRAIGHT!
The problem is, that with all religions there is no clear and concise guide to get into heaven. There also is no clear answer to how much leway God will give you. I would like to ask, why is this? If god wanted you to join him in heaven, woulden’t he tell you what you would need to do, very precisly? Its like we are being set up for failure. Or like trying to play a game to win the most points but you don’t know how many points anything is worth. Nor do you have a clear idea of what you have to do to win. The entire matter of religion is grey area, everything is hazy.
In the long run, a perfect afterlife was implemented into the package of religious benefits of the christian religion to serve two purposes. To give everyone a goal to reach that would be something anyone would want (which would help them get new followers) and to control them, so they could say, HEY you arn’t living right, you need to change this and this and that and give us your money and ONLY THEN can you get into heaven. It is a tool! Like promising someone a raise for good work, except that in this case, you don’t have the athority to give that raise :P
Dogson wrote:
“…Else if you don’t:
You´ll live your life free to do as you pleases if it harms no one, and seek your own hapiness and the hapiness of others.”
I must disagree with you here. First, define your definition of harm? Do you mean physical? If so, I can think of MANY, MANY ways to harm people emotionally, psycologically, mentally, relationally, socially, etc. Thus, my actions directly and significantly affect the lives of others.
If your definition of harm follows the items I mentioned above, then there isn’t much “freedom” in living under this presumption of not believing in God, because I’d be living a mostly moral life.
When you talk about the wager breaking down because of the different religions, you must reevaluate what you are presenting.
With any religion promoting/believing in reincarnation:
- First of all, does your conscience survive the rebirth?
-> If not, what’s the point? You’ll never know in the next life that you previously existed. You’ll know no joy, and you’ll know no pain. So why waste your time trying to do good to be reincarnated in a different form only to no remember anything of the past life/lives?
-> If so, well, I have a bunch of questions.
1. Does this mean you can think and feel and remember everything from a past life?
2. If I return as a roach, do I still have the conscience to know and remember a past life as a human?
3. Can I rationally think and make good decisions in human cognition? If so, why don’t animals act like humans?
4. Here’s a big one: Why don’t I remember my past lives? If it’s because of something I’ve done in the past, I’m again at a point where it doesn’t matter in relation to Pascal’s Wager. If it’s because I’m a new soul, where did I come from, and why should I care what I’ll be next in life? I can always make my way back to being human, right?
My point in the reincarnation scheme is that we ALWAYS have another chance to get it right. In Christianity, as your artical and Pascal’s Wager attend to, there’s only one chance to get it right. So now I’ll buy the Wager even more, and I’ll also play the “What If” game more readily. What if God exists? I’d rather get it wrong the first time in reincarnation and try to get it right the next time, rather than get it wrong the ONLY time in Christianity and go to Hell.
If the only life is now, and I don’t have any recollection of the life afterwards (I’m gone, there is no afterlife, I have ceased to exists), and my actions now only affect life now, then I go back to what was stated above above living my life in a way such that I don’t “harm” others. Well, now I’m back to a moral life.
And for the works based systems, I could ‘achieve’ those standards while living a moral life under God’s law. So I have those covered.
It really does seem to boil back down to Pascal’s Wager. I’ll read more about it and post any changes in my view at that point, but if your summary, Capella, is accurate, then I don’t ‘think’ ;) that I have any changes in my position.
And finally, for those of your speaking of God as being a ‘good’ god or ‘loving’ god…
I will answer this in another post, because this one is already getting quite long.
And finally, for those of your speaking of God as being a ‘good’ god or ‘loving’ god, you must take God in ALL of His character. You can look at ANYTHING in life ignoring some of the attributes of that person/object and expect to see/understand the TRUTH of that object. In the same way, you can’t look at certain characteristics of God and say that is who He is without acknowledging the other characteristics.
Thus, to attend to your question…I appreciate the fact that you (you being inclusive of all who have written about this–I’m not singling out one person) struggle with this. My perspective is that any Christian or non-Christian alike that does not struggle with this question has not taken an honest look at Christianity.
Well, to explain what happens in this world, you must remember two things: 1. What the world started as (the Garden of Eden, a perfect world, a perfect place–FREE OF SIN); and 2. Why it is no longer that way.
Ok, so why is it no longer that way. First of all, you would agree that we can make our own choices, right? If not, well, every time you are faced with a decision, don’t think about. Just make a choice. Who cares, right? You were going to do it anyway, because someone is controlling you, right? Ok, I can get into this later if need be, but yes I’m talking about ‘free will’. You may ask, if God is loving, why did He give us the ability no to choose him? Well, I think someone posting above said it already–you can’t force love, or it’s not the real thing. Do I think God could make us as puppets, controlling our every move, and make us genuinely love Him? Sure, but we could go on and on about that. And I’d be happy to if you want to discuss it, but I would like to get back to the point.
So when we decide to sin, we tell God “Take a hike.” So He does. It’s the tough love that parents often give to their children at some point in their life. Sometimes the best lesson is to let someone learn the hard way. Now, you could say, “Well, so if I sin once, God abandons me?” No, that is not what I’m saying. But I am saying that if you cognitively refuse God, as oppose to accept Him, then why do you think He should still protect you from every little think in life that could cause you harm? That would be God divinely intervening in Your life, and not only that, it would be ALL OF THE TIME.
So, if you sin against God, if you disobey Him, you feel He should treat you like royalty? I don’t buy this. If I disobey my parents, should they buy me a toy? If I break the law, should the government give me a tax break? It makes no sense.
Now, look at the bigger picture. You ask, why do bad things happen to reasonably good people? Because they are not perfect. Because they have sinned against God.
And at another point of the big picture–Why are people born with defects, or why did this happen on no accord of its own. Well, the only thing I can tell you is, we’re not living in the Garden of Eden anymore. Yes, the bible says (in the Old Testimate) that generations to follow us pay for our sins. Why is this fair? I have no clue, other than we (mankind from the very beginning and ever since) have essentially told God to take a hike by sinning against Him.
Ok, what about God the ‘good’ person getting into Heaven, even if they are not perfect. They tried really hard, right? They lived a mostly good life, right? Why can’t they get into Heaven? If God really loved them, He would let them in based on effort, no?
Ah, another good question to wrestle with. But the answer to this one is even more clear–we are sinners. We are NOT perfect. And God cannot be in the presence of sin. He cannot/will not allow sin into Heaven. And without asking for His forgiveness for our sins, we cannot take ourselves (our souls) along with the sin committed against God into His perfect kingdom where no sin exists. We’re not even perfect, yet we feel wronged/hurt/etc. if someone has done something “wrong” to us and does not say “I’m sorry.” Right? How much more so should that be with God?
And, contrary to what someone mentioned in a post above, God does NOT hide the path to Heaven. Jesus says “I am the way, and the truth, and the light. No one can come to the Father except through me.” And then we get into the details of salvation. I would be more than happy to spell that out for you if interested, but I’ll try to stay on topic right now. The point is that it IS clearly stated in the bible.
Also, about God not allowing evil/sin in Heaven, remember (or note) that this is the exact reason God cast out Lucifer (Satan) from Heaven.
I’m sure there was more that I wanted to attend to, but I don’t have time to re-read the posts above right now. I should probably get back to work. ;)
Adam says:
In the long run, a perfect afterlife was implemented into the package of religious benefits of the christian religion to serve two purposes. To give everyone a goal to reach that would be something anyone would want (which would help them get new followers) and to control them, so they could say, HEY you arn’t living right, you need to change this and this and that and give us your money and ONLY THEN can you get into heaven. It is a tool! Like promising someone a raise for good work, except that in this case, you don’t have the athority to give that raise :P
[My reply]
Both of your points don’t really make sense to me. What would be the point of any religion/club/organization/job/etc. if there were no goal. You could say this about EVERY religion out there. And what’s the point of this website, if you point is valid? To education? Well, why does that matter? I’m not getting why your purpose was in stating your first point.
And as for your second point, please read the Gospels before you make a blanket statement as you did. You seem to be characterizing a “church” instead of a relationship with God. You are characterizing a “practice of religion” (and not even correct) as opposed to what the bible actually says. This would be based on acts performed by the individual, and that is not what gets you into Heaven, according to Christianity. The way to Heaven is simple; following a straight path afterwards in TRYING to live your life in such a way is difficult. But that will not KEEP YOU from Heaven, just because you make mistakes or disobey. That may hinder your relationship with God, but not your salvation. We are not perfect. And thus, you must at this point recognize the character traits of God which are Grace, Mercy, and Forgiveness.
So, if reaching the afterlife in Christianity is not bound by our faults/sins, but rather, by us simply asking for forgiveness and accepting Christ, then the afterlife certainly wasn’t made up to “control them … and give us your money.”
In the end, you’re the only one who can decide what you want to believe. On the other hand, current science says that energy can’t be destroyed, only altered. To me that means that when I die, and the electromagnetic field and heat my body creates dissipate, either my consciousness dissipates with it and returns to all the other loose energy swirling around, or what makes me “me” survives. Either way, I’ll be spending my time on Terra trying to live my life well. My philosophy is an odd mix of quantum physics, Wicca, and a Catholic upbringing, but it seems to work for me.
As for the debate about getting to heaven… the Bible says various things, some contradictory, some relatively consistent. It all boils down to is what you believe being Christian means. The Catechism (Catholic text) , if I remember correctly, says that if you were a good person but were never baptised, you have to spend time in purgatory, an invention of the Church in the 14th (? not positive on the date) century. If, like many Protestant churches, you feel that baptism is a symbol of faith and nothing more, your identity as Christian will be very different from the Pope’s idea of his Christian faith.
My advice on it all? Read through the Bible. Don’t skim, don’t take stuff out of context. It leads to misunderstandings. ((Like a favorite of mine, “Everyone is stupid and without knowledge;” –Jeremiah 10:14))
Agh! Sorry, no closing tag. The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible is always good. Apologies.
Ashtara,
I don’t agree about the major religions supporting moral codes of don’t kill and steal.
The Bible for instance has many of it’s major characters killing and stealing, all imagined to be sanctioned and in some cases even joined in by Yahweh/Elohym (god of the bible).
In the Exodus story, Moses gave the 10 commandments and 40 years later these same Israelites conquered Canaan, killed all of it’s inhabitants, and stole their land and all their possessions.
Was it in rebellion to the 10 commandments? No, it was as they were directed to do by their god as the story goes.
As a matter of fact, most wars throughout history have been supported by religions and many of them were caused by religious disputes.
In the case of modern day Christians, they seem to support the invasion of Iraq. So many men, women, and children have died because of this decision which has clearly turned out to be a horendous error.
Also there\’s the invasion of Lebanon by Israel which is killing women and children daily. Christian groups are supporting this bombing.
I personally haven’t been very impressed with this sort of morality.
Haven’t read all the comments here, so apologies if I repeat someone else’s. Appart from the obvious point that pascal’s wager can be applied to any belief system, such as “pastafarianism”, Christians who use it should read the bible more. Just before I left my church through an unresolveable skepticism, my former minister tried pascals wager on me. My response was, “read the bible, god only wants those who love him and do his will, not people who are hedgeing their bets. The bible sats that those people will be booted out of his presence” see Matt. 12:50, Jn. 14:19-24 and most importantly Matt. 7:21-23 Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter, 22. “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ 23. And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; Depart form Me, you who practice lawlessness.”
Remember now Christians, dont gamble. It’not big and it’s not clever (I should know, I’m 6foot tall and have a PhD!) Someone else always wins. Usually the bookmaker!
The point that some people seem to miss when considering the wager is this: It is utterly immpossible to force yourself to believe something. That said, let’s say for a second that the christian God is the REAL one. Now, knowing you cannot make yourself believe, the only option is to fake it. Then you are just as wrong, and just as hellbound if it turns out he exists. Why? Because He knows your heart, and in your heart, you were placing a bet, and did not have belief, only your wager. Pascal’s Wager is the most unconvincing agruement for any religion that I have ever had the displeasure of hearing. It is flawed in so many ways that I cannot believe that some still choose to use it as a valid approach to take with disbelievers!
thephatp writes: Well, to explain what happens in this world, you must remember two things: 1. What the world started as (the Garden of Eden, a perfect world, a perfect place–FREE OF SIN); and 2. Why it is no longer that way.
thephatp also writes: Also, about God not allowing evil/sin in Heaven, remember (or note) that this is the exact reason God cast out Lucifer (Satan) from Heaven.
It’s pretty easy to “prove” that Christianity is true if you start out by assuming that Christianity is true! What you have stated are Christian beliefs, though you aparently expect all of us to believe that those are indisputable facts. However, I and probably most other atheists believe that the stories about Adam and Eve and Lucifer, etc., are just plain mythology, with no basis in fact, and were made up by primitive people to “explain” the workings of the world as they saw it.
The problems with the wager still stand. If you are a Christian or other non-Muslim, you could end up in the Muslim hell. If you are a Muslim or any non-Christian, you could end up in the Christian hell. Perhaps the real, actual, god(s) prefer people with honest doubts instead of those who believe things on faith. If that is the case, then atheists and agnostics will come out better than religious believers (of any religion). In short, it is impossible to cover all the bases.
To restate what Amanda wrote: Suppose that you believe in God (the one in the Bible) in order to take the “correct” side of this wager. If God is really like Christians say He is, wouldn’t He know that you are gambling instead of sincerely believing? Will that get you into heaven?
Finally, thephatp’s analogy about punishing a child for doing something wrong just doesn’t work. Punishing a child is for the purpose of teaching the child what to do and/or what not to do. When a person is punished (for choosing the wrong religion) by being in hell, it is too late, since they are there for eternity, with no way out (according to Christianity). Even if they have now learned something about right and wrong, how can they possibly use that knowledge? God is supposedly merciful, but where is the mercy in eternal torture with no way out of it once you are there?
God gave us life to choose before we get to hell, Jim.
You have a soul, don’t you? You think therefore you are? Right? So where did you come from, and where are you going?
Every athiest should be able to answer this.
I’ll answer for Jim since his comment is over a year old.
Actually the concept of the “soul” came from ancient people not understanding what keeps people alive. All they knew is that when the red stuff comes out and/or the breath stops, the person is dead. So our primitive ancestors, without the knowledge of respiration believed the breath to be the life of a person because when it “left” it appeared to cause them to die. This breath of life eventually was referred to in religious rituals as their “spirit.”
This fascination with “spirit/soul” (along with the fascination with blood) continues to today in religious worship even though we know now that the breath is not a spirit, but simply the taking in of nitrogen/oxygen and exhaling of nitrogen/carbon dioxide.
The “think therefore I am” is a function of the firing of brain synapses which makes a person self-aware, not some misunderstanding of the nature of breath.
I don’t want to venture off of the article topic too much but:
We came from the womb of a person that was a descendent of hundreds of thousands of generations of humans and protohumans, which evolved from primitive ape like ancestors who evolved from primitive mammals, etc…
Where we are going is likely into the ground (or to burn to ashes) like our countless ancestors which means this life is very precious.
In any case, threatening someone with hell is against my posting guidlelines and I would normally reject a post that includes it, but I’ll instead bring this one back to the subject of the article and say that trying to make a safe bet about some kind of after life (a need which stems from our evolved survival instincts) by subscribing to one particular religion out of hundreds of contradictory religions is as I mention in the article, obviously no safe bet at all.
“who evolved from primitive mammals, etc…”
Could you keep going a bit further perhaps?
Of course this life is precious, that is why it is so important to know why we have it, and where we are going next… Surely? All other achievements will turn to dust. Won’t they? Will you be able to look back on your life in 1,000 years time and say “Good work me!”?
A lot of atheists say they would rather concentrate on the “important” things in life, but what are they? And why are they important?
I wish I was just a bundle of physics, chemistry and biology, but I can’t be. I’ve not yet found a molecule which can turn around to me and say “hello”. If I am just chemistry why do I deserve rights? Or anything in fact? These are real issues I have and would love for you to shed some light on them, if you want to, and have the answers of course! They are real barriers to atheism for me. I personally don’t feel atheism is a safe bet, and it’s way too constricting. I would have to close my mind to so many things. Everything other than the material world would be “impossible”. Spirits, God, gods, afterlife, pre-life, other planes, worlds outside of the universe (Although I guess they would be permissable if they had nothing immaterial in them). I really don’t know dude, I’ve seen some really crazy things in science, it really seems anything is possible. Even the incredible things we see everyday, colours, smells, the world is so beautiful. How can anyone not be in awe? To think it just “happens” to be here… I mean, life… it’s such a wonderful thing, and we never even asked for it!
Apparently you are hinting at abiogenesis. Many years ago I attended a lecture of an astrophysicist who said the current thinking is that the conditions on the early earth were such that abiogenesis was not only likely but possibly inevitable and probably occurred many times on the early earth. He also went on to say that there is nothing special to the earth about these conditions and that they have likely occurred on countless other planets in the universe.
I’ve never found a molecule that could say “hi” but I’ve also never found a molecule that could poof out of nowhere to speak the universe into existence. As far as rights, there are precious few spoken of in the Bible.
Many of the bible’s example of “rights” concern things such as how to treat your slaves, which civilizations to slaughter, who and how many wives to take for your own or buy (Solomon was penned as having 1,000 wives and concubines), when to execute your children for being disrespectful and when to beat them with a rod, etc…
Among my favorite bible verses are those few that were attributed to Jesus about how to treat people well but it seems that very few people realize that Buddha was attributed the same sayings centuries earlier.
Anyone who has “rights” are given those rights by their various governments, except when their people are scared into giving up those rights in the name of security.
Atheists as a group are not closed minded. Most atheists I know such as myself just don’t see anything in their experience that supports a superstitious or spirit world. I am opened to anything as a discipline no matter how ridiculous it is, I just need to see something besides things like fallacious causality arguments or how pretty nature is. It’s not from lack of investigation or experience. I am an exchristian and I have debated with scores of believers over the years who have tried to rationalize the existence of their particular invisible gods.
I think the vast majority of atheists would accept some kind of situation where a spirit, angel, or god would simply appear and say “hi” to them (a situation that didn’t involve drugs, alcohol, or psychosis that is…).
On the other hand, I think it’s fairly easy to find believers who are not open minded about some things such as the existence of whatever invisible god they happened to believe in.
I will note that on the other end of the spectrum I’ve experienced some Christians who are very open minded about their beliefs.
I like Jon’s response and will go with that. I really have more important things to do. Spending time with my family, building companies, excersise, reading (even sometimes about God)… Folks need to consider that if a God existed he would likely be much more compex than we could possibly understand. Our human created ideas of heaven and hell would seem more than a litle childish.
Hi everyone,
Going back to Pascal’s Wager: I have read ALL the posts in this thread and, to be honest, in general I am impressed. But I must confess, some posts appealed to me more than others.
In particular, I agree with these three posters:
rick (29/03/06)
Billy Sands (21/09/06)
Amanda (10/01/07)
Accepting X-tianity is a matter of faith, not reason. If reason alone is what makes one accept X-tianity, then one cannot claim any right to salvation, regardless of one’s objective behaviour.
Allow me to emphasize this. Salvation is not about one’s sexual life or how much one goes to church on Sundays, how many times a day one prays or how much one keeps the 10 Commandments; whether one gives money to the church or whether one leads a “X-tian life”: avoiding rock & roll (Marilyn Manson, NIN, and such) or Harry Potter movies, etc.
If one has faith, then one will avoid these things, because that is what the “Good Book” supposedly says.
Faith is what ultimately matters: doing the “X-tian thing” might help, but it ain’t enough.
Simply put: Pascal’s Wager is an argument that it is reasonable to adhere to X-tian behaviour to gain ethernal life. In other words: it appeals to reason. Thus, it is ultimately irrelevant.
As an agnostic, I have no faith whatever. What’s more (as rick, Billy Sands and Amanda already pointed): I cannot reason my way to faith. Thus, the bad news, for me, is that I don’t “qualify” to X-tian salvation: no point filling out the application form. Or, to put it more bluntly: Hell, here I come!
The good news is (again, as an agnostic):
(1) I don’t really know whether there is any god (for all I KNOW, however infinitesimally unlikely, there might be one or several).
(2) If there is a god (or any number of them), I don’t know whether it is the X-tian god.
(3) If there is only one god AND it is indeed the X-tian god (or Muslim, or Jewish), I don’t know whether it really is like is depicted in any one of the many Bible versions (not to mention the Quran, Torah, Talmud, etc, etc, each of which gives a sometimes very different picture of the same character, making different demands from the believer).
(4) Furhter: I could ask quite similar questions about soul, ethernal life, judgement day, hell and heaven. Because, mind you, the existence of god(s), even if it was indisputable, would not logically entail the existence of any of these things.
(5) But even if all those things were answered in the traditional, conservative, evangelical way, there is still one last logical question: Justice requires the punishment to be proportional to the crime commited. No crime, no matter how terrible or monstrous, can possibly justify ethernal punishment. How much more unjust is ethernal punishment for not believing in god or not following its commandments?
But finally, let’s appeal to simple, everyday, garden-variety common sense and to the “great picture” someone invoked before in these posts:
Does a god, any god, really give a dam about something as trivial as my beliefs or taste in music or whether I pray or go to church? Whether I eat pork, have a beer, or turn the lights on and off Saturdays, Fridays or Sundays?
Are we really that important that a god has to follow our every thought or action?
People: the universe is enormous. We are a tiny part of if. Let’s stop navel gazing.
Again, hi everyone,
After finishing my previous rant (a very long one :), I realized I failed to comment on David Cousins’ post (17/04/08).
To be honest, I don’t know whether I should address them. With this, I mean no disrespect towards David. I am not implying his ideas are unworthy of consideration. The opposite is true: I was sincerely moved by David’s post. It was a humane post.
David asked many good questions. The problem is: the few answers I have may be hard to hear.
But then, again, as an agnostic, I can always say: I might be wrong…
All the best, mate.
After exercising some very elementary logic the flaws in the argument should be very obvious, but it should first be pointed out that the risk of not believing in Christianity can not be calculated. There simply is not enough information to determine how likely that Christianity is correct. The argument also assumes the premise that belief is a choice, it is not. Pascal’s Wager is just as valid or invalid for believers of other religions as it is for Christianity, and they can’t all be right but they can all be wrong. If the Muslims are right and one believes in Christianity then the Christian will burn in hell. The argument can be applied to countless other religions as well who do not even believe in the Abrahamic God. If you believe in the wrong religion you could suffer in that religion’s version of hell.
Hi Jesse,
I mostly agree with your post, with two exceptions (one only partial). (BTW: I will assume we all -especially the readers- are clear on the meaning of risk and probability).
The partial exception first: “The risk of not believing in Christianity cannot be calculated”. True, the probability cannot be calculated precisely, so the risk cannot be calculated precisely, either. But I don’t believe a precise calculation is required, either. Let me reason by analogy:
(1) Not many people know what is the exact probability of being hit by a shooting star (I myself don’t know it, but I assume it to be very low).
(2) Most everybody can guess that the damage suffered by being hit by an extremely hot meteoroid, possibly extremely radioactive, traveling at extreme speed, would be enormous.
(3) And yet, this does not stop me (and most people) from going out.
Why not? I (and I believe most people) behave AS IF the probability of being hit by a meteoroid were nil, even though I know it is a positive one. In my mind a small but positive probability (however subjectively determined) can be translated into a zero. What is more, a terrible loss weighted by zero is still zero. In contrast, a similar weighting procedure, applied to a positive benefit achievable with a non-nil probability, provides a result that is measurably different from zero.
In other words: a decision can be made, even though one does not know the precise probability AND one assesses the outcome suffered by ignoring this probability as catastrophic. This, I would say, is pretty much the same scenario we’ve discussed here.
Now with the second exception: “There simply is not enough information to determine how likely it is that Christianity is correct.”. Here, with all due respect to Christians, I beg to differ. For starters, one would need to define what exactly it is meant by “Christianity”. Say, does one include Catholicism (Roman and Eastern)? What about Mormonism and the Jehovah’s Witnesses? What about the diverse Gnostic sects, currently extinct? It is known that at some point in time, these sects have accused each other of being heretical. In fact, come to think, some Evangelical Christians still accuse the Catholic Church of being the “Whore of Babylon”. To be impartial, the language of His Holiness, Benedict XVI, while much less colourful and a lot more diplomatic, conveys a similar message when he said recently something to the effect that other religious beliefs are to be tolerated… but only Christian belief (presumably of the Roman Catholic variety) is correct. (I don’t quite remember the exact quotation, but I will try to find it).
If one is to believe these partial views, then clearly not all of them can be correct. I guess, one should choose which one to believe. As I cannot choose one, in this I tend to believe ALL of them, and conclude that NONE is correct.
But let’s leave this behind. Our host, Capella, has included some articles in this website pointing to what I would consider clear inconsistencies in Christian belief. I will not repeat them here and instead I would invite our Christians friends to consider the following: Christianity is supposed to be a monotheist religion. I confess: I never managed to understand what the Holy Trinity actually means, but, to me, it sounds quite… polytheistic! How can this be correct?
Another example: in the website Philosophy of Religion (http://www.philosophyofreligion.info) there is an interesting and accessible article on Reformed Epistemology. As I see it (and this is my personal take on this article), it is quite telling and a little ironic that the way Reformed philosophers find to accommodate Christian belief (of their own variety, I suppose) into rational thought is by… redefining what it means to be rational!
To the extent that “rational” and “correct” can be identified, I would think Christianity is quite suspicious.
Cheers!
I would like to point out yet another flaw in Pascal’s wager. If you decided to convert simply to avoid eternal punishment and were actually able to sincerely believe, then you would still go to hell because you based your decision solely on greed; just to save yourself. Greed is one of the seven deadly sins. Christianity is set up so you can’t just convert to benefit yourself.
There is another scenario that I very rarely see mentioned.
Personally, I am an atheist with approximately 10 years of biblical education so am more familiar with the bible and early church history than most xtians I have met.
Firstly, I take umbrage with the attitude that xtians seem to have with any statement from any atheist being about their god. Their god has no more credibility than any other. When we talk about the non-existance of a god we are not automatically talking about the abrahamic one.
Secondly, it is irrelevant whether that god exists or not. Existance of a god does not make it a requirement to blindly follow said god’s wishes. If the abrahamic god existed, I would not deny his existence, I would simply refuse to be on speaking terms. There is not one thing that the bible attributes to him – bar the creation – that is worthy of respect or devotion.
And that is my point, I don’t care if he exists or not; his actions, if remotely true, require punishment not worship and I would choose to withhold my respect. Any god that requires you to blindly follow orders and never question atrocity is no different than a totalitarian dictator and should be treated as such. As the abrahamic god essentially seems to behave like a spoilt, sadistic child most of the time, it simply isn’t worthy of respect.
Note: A mythology is simply a religion that is no longer mainstream or no longer has many adherents. It is sad that the only truly destructive and violent religions in the world have not yet reached mythology status. Middle eastern death cults need to be put firmly in their mythological place.
Quite right, Capella! Not to mention there are costs associated with belief: time spent in church, restrictions on things you can do if you follow certain sects (masturbation, dating/marrying people from other religions, etc.)
I hate to get all nitpicky on you, but I really should mention: Thomas Crapper didn’t invent the toilet; he made improvements to it.
Thanks for pointing that out about Thomas Crapper. I didn’t even get the name right, although “John Crapper” would have been even more ironic. :^)