How much of a gambler are you? Do you like to play the "long shot" or the "sure thing"? Are you presently making the ultimate wager with your own life? What kind of bet would you make with Pascal's Wager?
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) was a French mathematician, physicist and religious philosopher who put forth the proposition:
"...that it is a better "bet" to believe that God exists than not to believe, because the expected value of believing (which Pascal assessed as infinite) is always greater than the expected value of not believing."
It works like this:
God does not exist | God does exist | |
Live as though God does not exist | Lose nothing | Lose everything |
Live as though God does exist | Lose nothing | Lose nothing, gain everything |
Place your bets everyone!
7 comments:
Nice post, but I'm afraid I have to disagree.
The cost of believing is not zero, especially if you're believing something false. Wouldn't you agree that delusion is a bad thing? Even if your faith-based belief is true, though, it still costs you the time and energy spent maintaining the belief (e.g. going to church, studying scripture) and all the other many things you feel compelled to do because of it (e.g. writing blog entries about it).
But all this is beside the bigger point. The most serious flaw in Pascal's wager is that you can replace "God" with anything else, provided you define it a certain way, and it works just as well.
For example:
Define "Zod" as an invisible jelly donut that will punish you for not believing in it.
The above table works exactly the same, so why don't you believe in Zod?
Thanks for your reply godma. You pose some interesting questions and statements.
“The cost of believing is not zero, especially if you're believing something false.”
Pascal's wager has nothing to do with the “cost” of believing or not believing. Only losses and gains.
The cost of my believing was my life.
In return, I received God, who is everything. Plus, I received a new (eternal) life in return. When I do the math, I have lost nothing and I have gained everything. A pretty good deal I think.
If I am believing something false and God doesn't exist, that's ok too, because my "living like God exists" life has been far superior to my "living like God doesn't exist" life.
Once again when I do the math, I have lost nothing.
“Wouldn't you agree that delusion is a bad thing?”
Not necessarily.
I agree that delusion is a bad thing if it causes a person to do harm to themselves or others.
If the delusion causes no harm to the person or others, what concern should it be to the rest of us? That reminds me, I haven't watched the movie "Harvey" with Jimmy Stewart in a long time. I'll have to check the library.
However, if the delusion causes a person to act with more kindness, justice, honesty, self-control, compassion, love, etc. society actually gains from the delusion's existence.
“Even if your faith-based belief is true, though, it still costs you the time and energy spent maintaining the belief (e.g. going to church, studying scripture) and all the other many things you feel compelled to do because of it (e.g. writing blog entries about it).”
All actions require an expenditure or cost of energy and time.
If God does exist, then the energy and time spent in developing that relationship to full maturity is of the highest value over anything else. And if God does exist, He is too important not to be shared with others.
(Lose nothing~gain everything)
If God does not exist and we are the result of random chance + time, then there is really no real advantage, disadvantage or meaning as to where or how we expend our energy & time.
Going to church is equally valid to going to a Richard Dawkins lecture or watching the grass grow.
Studying scripture is equally valid to reading Sam Harris or a restaurant menu.
Writing a blog entry about God is equally valid to bloging about atheism or randomly scribbling on a wall with a purple crayon.
(Lose nothing)
“The most serious flaw in Pascal's wager is that you can replace "God" with anything else, provided you define it a certain way, and it works just as well.”
There is no flaw with Pascals's wager. Yes, you can replace "God" with "anything else" and it does work just as well if the “certain way” you define “anything else” meets the domain definition of "God". At which point you might as well replace “anything else” with “God” because by definition that is really what you are talking about.
God = Omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal creator of time, space and matter.
"Zod" will only work in Pascal's Wager if it fits the domain definition of God above and by your description it does not.
Besides, I prefer maple dip.
Every cost is a loss of some kind. The time you lose in worshipping a (possibly nonexistent) God could be better spent helping other people, or better enjoying true reality. True, you have to spend time either way. If you'd prefer to worship regardless of whether the object of your worship is true, then I would agree that this might not be a loss for you.
I strongly disagree that Pascal's wager only works if God is defined as "Omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal creator of time, space and matter." It only has to be defined as something that will punish nonbelievers (the reward of believing would be the avoidance of punishment).
It's interesting that your definition doesn't include this quality, though. Strictly using your definition of God, why would one's afterlife experience be dependent on whether they believed in Him or not? You didn't include in your definition that He cares whether we believe in him or not.
Let me just run through the four possibilities using Zod instead and see what happens.
1. If you believe in Zod and Zod exists, you are not punished.
2. If you believe in Zod and Zod does not exist, nothing lost (according to you).
3. If you don't believe in Zod and Zod exists, you'll be punished.
4. If you don't believe in Zod and Zod doesn't exist, you're not punished.
Since you are guaranteed to avoid punishment if you do believe in Zod, but you stand at risk of punishment if you do not, you should believe in Zod.
In a bizarre coincidence, this was just posted on another blog.
My
apologies for the delay in replying. I have been both sick and busy.
When someone lives as though God exists, all of life becomes an act of worship. (an act of gratitude to God) Romans
12:1-2
Your statement that worshipping God could be better spent helping other people is like saying that time spent sharpening his axe could be better spent chopping down trees or time spent becoming a studying surgery could be better spent cutting into people, or....you get the point. Time worshipping God via praise, study, prayer, etc. makes a person that much more effective in ministry to others as revealed in a recent study.
According to statistics from “Who Really Cares?” people who spend time worshipping God are the same people who are the most giving and charitable sector of society. Secularists (a category which would include all atheists) are the worst givers.
If God does not exist this is true reality below.
We live in a universe that has "no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference." Richard Dawkins Scientific American
November 1995.
Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear … There are no gods, no purposes, no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end for me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning to life, and no free will for humans, either - Provine,
W.B., Origins Research 16(1), p.9, 1994
Sounds like a regular laugh riot.
If there is no purpose, good or evil, etc., then nothing has any value. And if nothing has any value then there is no cost to anything and therefore there is nothing to lose.
0+0=0 the last time I checked.
For atheists to apply value to anything in a universe bound by the “true reality” of evolution, it would be neccessary for them to invent it in their own imaginations. That means that they would have to strongly hold a false belief that value exists in spite of the invalidating evidence. There's a word for that.
In response to your insistence on changing the definitions of Pascal's Wager, let's say that you told me that E=mc2 and I said that I disagreed. I said I could refute it and then proceeded to change "c" from the "speed of light" to "the top speed of a '64 Mercury Meteor". You would conclude that I am not interested in seriously discussing E=mc2.
To avoid any future confusion let me present the following definitions based on the authorial intent of Pascal, context and definitions from The Free Dictionary.
God: A being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator
and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions. (Free Dictionary doesn't mention punishment either, but I don't think that we can presupose a conspiracy) Pascal's authorial intent for the definition would have been more the
specific more Jesus Christ. Take your pick.
Exist: To have actual being; be real. (real....not a fantasy donut....mmmm donuts)
Live: To conduct one's life in a particular manner.
Live as though God exists” and “believe”are mutually exclusive ideas. A person can possibly believe one thing and live in an opposing manner to that belief. I have believed in God's existance for my whole life, however I have only lived like God exists for the past 20 years. (see Matthew
25: 31-46 and Luke 15:11-32 for further study)
Everything:
All things or a group of things. (Yes, punishment is a part of “all things”, but so is reward, purpose, love, justice, beauty,.....etc.
Nothing: Something that has no quantitative value; zero
Lose: To be deprived of (something one has had)
Gain: To come into possession or use of; acquire
I hope that this clarifies the parameters of any future discussion
regarding the validity of Pascal's wager. However, I think the end
result will be an agreement to agree to disagree.
Please remember that Pascal created the wager to to simply
encourage people to honestly and with an open mind investigate the
claims of Jesus Christ. Because if those claims are true, there is nothing of more
importance in the whole universe.
I posted it for the same reason. I would like to exhort you to investgate the truth claims of Jesus Christ with an open heart and mind. There is too much at stake and really, you really do have nothing to lose.
A good place to start is here or
here.
In a bizarre coincidence...
I think that's a "God incidence".
A claim that you have "nothing to lose" is patently false. There are many possibilities that were left out of that table. One that I think is fitting is that the bible was inspired by a wicked being who likes to torment people but who has no power over those who do not worship him.
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