Thus, it is not a thoughtful decision to simply conclude that developing a belief leads to negative returns on earth. Even if Pascal was right in simplifying such conditions and dealing with the issue by applying two players game theory, there are two Nash Equilibria on the table: B, T and N, F.
Thus, Pascal cannot merely conclude that believing in God or playing B is the dominant strategy for humans. September 23, category: Uncategorized.
Leave a Comment. Name required. While I agree this argument does not prove the existence of God, put together with the other strong indicators of the existence of God, one would be foolish to not take seriously the possible existence of God and pursue that possibility. This wager simply provides a rationale to make the belief in G-d irrelevant. However, this does not take into account what a good life would be according to G-d.
Therefore, the metric is potentially irrelevant to G-d. Therefore, unless the good life lived is a good life according to the metric of the potential god, god s or G-d then this wager is invalidated. Thus, it is important to consider if there is a G-d to see if your actions align with what is good. The assumption of a potential G-d includes the assumption of creator who is the originator of and ruler metric for the universe.
This wager just states that there is something to be gained by living a good life if there is a G-d that is loving and kind. The Atheist Wager just shows that it is better to be good than be evil without qualifying, which is outside the scope of belief.
I suppose I could have been more explicit here, though I do discuss it is the second last paragraph. Each religion has its own concept of what is good which makes the process infinitely more complicated. There are literally thousands of religions each with their own rules. I think a true Pascals Wager would not be as clean and clear as you suggest, but rather incredibly messy. Thus, even choosing the god, god s , G-d of any religion is better than not choosing any. The continuation of this line of thinking would lead one to choose the belief or faith that covers the most ground and probably has the most parallels to what is good in other faiths, at the minimum.
From here, I guess you would make a separate judgement call. Thus, this idea of just being good is of limited scope and seems to only be a subset of the larger discussion and wager.
The problem is that most religions are explicit that unless you believe their religion, you will not receive eternal reward. For example all Muslims are going to Hell for failing to believe in Christianity, the fact they believe in a God does not give them partial reward. All religions I am familiar with take an all or nothing approach. The core beliefs of most religions as far as I can tell is be a good person. Help other people. Be kind and generous. That seems to be the concept with most parallels.
There is also the problem that there are thousands of religions so it is not possible to study all of them in depth and compare them all.
I still believe Pascals Wager is not a simple two option choice but a choice with thousands of options. The oldest traditions of the church believe that salvation comes from Jesus, but because one does not believe in Jesus does not mean they are going to hell. Unfortunately, the evangelical doctrine brimstone and fire, aka Westboro Baptist gets all the attention even though it starkly contrasts with what has been thought and believed for millennia now.
I think you are mistaken. Matthew says: He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters. Either you believe, or not… What is this flimsy hippy view suddenly where anyone can get in? My teapot said the same thing. You should worship it. If it helps I have a piece of toast burned in the image of my teapot. Oxymoron much? The scope of what to gain or lost is entirely dependent on the mythological context that one ascribes to.
If hell does not exist and you have to make the statistical case that thousands of other mythological structures are false and yours is true before you begin to try to assert that which is not supported by the Bible then what is lost? Life is with people, works are with people, God is a fabrication. To that effect, how does an atheist know what is good versus what is evil?
It depends on the circumstance. For example murder is considered wrong, but there are cases where it is allowed self-defence and war or treated differently manslaughter. Be friendly, considerate, helpful, basically follow the golden rule. Thanks for the response and raising the topic for discussion. It is always a good idea to think about these matters. In any event, I would like to address a couple of points in your response, such as your view on murder.
We agree that murder is wrong but I would ask why is murder wrong? Next, let me point out that murder is the killing of innocent human life for a reason other than something such as self defense — every person has the right to defend themselves but it certainly should be the last and final response.
As for murder and war, well there is a collective defense of a nation and then there is indiscrimient killing in war, which would certainly be murder. Again, war being the last response and the action should be defensible as just. And one of those you mentioned, to so-called golden rule. This is one explicitly taught by Christ as a reiteration of that very same rule in Leviticus Our basic concepts of morality are written in our hearts — also known as natural law.
Nothing does not indeed happen in the last option. If you live your life by the last option then you rob yourself of the freedom and autonomy to just be the universe experiencing itself. You will be slave to a false reality for the entirety of your belief structure's lifespan, which could very well be your entire life. According to decision theory, rationality requires you to perform the action of maximum expected utility if there is one.
Suppose that the utility of money is linear in number of dollars: you value money at exactly its face value.
Suppose that you have the option of paying a dollar to play a game in which there is an equal chance of returning nothing, and returning three dollars. The expectation of the game itself is. This exceeds the expectation of not playing namely 0 , so you should play. On the other hand, if the game gave an equal chance of returning nothing, and returning two dollars, then its expectation would be:. Then consistent with decision theory, you could either pay the dollar to play, or refuse to play, for either way your overall expectation would be 0.
It should be admitted that there are certain exegetical problems in presenting these arguments. Furthermore, our formulation of the arguments in the parlance of modern Bayesian decision theory might appear somewhat anachronistic. For example, Pascal did not distinguish between what we would now call objective and subjective probability, although it is clear that it is the latter that is relevant to his arguments.
There is the further problem of dividing the Infinite-nothing into separate arguments. We will locate three arguments that each conclude that rationality requires you to wager for God, although they interleave in the text. We will conclude with a discussion of what Pascal meant by this.
Reason cannot settle which way we should incline, but a consideration of the relevant outcomes supposedly can. Here is the first key passage:. There are exegetical problems already here, partly because Pascal appears to contradict himself. If it could, then it might well be shocked—namely, if you chose in a way contrary to it. Wagering for God superdominates wagering against God: the worst outcome associated with wagering for God status quo is at least as good as the best outcome associated with wagering against God status quo ; and if God exists, the result of wagering for God is strictly better than the result of wagering against God.
The fact that the result is much better does not matter yet. Pascal draws the conclusion at this point that you should wager for God. Rationality does not require you to wager for God if you assign probability 0 to God existing, as a strict atheist might.
If that is a further premise, then the argument is apparently valid; but that premise contradicts his subsequent assumption that you assign positive probability. See McClennen for a reading of this argument as a decision under uncertainty. Pascal appears to be aware of a further objection to this argument, for he immediately imagines an opponent replying:. The thought seems to be that if I wager for God, and God does not exist, then I really do lose something. In fact, Pascal himself speaks of staking something when one wagers for God, which presumably one loses if God does not exist.
Pascal addresses this at once in his second argument, which we will discuss only briefly, as it can be thought of as just a prelude to the main argument. Now, recall our calculation of the expectations of the two dollar and three dollar gambles. This is, as it were, a warm-up. Since wagering for God is rationally required even in the hypothetical case in which one of the prizes is three lives, then all the more it is rationally required in the actual case, in which one of the prizes is an eternity of life salvation.
One way to defend it is via the classical interpretation of probability, according to which all possibilities are given equal weight. However, unless more is said, the interpretation yields implausible, and even contradictory results.
In the lottery ticket case, reason can decide something. But it is not clear that complete ignorance should be modeled as sharp indifference. Morris imagines, rather, an agent who does have evidence for and against the existence of God, but it is equally balanced. This argument, then, does not speak to them.
This brings us to the third, and by far the most important, of his arguments. Again this passage is difficult to understand completely.
In short, if God exists, then wagering for God results in infinite utility. What about the utilities for the other possible outcomes? Martin among others assigns this a value of negative infinity.
Sobel , on the other hand, is one author who takes this value to be finite. This suggests that whatever these values are, they are finite. In another landmark moment in this passage, he next presents a formulation of expected utility theory. How much, then, should a player be prepared to stake without transgressing against reason? Let us now gather together all of these points into a single argument.
Either God exists or God does not exist, and you can either wager for God or wager against God. We have a decision under risk, with probabilities assigned to the ways the world could be, and utilities assigned to the outcomes. On the other hand, your expected utility of wagering against God is. This is finite. Therefore, rationality requires you to wager for God. Here the objections are manifold. Different matrices for different people. The argument assumes that the same decision matrix applies to everybody.
However, perhaps the relevant rewards are different for different people. Perhaps, for example, there is a predestined infinite reward for the Chosen, whatever they do, and finite utility for the rest, as Mackie suggests.
Or maybe the prospect of salvation appeals more to some people than to others, as Swinburne has noted. This brings us to the next two objections. The utility of salvation could not be infinite. One might argue that the very notion of infinite utility is suspect—see for example Jeffrey and McClennen Strict finitists, who are suspicious of the notion of infinity in general, will agree—see Dummett and Wright Or perhaps the notion of infinite utility makes sense, but an infinite reward could only be finitely appreciated by a human being.
There should be more than one infinity in the matrix. There are also critics of the Wager who, far from objecting to infinite utilities, want to see more of them in the matrix. For example, it might be thought that a forgiving God would bestow infinite utility upon wagerers-for and wagerers-against alike—Rescher is one author who entertains this possibility.
Or it might be thought that, on the contrary, wagering against an existent God results in negative infinite utility. As we have noted, some authors read Pascal himself as saying as much. Suppose, for instance, that God does not exist, but that we are reincarnated ad infinitum , and that the total utility we receive is an infinite sum that diverges to infinity or to negative infinity. The matrix should have more rows. Perhaps there is more than one way to wager for God, and the rewards that God bestows vary accordingly.
For instance, God might not reward infinitely those who strive to believe in Him only for the very mercenary reasons that Pascal gives, as James has observed. One could also imagine distinguishing belief based on faith from belief based on evidential reasons, and posit different rewards in each case. The matrix should have more columns: the many Gods objection. If Pascal is really right that reason can decide nothing here, then it would seem that various other theistic hypotheses are also live options.
By excluded middle, this is a partition.
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