The Atheist's (Pascal's) Wager
Offline The amount of gods that are available for one to believe in are astronomical; as such, the odds of one picking the correct god are so slim that they are thousands of times more likely to end up in hell then they are to end up in heaven.<br><br>Therefore, if one were to do the most logical thing, they would live a life of reason and controlled pleasure (by controlled I am merely excluding pleasures outside of the rationalized moral realm). The reason for this is that they are guaranteed to enjoy themselves in this life while there is no guarantee that they will enjoy anything later. In fact, as previously stated, they are thousands of times more likely to suffer, which makes the present guarantee of pleasure even more logical a choice.
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Offline Agnosticism, in the case of Pascals Wager, is exactly the same as Atheism. Since one does not believe in the existance of specific Gods (the ones listed, or one is unsure, or whatever) then they are in the same category. Almost all religions that revolve around a God require devout blind faith in order to continue on to the positive portion of the afterlife. If one is agnostic then they suffer the same fate as an atheist.
The REASON why atheism is the better bet when dealing with pascals wager is that one does not waste ones life blindly following what has an equal chance of being right or wrong. It's like this.
I can either spend a year working on a book that has just as big a chance of becoming a hit as thousands of other books OR I can spend that time doing something else.
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Another possibility, one I noted on another thread:
Out of the infinite number of possible positive afterlives (or negative ones one wishes to avoid) with an infinite number of possible things you should do in this life to successfully enter them, one is a god who expects you to not believe in any god or afterlife at all.
With complete unverifiablity for this question, how can anyone knowingly choose any possible belief as the 'correct' one? The default position in the face of unknowability is non-belief... which IS one of the possible sets of requirements for a positive afterlife! In short, non-belief should be the position you choose, because it is both logically warrented by default as well as a viable possibility in the Wager.
Add that to your warrented respect for one's only lived life, and you've got one hell of a reversal of the Wager: Atheism/agnosticism is the best choice.
Nice teamwork
i agree with everything youv all said.... not reaally anything to add, guess this is a watse of forum space then... c yall later
I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction. ayn rand
You guys suffer from the same problems as the original "Pascal's wager", really.
It's all a discussion of chance.
Pascal aimed to show that the outcome of believing in god will always equal or supercede the outcome of not believing in god. (i.e. always provide equal or more reward for the better.)
here's why (he thought):
1)You believe in god, and are correct: infinite reward.
2)You believe in god, and are wrong: 0
3)You dont believe in god, and are correct: 0
4)You don't believe in god, and are wrong (god exists): infinite punishment.
Therefore, even if the possibility of god existing is (1/10^666),
it still appears to be rational to believe in god.
Pascal's wager fails because of the infinite possibility of god(s) existing who can infinitely punish someone who falsely believes in wrong gods. (meaning that outcome 2) could be infinite punishment. And outcome 4) could be 0 or infinite reward, for all we know.)
Here's where your reversal of the wager fails:
The mere possibility of infinite conceptions of god(s) doesn't place all conceptions on equal par of possibility.
In other words, we can make an infinite number of possible gods and ascribe them varying attributes and quirks, but the existence of the conception of these gods does not increase the likelihood of their existence.
If evidence existed that showed that the abrahamic god had a high likelihood of existence (I dont even know how that's possible, considering the rigid attributes this god supposedly has), then the wager would be in favor of that god. Of course it would be in your self interest to wager on it's existence, because you would have a high likelihood of infinite reward! Likewise, atheism/agnosticim would be a poor wager, despite the infinite number of possible afterlives, because the evidence would have shown (I'm definitely not arguing that it does show) a high likelihood of the existence of a god which punishes atheism.
Conceding that atheism/agnosticism will always be the best choice because of the infinite number of possible afterlives is commiting the same percieved falsehood as Pascal, on a larger scale. You've completely ignored chance as a factor in the bet.
In my opinion, atheism/agnosticism remains rationally in my own self interest only because the likelihood of any theistic god existing is astronomically low (which is also in my opinion).
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
George Orwell.
Of course not... we cannot assign ANY of them ANY sort of probability, and in addition to the infinite number of possible different gods/goddesses/spirits that could exists, there are likewise an infinite number of possible different non-theistic metaforces that could exist. We simply do not and cannot know; all are still possible in the interim, however... they just don't 'demand' any sort of decision concerning them, as it's a completely fruitless venbture. As such, the default position is non-belief... an agnosticsim/atheism which just so happens to satisfy the requirements of one such infinitely remote, completely unknowable possibility. I never said it was a convincing argument at all... but it seems that ours bears more weight than the alternative.
But as the chances are unknowbale and thus equally remote between the infinite number of possibilities, we cannot help but ignore any probabilities as such.
The actual biggest problem with Pascal's wager is that it is an unfinished work. Pascal himself never published it during his lifetime, I would suspect because he rcognized the flaws. It was only published posthumously.
"With its enduring appeal to the search for truth, philosophy has the great responsibility of forming thought and culture; and now it must strive resolutely to recover its original vocation." Pope John Paul II
Right.
But we can say that they very likely dont exist, because the hypotheses made in relation to any supernatural, personal god have been made with a lack of evidence, so the postulation is superfluous.
Or say that they entail logical contradictions, and therefore can't exist.
Right, but indecision or the negative isn't 'demanded' either.
If the claims of theists were of the sort that we could produce evidence to the contrary or to support, then weighing the evidence would be the ultimate way to determine what is rational. All we have are unfalsifiable claims which seem to be very unlikely, given their nature. Claims on which we have agreed no statement of chance can be definitively made.
Deriving that it's not necessarily rational to believe in any particular god, given that we can't make claims about the chance of it existing, doesn't mean that it's necessarily rational to believe in no gods.
I can say right now 100% that
1) god X punishes nonbelievers of god X
2) I do not want to be punished
3) if god X exists, then it is rationally in my own self interest to believe in it.
(rational self-interest is what Pascal wants to prove).
Following from that, If god X exists, it appears to be rational to believe in god X and to not be an atheist. However, you have agreed that there's no way for us to make a statement of chance regarding god X. So the only conclusion that can be made is that it's rational here to believe in what's true, which we can never definitively know.
The OP said this:
The fault is in assuming that anybody is "thousands of times" more likely to end up in hell then they are to end up in heaven. He has selectively discarded his own argument to prove his own point.
Just as we can come up with an infinite number of gods that punish non-believers, we can come up with an infinite number of gods that punish their own believers AND non-believers. There's no reason to believe either is more likely. Nor is it less likely that what we come up to believe as being "god" rewards believers, even if they were wrong about the nature of "god". (meaning everybody BUT atheists/agnostics are rewarded).
No statement of chance can be made any way.
If the last of the possibilities I gave are true, then atheism and agnosticism were poor wagers, in any event. And it is no more or less likely to be true than any of the other postulations given.
Even assuming the afterlife is true and heaven/hell are the only two possibilities, if we can't make a statement of chance on the nature of the god being presented (does it punish nonbelievers, only its own believers, every believer?), believers and nonbelievers are equally likely to enter "hell", despite what the believers believe.
What is rational here depends on what is true, which we already agreed we can make no statement of chance on.
Saying that we can't assign chance doesn't mean that there aren't different chances.
Atheism has either a 100% chance of being correct or a 100% chance of being incorrect. We will never know as long as we are alive. If it's correct, then it was a good wager. If it's incorrect, then it has equal chance of being a good or bad wager, as far as we can tell (since whatever god(s) that do exist could either punish, or reward us. Or I guess do something...neutral). That's basically as far as we can go with this.
Whether or not it is rationally in your own self-interest to believe or disbelieve relies on whether or not a god or gods exist, and the attributes of those gods. We can know none of this. Therefore, we don't know if it's rational to believe or disbelieve strictly based on the fact that there are infinite possible conceptions of gods.
For example, if the a group of abrahamic followers are correct, then it is rationally in your own self-interest to believe in whichever abrahamic religion is correct.
If no gods exist, it's rationally in your own self-interest to believe in atheism.
Since we can make no definitive statements on what is true, we can make no definitive statements on what is rationally in your own self-interest.
We have to rely on reason and evidence to guide us closer to the truth. In order to say what seems to be rational, we have to be able to make statements of chance. (for example, many of the claims made by abrahamics about their god seem contradictory or impossible to actually conceptualize (the trinity? wtf?), so it's probably not true. Therefore, it's probably not in your own rational self-interest to believe it.)
I would simply say that there's no reason to believe in the afterlife because I dont think that consciousness or personality survives the brain. There is a very low chance, in my opinion, of an afterlife.
However, the theist can simply assert, "well it does exist."
If the theist is right, then the theist believed what is in your own rational self-interest to believe.
If I am right, then I believe what is in my own self-interest to believe.
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
George Orwell.
Of the latter we are in agreement; an impossible sort of god/goddess/spirit/other isn't a possibility by any reasonable means. The former's a bit trickier... I don't agree that absence of evidence is evidence of absence as far as metaphyscial certainty goes, even though it's more than well enough for fully defaulting to non-belief. It's still possible that some god/goddess/spirit/other exists beyond our terrestrial knowledge... though its not meaningful to even talk about much less believe in.
Which demand an agnosticism, as the myriad of possibilities cannot be verified by any means.
However, I did state something to this effect:
1) God X punishes believers of god X or any other god.
2) I do not want to be punished.
3) If god X exists, then it is rationally in my own self interest to not believe in god X or any other god.
4) None of these possibilities are verifiable; it is rationally in my own self interest to default to the position of nonbelief and live my life as I choose.
If the last of the possibilities I gave are true, then atheism and agnosticism were poor wagers, in any event.
Unless there are also countless non-theistic metaphysical states of affairs in which it would be sound to not believe... or such deities exist that would perfer you not to, the same as with the default.
And thus the default of agnosticism rears it's head.