Pascal's Wager Again!

[Mike_from_NJ]

Perhaps you missed Pascal’s argument by a mile. Don’t think his argument is confined to one or two paragraphs about the wager. If that is all you have read of Pascal, I can see why you missed the point.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I read all of the Pensees (thereby lowering my opinion of Pascal as a thinker).

Pascal says we cannot prove or disprove the existence of God.

Agreed.

So the search for that particular truth must depend not on the logic of the head, but rather on the logic of the heart. Do we desire a God, or do we desire there be no God?

I disagree. The wager is not about a search for truth, no matter how many times you claim that it is. The wager is a question of belief based on consequences, both positive and negative.

With the wager argument Pascal was addressing the atheists/agnostics of his day. He was trying to show them that the heart has reasons reason cannot know.

No, it’s about giving us the possibility of Heaven and Hell and asking us to consider those consequences when deciding how we should treat the unknowable of question of the Christian god’s existence (which we agree he says can not be proven or disproven).

The reason of the heart is to desire God, to desire to be with God, the desire to be with God forever. The desire of the heart to be as far away from God as possible seemed to Pascal an irrational desire. Yet there can be no doubt that this is precisely where atheists desire to be. If they did not have this desire, they would be open to God; they would bet on God rather than ultimate nothingness.

Believers sometimes seem to think that atheists try to hide themselves from any god, when in reality atheists seek out knowledge and truth and find none when it concerns a supreme being. Now atheists like myself could very well be wrong in thinking there is not a god, but it’s completely wrong to think that atheists are not open to a god. We are. It’s just that this openness doesn’t reveal any evidence as far as we can see.

Edited to tone down the snarkiness.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Believers sometimes seem to think that atheists try to hide themselves from any god, when in reality atheists seek out knowledge and truth and find none when it concerns a supreme being. Now atheists like myself could very well be wrong in thinking there is not a god, but it’s completely wrong to think that atheists are not open to a god. We are. It’s just that this openness doesn’t reveal any evidence as far as we can see.

One can’t say one is seeking truth, that one is admitting the possibility of God, and that one is seeking evidence of that possibility, when one is resisting the evidence with all one’s might. It’s very evident that God is not going to make himself evident as a corporeal being, so you know there is never going to be any evidence that will satisfy you. So how can it be said that you are open to God?

It’s when we begin to suspect that God is more than corporeal, that his Spirit can connect with ours. Then, only then, will the doubts begin to dissipate and the reasons of the heart become more transparent than the reasons of the head could ever be. A personal friendship with God is not an event. It is an experience that is acquired over a lifetime. I suggest that two requirements for the beginning of that experience, as they might be required at the start of any human friendship, are good will (desire) and a powerful dose of humility. Lacking these conditions the experience of God will be as futile as any human experience that lacks the same conditions. We will, in our preoccupation with self, dismiss God as a nonentity. And since we can never be certain there is no God, to be so dismissive of God is the supreme act of foolishness. We risk losing all with that foolishness, as we might risk the loss of a treasure of real gold because we wrongly judged it to be fool’s gold.

A complete reading of Pascal should recognize that this is his argument in a nutshell.

 

[Winterwolf00]

(excerpts from Pensées, part III, §233):

You must wager (it is not optional).

Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.

Wager, then, without hesitation that He is. (…) There is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite. And so our proposition is of infinite force, when there is the finite to stake in a game where there are equal risks of gain and of loss, and the infinite to gain.

What say you all (or y’all if you’re from Texas).

Is it better to bet on eternal God or eternal nothingness?

1st off which God are we talking about?
If the pagan Scandinavians were right then all I have to do is die in battle and I’m golden.

Seeing as how not all gods require belief in them to get into their ‘heaven’ Pascal’s Wager kind of falls apart.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

1st off which God are we talking about?
If the pagan Scandinavians were right then all I have to do is die in battle and I’m golden.

Seeing as how not all gods require belief in them to get into their ‘heaven’ Pascal’s Wager kind of falls apart.

The Scandinavians were not right. All the gods are gone from Scandinavia, so today even Scandinavians don’t think they were right. Scandinavia is now largely socialist and atheist. The state is their god; and since states can collapse of their own weight, not much of a god.

 

[Winterwolf00]

The Scandinavians were not right. All the gods are gone from Scandinavia, so today even Scandinavians don’t think they were right. Scandinavia is now largely socialist and atheist. The state is their god; and since states can collapse of their own weight, not much of a god.

There are still followers of Asatru so your argument is invalid.
Frankly your argument is invalid to begin with because a lack of worshippers doesn’t automatically mean that a religion is false.
That’s just absurd.

That’s like saying before there were Christians the Christian god didn’t exist, and I somewhat doubt that you believe that.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

frankly your argument is invalid to begin with because a lack of worshippers doesn’t automatically mean that a religion is false.
That’s just absurd.

i agree, just as your lack of worship does not prove there is no God.

 

[Winterwolf00]

i agree, just as your lack of worship does not prove there is no God.

And that is how Pascal’s Wager is debunked.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

And that is how Pascal’s Wager is debunked.

Pascal’s wager has never been debunked. Whereas Bertrand Russell tried to refute every argument for the existence of God, he never attacked Pascal’s Wager. And that’s because he knew he could not defeat it using pure logic. If anyone could do that, it would be Russell because he was a master logician.

All assaults on Pascal’s Wager have been self defeating, as Martin Buber observed, because every atheist knows in his heart that he cannot be infallibly certain there is no God.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

1st off which God are we talking about?

I think that’s compatible with what I pointed out earlier; that Pascal’s Wager doesn’t work with people that don’t make the same assumptions about a god that the person presenting the argument does. There’s a wide spectrum of proposed god-concepts that have been proposed and the argument does nothing to try to persuade someone of one set of concepts over another.

because every atheist knows in his heart that he cannot be infallibly certain there is no God.

It’s rare (if ever) that one seeks absolute certainty to arrived at being convinced of a proposition. You’ll find very few people in these forums that are strong atheist.

 

[Winterwolf00]

Pascal’s wager has never been debunked. Whereas Bertrand Russell tried to refute every argument for the existence of God, he never attacked Pascal’s Wager. And that’s because he knew he could not defeat it using pure logic. If anyone could do that, it would be Russell because he was a master logician.

All assaults on Pascal’s Wager have been self defeating, as Martin Buber observed, because every atheist knows in his heart that he cannot be infallibly certain there is no God.

What are you talking about?
You just helped me do it.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I think that’s compatible with what I pointed out earlier; that Pascal’s Wager doesn’t work with people that don’t make the same assumptions about a god that the person presenting the argument does. There’s a wide spectrum of proposed god-concepts that have been proposed and the argument does nothing to try to persuade someone of one set of concepts over another.

This reveals that you have not read Pensees. The wager argument is only two or three paragraphs from Pensees. If you read the entire work, Pascal addresses the objection that one must choose from all the religions, and that one might choose falsely. He compares the world religions and shows that if you are going to choose, the most logical choice is Christianity. All the others are fatally flawed and only Christianity is not fatally flawed (as can be seen by the fact that so many unbelievers turn to it at the hour of their death). Several atheists in my own family did just that. One of them begged me to pray for him, and another began to wear a cross before he died.

The great strength of Pascal’s argument is the assumption rightly made that hope springs eternal in the human breast.

 

[Winterwolf00]

This reveals that you have not read Pensees. The wager argument is only two or three paragraphs from Pensees. If you read the entire work, Pascal addresses the objection that one must choose from all the religions, and that one might choose falsely. He compares the world religions and shows that if you are going to choose, the most logical choice is Christianity. All the others are fatally flawed and only Christianity is not fatally flawed (as can be seen by the fact that so many unbelievers turn to it at the hour of their death). Several atheists in my own family did just that. One of them begged me to pray for him, and another began to wear a cross before he died.

The great strength of Pascal’s argument is the assumption rightly made that hope springs eternal in the human breast.

I’ve read the arguments and they are weak.
And your anecdotal tales are suspect.

Can you provided anything new?

 

[Charlemagne_III]

What are you talking about?
You just helped me do it.

If you could write posts longer than one or two sentences, I might engage you.

As it is now going, I will only match your one or two sentences with one or two sentences of my own.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I’ve read the arguments and they are weak.
And your anecdotal tales are suspect.

Can you provided anything new?

Nope.

 

[Winterwolf00]

If you could write posts longer than one or two sentences, I might engage you.

As it is now going, I will only match your one or two sentences with one or two sentences of my own.

I guess pointing out that you accidently debunked your own argument is a bit inconvenient for you.
Best to dodge the point and pretend it didn’t happen right?

 

[Winterwolf00]

Nope.

Thank you for admitting it.
I guess I’m done here.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I guess I’m done here.

:sad_bye:

 

[Tomdstone]

If you read the entire work, Pascal addresses the objection that one must choose from all the religions, and that one might choose falsely. He compares the world religions and shows that if you are going to choose, the most logical choice is Christianity. All the others are fatally flawed and only Christianity is not fatally flawed …

As a group, Jews are pretty smart. The number of Jewish doctors, professors, bankers, historians, scientists, physicists, mathematicians, chess players, Nobel prize winners and possibly even philosophers exceeds their relative percentage in the population, but as a group, I doubt that they would agree with the declaration that Christianity is the most logical choice of religions. Specifically, they would question the Trinity.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

As a group, Jews are pretty smart. The number of Jewish doctors, professors, bankers, historians, scientists, physicists, mathematicians, chess players, Nobel prize winners and possibly even philosophers exceeds their relative percentage in the population, but as a group, I doubt that they would agree with the declaration that Christianity is the most logical choice of religions. Specifically, they would question the Trinity.

Notwithstanding the fact that it was almost entirely a Jewish group that started the Christian Church, and to this day Jews are still being converted to it.

 

[Cone]

Clearly there is only one choice, and that is to follow Islam. Allah threatens man with the eternal fire for not believing in him.

“Allah will leave the disbelievers alone for a while, but then he will compel them to the doom of Fire.” 2:126

“It’s you and your religion against them and theirs. They won’t stop fighting until they make you a “renegade from your religion” and if they succeed in that so you die in disbelief, Allah will burn you forever in the Fire.” 2:217

“Disbelievers worship false gods. The will burn forever in the Fire.” 2:257

But seriously, the Christian god is not the only one that threatens punishment for disbelief. How does one choose?

Compare the teachings of Jesus to the teachings of Muhammed. Which rings more true to you: Love your neighbor or kill the infidels?