Pascal's Wager and Faith

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Charlemagne_II said:
elev

**So, by Pascal’s reasoning, there’s an infinite expected value to ignoring Pascal’s Wager. **

Yes, the infinite expected value is negative … hell. :eek:
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No, it’s positive. Positive infinite value of life in heaven times non-zero probability that you end up in heaven anyway gives you a positive, infinite expected value.

Though you are right about one thing: there’s also a non-zero chance that a person taking Pascal’s Wager will, in spite of her efforts, end up with an infinite negative value in Hell.

When your math works out to both positive infinity and negative infinity, perhaps you have faulty math.
 
Eleve
**
When your math works out to both positive infinity and negative infinity, perhaps you have faulty math. **

Ah, Horatio, there are more things in heaven and on earth than are dreamt of in your math! 😃
 
It’s not my math. It’s Pascals. But, at any rate, you can’t simultaneously expect me to believe something because of Pascal’s math and tell me that Pascal’s math is faulty when it tells me I should believe something different.
 
The wager argument was surrounded by other arguments. For example, that other religions do not even claim what Christ claimed. That the founders also do not claim what Christ claimed. That the other religions did not rely on prophecies fulfilled as proof of their truthfulness. Nor do they rely on the claim of miracles performed as proof of their truthfulness. Aside from all that, the consistency of Christian theology is greater than the consistency of any other religion. Etc.etc. The claim that Pascal does not answer the question of which god it is most rational to believe in is also disproven by a complete read of Pensees.

So the usual atheist criticisms of Pascal are just so much blah, blah, blah. :rolleyes:
 
CHRISTINE77 said:
An atheist visited the great rabbi and philosopher Martin Buber and demanded that Buber prove the existence of God to him. Buber refused, and the atheist got up to leave in anger. As he left, Buber called after him, “But can you be sure there is no God?” That atheist wrote, forty years later, “I am still an atheist. But Buber’s question has haunted me every day of my life.” The Pascal Wager has just that haunting power.
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I’m just curious, does this atheist have a name?
 
I’m not arguing that Pascal doesn’t settle the question of which God you should follow if you are to follow a God. I’m arguing that Pascal’s Wager specifically, the subject of this thread, does not show that you should follow a God in the first place.
 
Candide_West said:
As I said, it depends what you mean by evidence. If you’re loose enough with the term (as you are above) then there is loads of evidence both for and against the existence of God. I personally am more rigorous in what I consider to be evidence which eliminates both sides.
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CW:

What evidence eliminates God? (Please use summary words; long explanations not required. If there is reason to explicate on one, or more, of them, we will.)

Your statements, above, are naked assertions (so far). Whereas, Catholics (and other believers) have filled these fora with evidence.

God bless,
jf
 
JDaniel said:
CW:

What evidence eliminates God?
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I don’t think that’s what CW is saying. Rather, he/she is saying that his/her understanding of the word “evidence” is restricted enough that it eliminates the possibility of evidence for or against God.
 
CHRISTINE77 said:
An atheist visited the great rabbi and philosopher Martin Buber and demanded that Buber prove the existence of God to him. Buber refused, and the atheist got up to leave in anger. As he left, Buber called after him, “But can you be sure there is no God?” That atheist wrote, forty years later, “I am still an atheist. But Buber’s question has haunted me every day of my life.” The Pascal Wager has just that haunting power.
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Christine:

Yes it does. It brought me back after 25 years of frolicking around like a, well, non-believer.
👍

God bless,
jd
 
Eleve said:
No, it’s positive. Positive infinite value of life in heaven times non-zero probability that you end up in heaven anyway gives you a positive, infinite expected value.
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Eleve:

This is entirely wrong. The word “infinite” cannot be used in this regard. That is precisely why the word, “eternal,” is used. Infinite means no bounds. Eternal can be taken to mean, having a beginning, but no ending. Although they are often used interchangeably, there’s still that technical, anti-mathematical difference.

To my knowledge, no mathematician has ever worked out a math using the word, “eternal.”

God bless,
jd
 
JDaniel said:
This is entirely wrong. The word “infinite” cannot be used in this regard.
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What do you take Pascal’s Wager to be if not the claim that there is an infinite expected value to following God?
 
Eleve said:
I don’t think that’s what CW is saying. Rather, he/she is saying that his/her understanding of the word “evidence” is restricted enough that it eliminates the possibility of evidence for or against God.
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Eleve:

OK. So she’s equivocating. 🤷

God bless,
jd
 
Eleve said:
What do you take Pascal’s Wager to be if not the claim that there is an infinite expected value to following God?
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Eleve:

An eternal expected value; from origination, i.e., creation, into the indeterminable (in durational terms) future.

God bless,
jd
 
JDaniel said:
Eleve:

An eternal expected value; from origination, i.e., creation, into the indeterminable (in durational terms) future.

God bless,
jd
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Well, just as a matter of Pascal’s actual argument, this isn’t the case: Pascal specifically talks about “an infinity of an infinitely happy life” and appeals to the standard way that decision theory would handle infinite utility and non-zero likelihood.

But suppose the argument is framed in your alternate way; suppose what’s really at stake is an eternal outcome of finite value. Then the argument loses its conclusive force.

There are a lot of difficulties involved in following God, as Jesus himself makes clear in verses like Luke 14:26. As many on CAF are keen to point out, it’s not supposed to be easy. And you wouldn’t have to be crazy to think that, if God doesn’t exist, a person would be worse off for trying to follow him.

So if there’s a downside to following God, the point of Pascal’s Wager is to show that the potential upside outweighs it. But how do we know if that’s the case? In the original version, it’s because the upside is infinite. But if it’s some finite value, the same argument doesn’t work. Instead, it becomes a matter of how much the finite value is, how likely it would actually be realized, and what cost is involved in seeking it. So the argument isn’t really complete: you need to fill in a lot of gaps to reach the same decision-theoretic conclusion that Pascal does. And then the problem is that, to fill in the important “how likely” gap, you’re not really using Pascal’s Wager at all: you’re just appealing to all the other, non-pragmatic arguments for the existence of God. And if you’re going to appeal to those anyway, why not just try to show that God exists without the hand-wavy, unconvincing decision theory?
 
I’m back at CAF after a long absence… I haven’t gone thorugh all the previous comments, but I might have something new to add. There is a paper published on Facebook that addresses some of the difficulties raised with Pascal’s Wager and uses contemporary decision theory to show that it is a valid road to faith. Here is the link:
facebook.com/note.php?note_id=171231979581598
 
Eleve said:
I’m not arguing that Pascal doesn’t settle the question of which God you should follow if you are to follow a God. I’m arguing that Pascal’s Wager specifically, the subject of this thread, does not show that you should follow a God in the first place.
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Pascal’s wager was deadly serious, not silly. It basically forces you to chose whether you believe in God or not. You cannot sit on the sidelines and say I don’t know, I am an agnostic (no-nothing), therefore I won’t choose. You must either choose the possibility of salvation or not. To me that is a very serious gamble.
 
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