Pascal's wager is not practical

[HerCrazierHalf]

Can’t you at least gather enough courage to make that claim yourself?

The cost is not insignificant.

But then, so many atheists can’t even gather enough courage to assert that they believe God doesn’t exist… Pascal’s Wager certainly applies to them.

“God doesn’t exist” requires an unobtainable level of evidence (observations beyond the observable universe). To some of us it would be arrogant.

Ex: I can say unicorns don’t exist because they’d exist on land and we generally know where all populations of horses exist. I can’t say an insect with a mickey mouse mark on it’s shell doesn’t exist as there are likely many unknown populations of insects.

 

[tafan2]

As is commonly presented? Well perhaps, but that is because most people discussing it have not read it, and do not understand it.
As Pascal presented it, you are wrong.

 

[HerCrazierHalf]

As Pascal presented it, you are wrong

Assuming one agrees with the rest of his works that attempt to narrow things down to the choices presented.

 

[Major]

The cost is not insignificant.

From what perspective?
If God exist, we have to strive to enter the heaven, but any finite cost is effectively 0 comparing to the beatific vision.

On the other hand if there is no God, what is the lasting cost of you acting according to some specific doctrine? I don’t think the cost of some well evolved ape having to force itself into being nicer to other apes in some corner of the universe is really a big deal. It can only feel hard for this neural network you are but why should you care about that?

God can be fooled by one who goes through the motions and pretends to believe.
Or
The person can arbitrarily “make” themselves sincerely believe on a whim. Or following a set of rituals will make one believe what they previously viewed as false.

God won’t be fooled, but he would gladly start from this spark and lead you to more reasonable faith. And it is quite common for great teachers to say that if you could not believe things or force yourself into some desired state of mind you should start from doing as if you already thought in proper way. For example, you may dislike your neighbors, but you can still act as you loved them and eventually doing so you will grow to really love them.

 

[fhansen]

You are good when you know what good is and do good. One cannot know what good is when there are conflicts between religions. One asks killing for God and in another God dies for us.

I think that’s a fairly easy choice.

 

[fhansen]

The belief on God cannot take you anawhere good.

True enough. Believing that love and goodness are foundational to the universe and that there’s real hope for a super-bright future for all, that life has meaning and purpose and an ultimate goal. Wow, yes, bad stuff.

 

[fhansen]

I think his wager just isn’t possible. We can’t fake or force faith.

 

[HerCrazierHalf]

I don’t think the cost of some well evolved ape having to force itself into being nicer to other apes in some corner of the universe is really a big deal.

Don’t you find that a bit dishonest? There’s clearly more to it. We can and many are nice to each other without religious belief simply because we want to and dem it a better option. It’s hard to explain but attempting to believe our even pretending to believe something you view as false saps the joy out of life. And if life is all there is than you’ve wasted all you have.

For example, you may dislike your neighbors, but you can still act as you loved them and eventually doing so you will grow to really love them.

I’ve heard this about habit forming in general. Maybeit works for most but this has proven mostly false in my experience. Parents enforce various rules on children in hopes of instilling certain values. But we’ve all quite a few seen them jettison many of them upon moving away from home.

 

[Major]

Don’t you find that a bit dishonest? There’s clearly more to it. We can and many are nice to each other without religious belief simply because we want to and dem it a better option.

I am not claiming that you can’t be good if you are not religious person. The point is that you argued it is costly for person to conform to some doctrine, but if there is no absolute, the fact that some human feels uncomfortable about something is unimportant in big scale.
Let’s reformulate it a bit:
Let’s suppose you have to go through some hard experiences because of your faith. Does it matters? If there is no God will it be important in 100 million years? Clearly no, even if there will be then someone to remember anything then.
On the other hand, if there is God and christian faith is true (lets put aside for a moment case of different religions) it matters, as you have immortal soul and its eternal fate can hang on the choices you had made during your life on Earth.

 

[Flopfoot]

God doesn’t need to be fooled. If a person lives as though God exists (by obeying his commands) then that is faith, it doesn’t matter how sincere the belief is

 

[PetraG]

As commonly presented the wager is insulting to God and/or the person. Either,

God can be fooled by one who goes through the motions and pretends to believe.
Or
The person can arbitrarily “make” themselves sincerely believe on a whim. Or following a set of rituals will make one believe what they previously viewed as false.

OK, but if belief is not a positive choice one can make whether or not one has the gift of “sincerely believing,” then all bets are off, so to speak. The person who decides to believe without “feeling sincere,” even as a form of “fire insurance,” would have been doomed whatever they did. Should such a person be told to “eat and drink, because tomorrow you die!!”? So while I agree that faith is not a matter of making a show of public compliance but an act of will of the creature to consent to the existence of (and therefore the demands of justice towards) an unsensed Creator, I don’t agree that there has to be “sincerity” in terms of making the choice in spite of lacking an emotional connection or having some emotional feeling of being right. If there is not a choice open to decide to believe on whatever grounds are available, then there could hardly be a penalty for not believing.

Having said all that, you are right: the Church teaches that invincible ignorance, the situation where the Just Judge could decide that the full means necessary to give consent to the truth were not granted in spite of the honestly-seeking person having been given access to a literal recitation of the truth, could be a mitigating factor when lack of faith is looked at in the Final Judgment. As you imply, God knows what our opportunities were and what our devotion to give ourselves over to the true and the good actually have been. God reads hearts, and God will not be mocked or hoodwinked.

 

[PetraG]

His argument is a simple confrontation between religion and irreligion,

It may have seemed as simple as that to them, but was it?
Is it possible that Enlightenment philosophy had taught these men to shout down any inner witness to the truth that could reach theirs wills when such was not founded solely upon logic and reason?
There could be a lesson here in the risks of espousing the counsels coming from the mind only (the “Enlightenment” conscience) or else espousing only those that come only from emotions and the experience of beauty (the “Romantic” conscience).
I don’t mean Blaise Pascal himself, but the fellows he would have been trying to convince with this thought experiment. He may have been faced with trying to give deliberately one-legged men a way to walk towards the light of truth.

This. Pascal was a brilliant mathematician and approached the subject from the point of view of probability theory.

One wonders whether Pascal did or did not give appropriate credence to his emotional or intuitive senses: to his heart of hearts, rather than to his mind only, when he was making this argument to those who had an extremely “rational” self-identity. Is there any lack of virtue in ignoring one’s heart when one does not have the gift of a strong connection to it? I mean, is it possible that someone might not actually choose to be disconnected from his heart, to be logical only, because one has been afflicted with a mute heart or because the communications from one’s heart to one’s will has been silenced through no fault of one’s own?

I mean that perhaps he was trying to convince them that faith could come by appeals to the mind only, when perhaps that was like leading someone as if he were blind when in fact he has simply set himself stubbornly to screwing his eyes as tightly shut as possible, insisting he can get along fine if he sticks strictly to using his other senses.

I don’t know what he would have said to my question, excepting that he said this:
“The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know at all.”
and
“Do not be surprised at the sight of simple people who believe without argument. God makes them love him and hate themselves. He inclines their hearts to believe. We shall never believe with a vigorous and unquestioning faith unless God touches our hearts; and we shall believe as soon as he does so.”
–Blaise Pascal

Perhaps that is why the papers that held Pascal’s wager had not yet been published when he died. Perhaps he was still weighing how to evangelize to the “sons of the Enlightment” himself.

 

[STT]

I don’t see how the word “praises” fits here, and I don’t believe that the choice makes no difference.

So choosing the right religion is matter to you. All I am saying that his sugestion does not help any body to choose the right religion.

 

[STT]

I think that’s a fairly easy choice.

How that could be easy when you don’t know what God is? To me it is very difficult.

 

[BartholomewB]

All I am saying that his sugestion does not help any body to choose the right religion.

Of course not. It wasn’t intended to help people choose this religion or that religion…

 

[Aquinas11]

All I am saying that his sugestion does not help any body to choose the right religion.

and suggesting someone get a home alarm v. no home alarm doesn’t help someone choose the right home alarm

or suggesting someone get health insurance v. no health insurance doesn’t help someone choose the right health insurance

 

[ProdglArchitect]

I think it’s pretty easy to pare down Pascal’s Wager based on what each religion teaches about the afterlife.

Most Eastern religions believe in reincarnation. That removes them from the need for consideration. If they’re right, then you’ll get as many shots as you need, as long as you’re not just the worst person.

So, that means we only need to concern ourselves with religions that have a final, absolute death and afterlife.

These can, generally, be broken into three groups.

1 - There is only one potential outcome, regardless of your behavior.

2 - You need to only be a “good person” to achieve salvation.

3 - There are a specific set of required criteria and behaviors which determine the outcome of your eternal salvation.

Group 1 contains all universalist religions, as well as most pagan religions. It can also encompass the various Calvinist Protestant sects, as your actions have no effect on your salvation in those. There is no reason to concern yourself with this group, as nothing you do has any impact on your eternal outcome.

Group 2 covers a number of the non-denominational Protestant groups, the majority of most modern cults, and most of the non-religious “spiritualists.” This group requires a bit more effort than group 1, but you still don’t need to worry about it that much, since living according to any of the group 3 religions will pretty much guarantee you hit the worldly “good” criteria. (At least as long as you don’t engage in a violent militaristic sect of any of those groups… the mere existence of which may give you pause to consider the correctness of that religion.)

Group 3 is where the real meat of the question comes in. This encompasses your major monotheistic religions around today. I’m not going to get into the distinctions here, that is a topic for another day. The point of all this was to show you that the existence of a plurality of religions doesn’t make Pascal’s wager untenable, it just means that you have to put in some work. The answer is clearly knowable once you examine the individual religions in group 3.

 

[goout]

It’s very easy to complicate Pascal’s wager, as is being done here.

Pascal’s wager is a mathematical thing ok?
It proposes the possibility of infinite return on a finite investment. And if you make the investment and the infinite return is not there, you lose nothing. nothing. It’s a zero cost wager with the opportunity of infinite payback.

Any gambler or investor should take this bet in a heartbeat.

 

[Vico]

HopkinsReb:

Really the only good Pascal’s Wager does is rule out any universalist religion. If you aren’t certain, you can hedge your bets by not selecting a religion that holds that all religions are true, as if one of those religions is correct, you’re good anyway.

You are good when you know what good is and do good. One cannot know what good is when there are conflicts between religions. One asks killing for God and in another God dies for us.

Conscience. Catechism

1777 Moral conscience,48 present at the heart of the person, enjoins him at the appropriate moment to do good and to avoid evil. …

48 Cf. Rom 2:14-16.

 

[MPat]

So choosing the right religion is matter to you. All I am saying that his sugestion does not help any body to choose the right religion.

Well, it does help a little (ruling out atheism is helping), and it can be extended to help a bit more.

But it is true that it does not solve everything on its own. How could a single short argument do that?

The cost is not insignificant.

So, can you give some examples? What “not insignificant costs” of religions do you see?

Naturally, at least some examples should consider “costs” of Catholicism, but it is fine to offer examples of “costs” of other religions as well.

“God doesn’t exist” requires an unobtainable level of evidence (observations beyond the observable universe). To some of us it would be arrogant.

Ex: I can say unicorns don’t exist because they’d exist on land and we generally know where all populations of horses exist. I can’t say an insect with a mickey mouse mark on it’s shell doesn’t exist as there are likely many unknown populations of insects.

Well, then you run right into Pascal’s Wager.

If you think you have no hope of ever demonstrating that God does not exist (or, at least, that God’s existence is unlikely), why act as if God doesn’t exist?

That choice is silly from any point of view.

To avoid this conclusion, you’d better find some extremely impressive examples of “costs of religion”…