Pascal's Wager Redux

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Randy_Carson said:
How can something which is preparatory be a nuisance. That’s kinda like saying that going to medical school is a nuisance one must endure before performing surgery. Rather, anyone who is contemplating cutting another human being open with a scalpel is riveted by what they learn in the prep phase.
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Or like saying pregnancy is dismal because it’s preparation for the birth.

I enjoyed every single minute of my pregnancies. I cherished it for what it was, as well as for what it would become.
 
Randy_Carson said:
That would be a clever rejoinder except that when we examine the evidence for these other “gods” closely, we find that it does not hold up under scrutiny to the same degree that Christianity’s claims do.
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Evidence? Could you please be more specific?
 
STT said:
Evidence? Could you please be more specific?
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Well, there’s the historical evidence that Jesus Christ actually walked this planet.
(This is conceded by almost all of academia–even atheists. Only a fringe group of intellectuals deny that the historical Jesus lived. They are in the same group as those who deny the Holocaust, or profess that the MMR causes autism, or that the earth is only 6000 years old.

I don’t see any historical evidence for Zeus, Mithra, Poseidon, Athena, Freyda actually being alive.
 
PRmerger said:
Well, there’s the historical evidence that Jesus Christ actually walked this planet.
(This is conceded by almost all of academia–even atheists. Only a fringe group of intellectuals deny that the historical Jesus lived. They are in the same group as those who deny the Holocaust, or profess that the MMR causes autism, or that the earth is only 6000 years old).

I don’t see any historical evidence for Zeus, Mithra, Poseidon, Athena, Freyda actually being alive.
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Why that should be important matter?

Moreover the history is full of Gods who were given birth.
 
Vera_Ljuba said:
The “no greater love” kind of argument is only applicable to atheists. For Christians only giving up the eternal bliss would be applicable.
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I’d like to see the data on this, please.

If what you say is true, then atheists should be falling over themselves offering up their lives for others out of love.

Can you offer some stats that demonstrate that atheists have stood up, said, “I give my life out of love for this person. Take me, instead, please!”.…in greater degree than Believers?

Otherwise…it sounds like a statement of…

…faith. 🙂
 
PRmerger said:
Well, if there’s no evidence they existed, that makes the stories of their walking this earth…false.
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That I understood but it seems that you didn’t get my point. Why walking on the earth is important fact for existence of God?
 
STT said:
That I understood but it seems that you didn’t get my point. Why walking on the earth is important fact for existence of God?
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It puts Christianity light year ahead, in terms of evidence. of the other gods.
 
STT said:
That is of course is not a good reason to believe in Christianity.
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I can agree with you on this point. The fact that Jesus was a real person does not prove that God exists.

However, acknowledging that Jesus was a real person is important because a real person is very different from a myth or legend. Thus, Jesus is in a different category from other so-called “gods” for whom there is no actual proof of their existence.

Bart Ehrman, a serious NT scholar who is also an agnostic with atheist leanings, wrote:

“But as a historian, I think evidence matters. And the past matters. And for anyone to whom both evidence and the past matter, a dispassionate consideration of the case makes it quite plain: Jesus did exist. He may not have been the Jesus that your mother believes in or the Jesus of the stain-glass window or the Jesus of your least-favorite televangelist or the Jesus proclaimed by the Vatican, the Southern Baptist Convention, the local megachurch, or the California Gnostic. But he did exist, and we can say a few things with relative certainty about him.” (Ehrman, Bart, Did Jesus Exist?, 5-6.)

We have yet to prove, of course, that Jesus is God, but at least we can know that he really existed and that we can know some things with certainty about him.

And that is a very good start. 👍
 
STT said:
How about this?
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A great website that I visit daily to check for new articles. The article to which you have referred concludes:

The mythology and rites of the earliest Mithraists do not present themselves as close parallels to Christian beliefs and practices. When they do resemble Christianity to some degree, they can be found to be dated well after the establishment in the Christian religion.

We have also seen that many of the supposed parallels between Christianity and Mithraism are based on outdated scholarship that relies heavily on the assumption that the Roman cult was a natural extension of the ancient Persian religion rather than an entirely new late first-century system. Therefore, in the opinion of this author, our examination of the evidence is enough to dismiss the claim that Christianity is merely borrowed from this pagan cult.

IOW, Christianity is not merely a copy-cat movement based on warmed-up leftovers from other middle Eastern mystery religions.
 
Bradski said:
As Mike says, you don’t have a choice whether to believe or not.

If I give you some evidence about anything - the existence of aliens, unicorns, gods…whatever, you will either consider the evidence to be reasonable or not. So you will either accept it or reject it to a certain extent. That then defines your belief about the matter.

It is impossible to believe something if you have rejected evidence about it and equally impossible to disbelieve something if you accept the evidence.
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It is not impossible. It is not even hard. There are many cases when evidence is not overwhelming and one can easily make a choice.

For example, neither evidence for P=NP nor evidence against P=NP is overwhelming. Yet I believe that P=NP. Why? Simply because I think I am more likely to discover a good algorithm solving NP-complete problems than a proof that P!=NP. And looking for an algorithm while believing it is not there to be found is harder (it is harder to motivate oneself). Naturally, I am not going to lose much if I’m wrong - I can just change my mind.

Another example is that doctors who have an ambiguous diagnosis act as if they believed that the patient is sick. Once again, not because of evidence (it is, um, ambiguous), but because of different risks.

As we can see, we use such reasoning all the time. Why do atheists act as if there is suddenly something wrong with applying the same reasoning to religious matters?

In fact, it is only hard when one tries to believe against evidence (although I’m pretty sure any of us can find someone who did manage that “feat”). But no one on this thread has claimed that evidence against existence of God is anywhere close to being overwhelming.
STT said:
I have problem with E. How could you justify that?
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In fact, E can be softened: it is enough that not believing in God makes going to Heaven harder or less likely. In that case it is pretty obvious that guessing right makes it easier to act as one should.

For example, going to Mass and receiving sacraments makes going to Heaven easier. But you won’t do that without at least an “imperfect faith”.
rossum said:
And also their demerits: “If I believe in the Christian God, and I am wrong, then Allah will smite me.” You need to consider the downside of any choice as well as the up side.
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Actually, it is at least arguable that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. And even if Muslims are right, being a Catholic is a much better option than being an atheist. In fact, the same is true for many other religions - the only alternative is that one doesn’t lose much. For example, if Mormons are right, one can still be baptised after death - not that much of a loss. Or, if Buddhists or Hinduists are right, one can still try again after reincarnation - also not that much of a loss.

And, of course, as PRmerger has just mentioned, evidence for Catholicism is much stronger than evidence for some random paganism.
Mike_from_NJ said:
  1. What benefit would come if I, someone who doesn’t believe there is enough evidence of the Catholic god, get from praying or going to church other than going through motions? Giving to the poor I already do. That can be done independently of being a Christian.
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If imperfect contrition (being sorry for one’s sins just because of fear of Hell or something similar) is sufficient with sacramental confession (see, let’s say, catholic.com/encyclopedia/attrition-or-imperfect-contrition), why should we be so sure that “imperfect faith” won’t be sufficient with sacraments and the like?
 
Randy_Carson said:
Of course He would. But this does not bother Him anymore than it bothers a father to give his children the money they need to buy him a Christmas present. God is able to work with the heart that is willing to take baby steps.
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As I’ve noted in the past this method of getting a person to believe in his existence can charitably called circuitous. If the purpose of one going through the motions is to lead one to believe in him, there are far easier ways and far more effective ways.
What benefit would you get? Your question assumes that you will end your days as a nominal church-goer as indifferently as you began them. I think the Holy Spirit has planned for you.
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I think for a vast majority of people who have gone through the motions that would be the case. If you check some of CAF’s threads in places like the evangelization sub-forum as well as other places online you’ll see some variant of the question “My high schooler/collegiate child says he/she is an atheist! What do I do?” While some will call for pushing the child to maintain attending church and church programs, more say that forcing them will make them resent the faith. In general, people don’t like doing things because they feel they have to especially if they see minimal worth in it (if any).
Whoa. What I actually said was…well, you can refresh in the post above. My point is that if we do those things which God has called us to do (pray, give alms, etc.), our hearts will be open to the needs of others and to His will. Jesus specifically said that whatever we do for the least of those among us, we do for Him. In caring for others, you will be changed for the better.
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What you said was “Such behavior will not fail to have an effect upon the will and emotions which would lead one to a true faith position.” The key word there is true. As I showed attending service and following the practices of a non-Christian is just as likely to lead one to a faith position that you would not consider true (although as I noted in my earlier post that I don’t think such shifts from going through the motions to full-on belief happen in a majority of cases). And as I mentioned I know a great many people (myself included) who do good for the less fortunate to do good. In some cases they don’t belong to a faith. In some cases they hold to a faith but would be just as giving if they didn’t because that’s the type of people they are. Surely there are some whose charity and faithfulness are tightly bound, but you can’t ignore those people who are charitable and not faithful or vice versa to try and fit it into an argument.
Bingo! And this is why Pascal’s Wager is actually so powerful. Because, yes, if you do the things that [insert religion here] require, then you will begin to think and act more like an adherent of that religion.
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As I noted above I disagree with that notion. Calls not to force young adults into faith attendance and practices for fear of pushing them out of that faith seem to back me up.
Thus, the person who BEGINS with the low-level notion of simply saving his own skin may be transformed into someone who ENDS with a deep love of God, Allah, Yahweh, etc.
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You have done well here.
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Now, we could discuss elsewhere WHICH of these faiths you should choose, but that is not really at issue with regard to the logic of Pascal’s Wager.
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The wager fails on so many levels, not the least of which that the question of which god or gods is brushed aside by those who would use it to push a very specific god.
Why [would someone be punished for going through the motions of Christianity yet in the end not believe]?
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It’s a vital question. Let’s say Zap Rowsdower is convinced by your argument on going through the motions of Christianity. He attends Catholic Church every week. He prays daily. He watches videos from Fulton J. Sheen at every opportunity. On his deathbed it didn’t help. It just didn’t add up. No amount of wanting it to be true led him to believe it true. So now have two scenarios:

Scenario 1) Zap dies and God judges him. He finds that even though he doesn’t believe Jesus was his lord and savior (something the Bible is says is necessary to avoid Hell) that he appreciates the effort and sends him to Purgatory and eventually Heaven. In this scenario we now know that belief in Jesus isn’t necessary, just performing the rituals is enough.

Scenario 2) Zap dies and God judges him. He knows that Zap is not invincibly ignorant since he spent a great deal of time trying to make sense of Christianity. Since he didn’t believe he is sent to Hell. In this scenario we have what I termed earlier The Problem of Punishment For Reasonable Disbelief. God is said to create man to be rational, but then punishes him for being rational.
I agreed with you on this point already. I stand ready to show you why Catholicism is the one true Church established by God. But that is the stuff of other threads.
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I’ve been on more than a few of those threads 🙂
I have no reason to believe that you are dishonest, but if you say that God does not exist, then I stand by my statement that you are ignorant on that point.
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But that’s just it. The whole point of the wager is to take the existence of your god from a neutral position when the person making the wager doesn’t see the evidence for him, yet you’re expecting people to accept wholesale that he’s there. If they don’t you’re saying they’re dishonest, ignorant, or both.
 
Randy_Carson said:
That would be a clever rejoinder except that when we examine the evidence for these other “gods” closely, we find that it does not hold up under scrutiny to the same degree that Christianity’s claims do.
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It’s easy to dismiss other faiths out of hand, but it is not an accurate portrayal of someone making the wager. Not only do we have to take into account the various non-Christian faiths but also the various flavors of Christianity. That entails more than just Baptist, Orthodox, or Catholic. It’s the various sub-beliefs within each. Two people can say God and mean two very different things. There are many factors to take into account. Honest and intelligent people have chosen many different faiths and more than a few have said none.
Randy_Carson said:
Not if He shows up. Then His presence is evidence of His existence. 😉
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Yes, if he were to show up then it would be unreasonable to doubt his existence. Until then we have to decide on his existence in a way that we don’t have to determine the existence of anything else.
As for seeking out the God who does not exist, I think this occurs when the non-believer is confronted with new information…usually as a result of a nagging question that demands to be answered.
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Are believers immune from such nagging questions? Have we not seen the many believers who have struggled in later years with the problem of divine hiddenness? Isn’t the greatest concern to believers not the question of unanswered prayer? As we have gotten into information age with the internet allowing us to learn so much of the world’s faiths haven’t there been believers who’ve questioned why they belong to the faith of their parents and how the assurance that they’ve been given that their faith is true is not dissimilar to how competing faiths tell their followers why theirs is the true faith.

We are tiny specks in the universe, and non-believers are not alone in questioning our place within it. The fact that we ask these questions is in no way a tick in favor of theism – as evidenced by doubting theists struggling to also find their place. It’s human nature.
 
Just as my climate change version of Pascal’s wager doesn’t seem to work for climate change deniers, I don’t think Pascal’s wager works very well for atheists & agnostics.

What I think of whenever I have any doubts is the Apostles. They knew Jesus & saw miracles that astounded them, esp the resurrection & the predictions of Jesus coming true – so they truly believed what Jesus taught re God & heaven.

The important point about the Apostles is that they were not elites, but peasants. I love the part in Last Temptation of Christ (the movie - I can’t remember the novel) when Judas, confounded & disgusted by the lowliness of the Apostles, asks Jesus, “Where did you get these men?!”

Now the Apostles didn’t have anything to gain by lying; they even had doubts & misunderstandings about Jesus until the resurrection & thereafter. In fact they were scared to death at first to tell what they knew about Jesus, until the Spirit gave the courage. And they suffered at various times, esp in their deaths, for their witness.

So we either believe them or we do not.

“Faith comes through hearing (the Gospels, the words of the Apostles).”

And sometimes God gives special “insights” to some people.
 
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