Pascal's Wager: The End of Nihilism

[IWantGod]

Pascals wager rewards the fear of hell. I think this is where it fails because we have no experience of heaven and hell.

But when dealing with the reality we know, I think, pascals wager makes sense when faced with the possibility of nihilism and if a rationally consistent sense of value and meaning is the only reward if we reject it, because we at least have a concept of what its like to have sense of worth and value and meaning in our lives…

Most atheists don’t honestly perceive themselves as living in a nihilistic reality and neither do they take its consequence seriously in their day to day lives, because they don’t realize the absurdity of concepts like meaning, moral value, and purpose in a strictly materialistic reality. This is what allows them to operate with some sense of dignity despite the fact that there is none if they are correct. Thus their lives can continue in the illusion that their thoughts, feelings, and behavior, are not absurd. But the reality is, if nihilism is true, then any sense of existential value that one applies to existing things beyond the concept of utility, be it moral value or some kind of meaning, becomes rationally absurd in so far as it is not consistent with objective reality.

The problem is we need to have meaning, moral value, and purpose to be motivated and function in the world because we are emotional beings and we naturally desire such things. But, more importantly, we also desire them to be true. Most of us are not satisfied with a value that we know is not true.

Pascals wager is for those who do understand the reality of nihilism and the impossibility of living with it on a psychological level. Thus in that context it seems more reasonable to wager that there is a purpose, meaning, and moral value to their existence (and thus there is a God) rather than go through life assuming that their lives have no true meaning, purpose or moral value or that any value they have is subject to the egotistic fantasy going on in someone else’s head or is subject to societies opinions. In fact it seems absolutely absurd for somebody to wager nihilism over theism.

To place ones hope in Theism is a revolutionary act, existentially and psychologically speaking becuase it is freedom from absolute absurdity……

 

[PickyPicky]

Well yes, so you have argued before at length. For myself I don’t see why moral values imposed by some supernatural entity are more real or less absurd than moral values deduced by man’s reason working on the emotional results of our evolutionarily developed empathy. Quite the contrary, in fact.

 

[IWantGod]

Well yes, so you have argued before at length. For myself I don’t see why moral values imposed by some supernatural entity are more real or less absurd than moral values deduced by man’s reason working on the emotional results of our evolutionarily developed empathy. Quite the contrary, in fact.

Empathy implies there is something to be empathetic about. We cannot deduce this from purely materialistic grounds.

 

[PickyPicky]

No, empathy is simply the ability to understand, and feel by analogy, the feelings of others.

 

[IWantGod]

So what are we talking about here exactly? The chemical processes in your brain has made you care about some other object. But why? There is no purpose to it. Physical reality doesn’t have a purpose, its completely blind and indifferent. It doesn’t have a meaning although somehow physical activities in your brain has led you to have a sense of meaning about some other thing. The object you empathize for has no objective moral value.

So we are talking about something objectively purposeless, meaningless, and has no objective moral value; just like any other object be it an insect or a rock. The difference is we see a sense of our selves in another object. But since my existence has no true value and neither does the object of our empathy, beyond a utility value what rational reason do i have to be concerned about the well being of another? Because in this case, we are not dealing with truth so much as we are dealing with feelings and succumbing to those feelings. If someone had no empathy, there is no change in the value of the objects because they have no value to begin with. So the qeustion is, in a strictly materialist reality, does our emotions and feelings make rational sense, and does it make sense to act on them? I think its obvious that they don’t although you may feel compelled to think otherwise.

If a being has true objective moral value then it makes rational sense that we would have the capacity to empathize with their lack of well-being, because to empathize is to recognize a lack of something, something truly good. Otherwise it does not make sense at all. It’s just something that happens.

 

[PickyPicky]

You are obsessed, it seems, with a requirement for everything to have “meaning” (whatever that might be) and “purpose”. I am not. I dislike feeling pain; that is a real sensation (and, actually, it has a meaning and a purpose, if that is what you are looking for). You can tell me my pain has no significance but, believe me, I don’t agree. Empathy makes me share to some small degree in the pain of others, You can tell me that sharing has no significance, but I don’t agree, and nor did Jesus of Nazareth. Acting on our empathy is, he said, the Law and the Prophets.

Our sensations, our thoughts, our empathy, are the result of our evolutionary development. Some Christians hold that development to be purposeful. Whether it was purposeful or not does not affect its reality. I have moral values, you have moral values, my next-door neighbour has moral values. Curiously, they are probably not very different, whether they come from our shared reality or from the intervention of some supernatural personage, and that should give us cause to doubt whether they really come from different sources.

In any case your attempt to distinguish my moral values from yours or yours from my neighbour’s on the grounds that yours are supposedly derived from God and mine from my fallible thoughts and feelings is thoroughly ill-founded. It’s the sort of thinking, moreover, that has an unpleasant history, since it is just one step away from enabling you to suppose me a lesser being, objectively purposeless, meaningless, and with no objective moral value, just like an insect. We’ve seen that sort of thing before, haven’t we.

 

[IWantGod]

I am not. I dislike feeling pain; that is a real sensation (and, actually, it has a meaning and a purpose, if that is what you are looking for).

It cannot possibly be true that something has an objective meaning or a purpose in a reality that has no meaning or purpose. If only physical objects exist, then only physical objects exist. There is not a physical object called pain and a physical object called meaning, and another physical object called purpose floating around in space-time…

 

[PickyPicky]

Pain has at least two purposes that I can think of:

1 it alerts me to damage to my body

2 it causes me to avoid the cause of the pain.

Very purposeful. Very meaningful. Painful, too.

 

[IWantGod]

Our sensations, our thoughts, our empathy, are the result of our evolutionary development. Some Christians hold that development to be purposeful. Whether it was purposeful or not does not affect its reality.

Clearly reality is reality. If you find something to be inconsistent with idea of a purely materialistic reality, then the rational thing to do is reject the notion of a purely materialistic reality.

If i feel guilt and there is nothing objectively to feel guilty about, then clearly my guilt is not rationally consistent with actual events. We all mistakenly felt guilty about something and then realized we had done nothing wrong. In the case of a purely materialistic reality there is nothing wrong or right, and thus to act on a sense of guilt is absurd and the very sensation of guilt makes no sense in a purely materialistic reality.

 

[IWantGod]

And absurd, because there is no purpose or meaning in a purely materialistic reality.

 

[Cyril]

Perpose is ascribed by the beholder. If there is no God you still have sandbox universe to play in. Go find something you enjoy.

 

[IWantGod]

Some people are okay with treating reality like a user-experience; a game that they will ultimately be the victim of. They can make up what ever fantasy they want while it lasts. Truly if an atheist didn’t contrive his own sense of moral value and worth he would go insane.

 

[PickyPicky]

If you feel guilt you can be pretty sure there is something to feel guilty about, even if it is a deed you think you have committed. That is not absurd: it is perfectly sensible.

 

[IWantGod]

If you feel guilt you can be pretty sure there is something to feel guilty about.

That’s a delusion if only physical things exist.

 

[Cyril]

Guilt is a learned emotion not one animals are born with. Guilt makes other people feel better and assured you won’t do it again that’s why they force it on you.

Try having a prisoner go to a parole meeting and just say “I logically understand my actions as wrong.”

They won’t get far.

Guilt is evil and useless.

 

[gregoryphealy]

For myself I don’t see why moral values imposed by some supernatural entity are more real or less absurd than moral values deduced by man’s reason working on the emotional results of our evolutionarily developed empathy.

Your argument either (a) presupposes a defined set of natural laws by which we can deduce (however imperfectly) or uncover some approximation of objective morality or (b) implies man-made subjective morality, which is absurd given that any two individuals could hold exactly opposing definitions for morality with both being equally valid (ie evil = good, which, again, invalidates the concepts and is absurd). If you’re advocating the former, I would ask by what means were we provided the tools with which to deduce this morality? If you’re going to argue evolution, that’s fine, but a God-given morality does not necessarily preclude evolutionary influences.

In any case your attempt to distinguish my moral values from yours or yours from my neighbour’s on the grounds that yours are supposedly derived from God and mine from my fallible thoughts and feelings is thoroughly ill-founded.

I think you’re missing the point. If you left children alone, you’d have Lord of the Flies on your hands because they wouldn’t have a developed moral intuition. It’s something that needs to be taught. However, we are all socialized in a very similar quasi-secular culture predicated on Judeo-Christian values. So, yes, your moral values may not differ from the religious person’s, but not because they’re innate moral values inscribed into your mind from eons of evolution. Rather, they’re a product of a combination of, in my eyes, God-given, evolutionary, and legal mandates, the former two of which were initiated by God.

 

[PickyPicky]

It’s a delusion if you hold that thoughts and feelings are delusory. I on the other hand believe that thoughts and feelings are real thoughts and feelings, however they are produced.

 

[Cyril]

If you left children alone, you’d have Lord of the Flies on your hands because they wouldn’t have a developed moral intuition.

Lord of the flies happened because an extreme situations arose in one case in a fictional work. It has no baring here.

 

[IWantGod]

Its a delusion because there is no such thing as right or wrong in a purely materialistic reality. Thus there is nothing true to feel guilty about.

 

[gregoryphealy]

Lord of the flies happened because an extreme situations arose in one case in a fictional work. It has no baring here.

It’s not an integral part of my argument. It’s just an illustration of how guiding moral philosophies are not something innate. Transplanting individuals who have evolved to the same state of being as you into an orderless system does not guarantee that the same basic moral order will develop as a result of biological evolution.