What Do You Think Of Emmanuel's Wager©?

[wittgenstein]

Thank you for your post. I agree with most of it. Except, I think that believing something without certainty is a bet, even if the bet has a 89% chance.
I also agree that it is impossible to believe something, even if that belief profits me. For example, I know that believing a fat guy rewards me with presents, will make me happy. However, I cannot will myself to believe in Santa.
Please note, that I am not saying that a belief in Santa is as legitimate as a belief in God.
I am making a more difficult point to understand.

 

[wittgenstein]

My favorite parable is from the Hindu tradition. Hinduism is like Christianity, many different beliefs!
According to one Hindu tradition, thinking about God is the way to heaven.
An atheist says," there is no God." He says that every day for decades. Then he becomes 90 and dies. He goes straight to heaven!!! He asks God," why am I here? I never believed in you."
God answers," you never stopped thinking about me for even for a moment."
It is what is in your heart that saves you. Not what you “know”!

 

[Charlemagne_III]

For example, I know that believing a fat guy rewards me with presents, will make me happy. However, I cannot will myself to believe in Santa.

What, no Sanity Clause?

Seriously, it doesn’t matter if you believe or don’t believe in Santa. It may well matter if you don’t believe in God.

I belonged to a Unitarian/Universalist congregation for several years.

 

[wittgenstein]

Oreoracle,
Ignostic? Is that like the character from “Taxi”? I really like that! Very creative and ironic!

 

[Charlemagne_III]

My favorite parable is from the Hindu tradition. Hinduism is like Christianity, many different beliefs!
According to one Hindu tradition, thinking about God is the way to heaven.
An atheist says," there is no God." He says that every day for decades. Then he becomes 90 and dies. He goes straight to heaven!!! He asks God," why am I here? I never believed in you."
God answers," you never stopped thinking about me for even for a moment."
It is what is in your heart that saves you. Not what you “know”!

I agree that atheists cannot get God out of their head, even if they have got him out of their heart.

 

[wittgenstein]

What, no Sanity Clause?

Seriously, it doesn’t matter if you believe or don’t believe in Santa. It may well matter if you don’t believe in God.

I belonged to a Unitarian/Universalist congregation for several years.

What is your response to post 222? And 220 and 221?
Was that a Santa pun?

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Interesting point!
It seems valid at first sight. However, when seen in its totality it is not valid.
If all harmless bets are worth doing then betting that God does not exist is worth doing.

No, betting God does not exist is not a harmless bet worth doing if God does exist.

Betting God does exist, even if you question His existence, is the harmless bet.

What do you lose if you believe and it turns out He doesn’t exist?

 

[wittgenstein]

​

Perhaps ( and as finite minds who are we to know what God thinks?) God does not want us to know that he exists. * What would faith mean? ( like validity vs truth, faith and knowing are not two words for the same concept.)
As I said previously (post 222) if God exists is the only true option, that makes Pascal’s wager a tautology.

• See post 214 for one more reason why believing that God does not exist is what God wants. 2nd syllogism, the one in the middle. Please note that I am not saying that is true, only that it is as likely as any other option to our finite minds.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I don’t see how this is anything new. A person cannot simply believe in case they might go to a hell that they don’t really believe in. This would be like living in a dictatorship and telling the leader that you love him when you really don’t, but that does not work for God since he knows your true thoughts. Besides if a theist happened to choose the wrong religion then they would burn in hell right along with all the atheists. A Muslim could use this argument right back against Christians. They’re hell is worse than the Christian hell so it would actually be a safer bet to join Islam since if you are wrong then your punishment won’t be as bad as if you were wrong the other way.

I guess I’m just too weary to answer once again all these objections. But if you want answers to all these objection straight from the horse’s mouth, read Passcal’s Pensees.

 

[Oreoracle]

Oreoracle,
Ignostic? Is that like the character from “Taxi”? I really like that! Very creative and ironic!

No, haha. Ignosticism is the position that questions like “Do you believe in God?” have to be answered on a case-by-case basis depending on the definition of “God” that’s being used by the person asking the question. I suppose that is true of any question, but the variety of definitions of “God” is especially overwhelming.

It’s an unfortunate name, really. It makes it appear that I misspelled “agnostic”.

 

[DrTaffy]

What do you lose if you believe and it turns out He doesn’t exist?

Intellectual integrity.

The worst thing about the naive version of Pascal’s wager often seen on the internet, in my opinion, is how it mocks and cheapens sincerely held belief on both sides of the debate.

 

[inocente]

No, betting God does not exist is not a harmless bet worth doing if God does exist.

Betting God does exist, even if you question His existence, is the harmless bet.

What do you lose if you believe and it turns out He doesn’t exist?

Doesn’t Satan own the souls of those he tempts to use God as a slot machine?

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Doesn’t Satan own the souls of those he tempts to use God as a slot machine?

So far as I know, nobody uses God as a slot machine.

When you invest your faith in God, you are not investing money, you are investing faith. When you marry a woman, it is because you are investing your faith in her. You don’t expect her to pay off with many coins. You expect her to pay off with love. That is what we expect from God when we invest ourselves in God, rather than invest ourselves in Nogod. Nogod cannot return our investment with intellectual integrity by refusing to believe in God, since there is not one iota of integrity in refusing to believe in God on the grounds of intellectual integrity. The reason there is not intellectual integrity in atheism is that there is no intellect in atheism. That is to say, you cannot prove that God does not exist. It being the case that God might exist, there is intellectual integrity to invest ourselves in the God that might exist. Sooner or later we grow in the conviction that we have made the best investment possible for our lives. I have never heard an atheist say he has made the best possible investment in Nogod. How does Nogod return our love? How does Nogod give us hope and virtue?

 

[Oreoracle]

I wonder how many Catholics “invest” in the possibility that Jehovah might exist, or Allah, or Krishna. After all, no one can prove that they don’t exist. The rewards for believing in them if they exist are great, and there is no penalty for believing in them if they don’t. They are harmless bets. And harmless bets should always be made, so we are told.

Alright, now there are bound to be objections to this. Take any objection you raise to my argument above and apply it to your own god. The fact that Christians never seem to lose sleep over the myriad possible hells they may be condemned to by the endless variety of gods mankind has contrived is proof that wager-style arguments are unconvincing.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Pascal did not believe the Wager, as Christians often present it. He did not believe that you could control your beliefs. He did, however, believe that you can control your actions, and see whether beliefs followed the actions:

“Yes, but I have my hands tied and my mouth closed; I am forced to wager, and am not free. I am not released, and am so made that I cannot believe. What, then, would you have me do?”

True. But at least learn your inability to believe, since reason brings you to this, and yet you cannot believe. Endeavor, then, to convince yourself, not by increase of proofs of God, but by the abatement of your passions. You would like to attain faith and do not know the way; you would like to cure yourself of unbelief and ask the remedy for it. Learn of those who have been bound like you, and who now stake all their possessions. These are people who know the way which you would follow, and who are cured of an ill of which you would be cured. Follow the way by which they began; by acting as if they believed, taking the holy water, having masses said, etc. Even this will naturally make you believe, and deaden your acuteness. “But this is what I am afraid of.” And why? What have you to lose?

But to show you that this leads you there, it is this which will lessen the passions, which are your stumbling-blocks.

The end of this discourse.-- Now, what harm will befall you in taking this side? You will be faithful, humble, grateful, generous, a sincere friend, truthful. Certainly you will not have those poisonous pleasures, glory and luxury; but will you not have others? I will tell you that you will thereby gain in this life, and that, at each step you take on this road, you will see so great certainty of gain, so much nothingness in what you risk, that you will at last recognize that you have wagered for something certain and infinite, for which you have given nothing.

I have no intense desire to defend Pascal’s Wager, but I do hate the way people distort it.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I have no intense desire to defend Pascal’s Wager, but I do hate the way people distort it.

According to Pascal, one must wage.

One must wage that God does not exist.

Or one must wage that God does exist.

There is no escape from making the wager.

What makes the Nogod Wager more likely than the God Wager?

Nothing, since there is no evidence that God does not exist.

The logical wager then is to follow the wager that offers the best possible outcome, as opposed to the wager that offers nothing, not even intellectual integrity.

 

[inocente]

So far as I know, nobody uses God as a slot machine.

When you invest your faith in God, you are not investing money, you are investing faith. When you marry a woman, it is because you are investing your faith in her. You don’t expect her to pay off with many coins. You expect her to pay off with love. That is what we expect from God when we invest ourselves in God, rather than invest ourselves in Nogod. Nogod cannot return our investment with intellectual integrity by refusing to believe in God, since there is not one iota of integrity in refusing to believe in God on the grounds of intellectual integrity. The reason there is not intellectual integrity in atheism is that there is no intellect in atheism. That is to say, you cannot prove that God does not exist. It being the case that God might exist, there is intellectual integrity to invest ourselves in the God that might exist. Sooner or later we grow in the conviction that we have made the best investment possible for our lives. I have never heard an atheist say he has made the best possible investment in Nogod. How does Nogod return our love? How does Nogod give us hope and virtue?

Not if we bet. If we bet then we make the most selfish act possible, a cynical pretense at belief in the hope of the biggest payoff possible, eternal life.

Pascal is running scared of death (“the eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me”) and would make a pact with the Devil himself to get through the nights. So he invents god as a soft blanket, comfort food, a lullaby. But that’s the only reason he has, and he has to try to fool himself and us that his god is the Judeo-Christian God, honest he is guvnor, and that blind faith via self-indoctrination is legitimate.

Pascal is really no different than Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilych, erecting a barrier of belief in an attempt to hide from his terror of Death.

In moral terms it’s a kind of perverse utilitarianism, aimed not at the greater good but at self alone.

You may detect I’m not greatly enamored of the dude.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Not if we bet. If we bet then we make the most selfish act possible, a cynical pretense at belief in the hope of the biggest payoff possible, eternal life.

Pascal is running scared of death (“the eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me”) and would make a pact with the Devil himself to get through the nights. So he invents god as a soft blanket, comfort food, a lullaby. But that’s the only reason he has, and he has to try to fool himself and us that his god is the Judeo-Christian God, honest he is guvnor, and that blind faith via self-indoctrination is legitimate.

Pascal is really no different than Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilych, erecting a barrier of belief in an attempt to hide from his terror of Death.

In moral terms it’s a kind of perverse utilitarianism, aimed not at the greater good but at self alone.

You may detect I’m not greatly enamored of the dude.

More silly-putty logic?

Why would anybody not be afraid of death, especially someone who has just had a close brush with it.

Are you condemning fear of death?

It is not the most selfish act possible to try, as Pascal did, to get atheists to see that they have everything to gain and nothing to lose if they embrace Christ.

You may detect I am not greatly enamored of your logic.

 

[wittgenstein]

As I proved in posts 220,221,222 and 231 the argument behind Pascal’s wager is invalid.
Remember that validity and truth are not two words for the same concept.
Pascal’s wager also employs a false premise. It is not true that if God does not exist and you believe that God exists nothing bad will happen to you.

1. You will not know the truth.
2. You may condemn yourself to unneeded guilt and stop being an open minded free thinker. You will take scripture ( which in this scenario is false because in this scenario God does not exist) as fact and it will divert you from free enquiry and the truth.

 

[wittgenstein]

Post 214 proved that Pascal’s wager is invalid. Posts 220,221,222 and 231 answered any objections to the claim that Pascal’s wager is invalid.