Pascal’s Wager?

[Anonymous]

“God is, or He is not” is perfectly useless in my opinion. I define God, at least as a start, as the creative force of life – therefore God IS, and from my perspective nobody can argue with that. The question that remains is: WHAT is God? (or what is God’s true nature) …which is a question that is unanswerable as far as science is concerned, . . . but can be immeasurably productive to contemplate for spiritual purposes.

[Anonymous]

This has been a good thread.

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[Anonymous]

wayfarer wrote:

…what would I care what s/he thought of me?

I have always thought as I strive to become a more perfect person I care less about what people think and care more about who I really am.

The petty vengeful jealous descriptions of God are to me glaring images of the people who wrote them, people that could not fully comprehend the patience, love, and self-confidence of a perfect being.

[Anonymous]

DA wrote:

I think Pascal had the right idea other than greatly oversimplifying things into only two basic dichotomies when there are definitely other possibilities that are also worthy of consideration.

This is mostly what I think also.

It would be nice if the complexities of this mortal probation could be boiled down to a nice logical 6-point assumption and choice list.

Since it can’t, it is simply an exercise in the hypothetical, and therefore, any answer is hypothetically valid.

Cadence wrote:

just do your best to be a good person. Leave the specifics of different religions out of the equation

+1

The part most flawed is:

Quote:

If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.

As wayfarer points out, it is a false choice.

Fun to discuss, though. Good thread.

[Anonymous]

wayfarer wrote:

I find pascal’s wager to be completely flawed. “If you win you gain all.” It’s a false choice…I would like to think of god as an enlightened being..If I had a son or daughter who ascribed to me genocide, and then justified it through faithful apologetics, I would be deeply concerned as to his or her moral compass…If, on the other hand, I had a child who took full responsibility for his or her actions, did her level best to make the best out of the world s/he lived in, and cared for neighbor, what would I care what s/he thought of me? Expecially if every description of me is robed in abstraction so vague I cannot be recognized?…I would hope an enlightened god would countenance critical thinking…

Orson wrote:

“God is, or He is not” is perfectly useless in my opinion. I define God, at least as a start, as the creative force of life – therefore God IS, and from my perspective nobody can argue with that. The question that remains is: WHAT is God? (or what is God’s true nature) …which is a question that is unanswerable as far as science is concerned, . . . but can be immeasurably productive to contemplate for spiritual purposes.

Pascal was Catholic and came up with this idea in the 1600s so I’m not sure it is very fair to fault him for not seriously considering nuanced and unorthodox views about God and the afterlife. Basically it was a question of traditional Christianity versus atheism in his mind. To me what is interesting about this idea is not so much what he thought made the most sense as much as the way he approached the problem by facing and openly evaluating what he saw as the strongest alternatives rather than focusing primarily on his own preferences from the beginning and mostly ignoring or dismissing any competing arguments. So to simply say that I disagree with Pascal’s views about God and the afterlife therefore I think he was wrong misses the real point of the exercise that for ideas like God and an afterlife there is no obvious right answer, all we really have is basically guesswork about different possibilities that can’t be directly verified. That’s what is still just as true now as it was then.

[Anonymous]

DevilsAdvocate wrote:

So to simply say that I disagree with Pascal’s views about God and the afterlife therefore I think he was wrong misses the real point of the exercise that for ideas like God and an afterlife there is no obvious right answer …

FWIW my comments are forward looking, “what works for me” and are not about Pascal. I agree there is no obvious, or physically verifiable right answer, that was one of the points I was aiming at.

I think it is always productive to examine the assumptions that our beliefs lean on.

[Anonymous]

Orson wrote:

I think it is always productive to examine the assumptions that our beliefs lean on.

I agree Orson. I tend to have increased respect for individuals that acknowldge that their position is based upon assumptions XYZ but that they are comfortable with those assumptions.

[Anonymous]

DevilsAdvocate wrote:

I think he was wrong misses the real point of the exercise that for ideas like God and an afterlife there is no obvious right answer, all we really have is basically guesswork about different possibilities that can’t be directly verified. That’s what is still just as true now as it was then.

Well said.

[Anonymous]

I rather like Terry Pratchett’s (British Comedic Author)take on Pascal’s wager:

Quote:

Ventre was the Quirmian philosopher (mentioned in Hogfather) who expounded the Discworld equivalent of Pascal’s Wager. He said, “Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it’s all true you’ll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn’t then you’ve lost nothing, right?” When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said, “We’re going to show you what we think of Mr Clever Dick in these parts…”

Source: http://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/index.php/Ventre” class=”bbcode_url”>http://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/index.php/Ventre

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