Pascal's wager

traed said:
It's an argument for people ignorant of the existance of other religions. The whole argument relies on a binary but the possabile religions are in the millions.

deg said:


yep

The argument from inconsistent revelations, also known as the avoiding the wrong hell problem, is an argument against the existence of God. It asserts that it is unlikely that God exists because many theologians and faithful adherents have produced conflicting and mutually exclusive revelations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_inconsistent_revelations

MasterGlyth said:
I am god. Worship me or suffer.
You cannot be sure I am not god, so it is in your best interest to worship me.

Freshell said:
Well, let's get one simple but important point in. It's not evidence. It's an appeal to self interest. Personally I believe one ought to adapt their preferences to facts rather than adapt their facts to their preferences. Seek truth honestly and earnestly and do your best to accept the world for what it is.

Next point. It only works as an appeal to self interest if at least some evidence is provided that God exists in the first place. And not just any God, but specifically a God that rewards and punishes people in the after life based on their belief in him, in this case in the form of the Christian God. To quickly see why there needs evidence presented beforehand, let's keep the heaven and hell parts of his wager but replace believing in the Christian God with believing in the flying spaghetti monster. The flying spaghetti monster will send you to hell if you don't believe in his theology and to heaven if you do. You already don't take it seriously, don't you? That's because you have no reason to believe the flying spaghetti monster exists. You would only take the argument seriously once someone gave you a reason to think there's at least some credibility to the possibility. This kind of reasoning reduces to absurdity when you try to apply it to other things in life. Should you respond to all chain letters just in case it actually curses you? Of course not. And this doesn't change just because you slap infinite rewards and infinite punishments on it. The chain letter could say following its instructions leads to infinite pleasure instead of just meeting your crush and leads infinite torment instead of someone just dying. You won't now do what the chain letter says, I hope.

And let's be very clear. Not only must the person using Pascal's wager provide evidence for a God for it to work as an argument from self interest, but they must provide evidence specifically for the kind of God that punishes and rewards people. Do you find the first cause argument convincing? Doesn't matter. That only supports a deistic God. Like fine tuning arguments? Too bad, that also only supports a deistic God. The philosophical arguments typically made in favor of God lend no credibility to a God that punishes or rewards people, and sadly you need to lend credibility to that idea before Pascal's wager works.

Point is, it's a nonsense argument. It doesn't provide actual evidence that God exists and even if someone purely wants to appeal to your self interest, they have to actually make at least one good argument for a very specific kind of God prior for it to land. Anyone who just comes out using this argument makes their position look very flimsy, which is why literally no one ever leads with this argument.

Cookies said:
lmfao @ neckbeards trying to debate Pascal's Wager like they have any understanding of 17th century religious philosophy this is sad that you come up with such an argument and you don't even understand what Pascal's Wager is and what it means. I pity you.

Freshell said:
You're quite the sadist, calling me out while not even having the decency to show me where I'm wrong. uwu

Freshell said:
Well, let's get one simple but important point in. It's not evidence. It's an appeal to self interest. Personally I believe one ought to adapt their preferences to facts rather than adapt their facts to their preferences. Seek truth honestly and earnestly and do your best to accept the world for what it is.

Next point. It only works as an appeal to self interest if at least some evidence is provided that God exists in the first place. And not just any God, but specifically a God that rewards and punishes people in the after life based on their belief in him, in this case in the form of the Christian God. To quickly see why there needs evidence presented beforehand, let's keep the heaven and hell parts of his wager but replace believing in the Christian God with believing in the flying spaghetti monster. The flying spaghetti monster will send you to hell if you don't believe in his theology and to heaven if you do. You already don't take it seriously, don't you? That's because you have no reason to believe the flying spaghetti monster exists. You would only take the argument seriously once someone gave you a reason to think there's at least some credibility to the possibility. This kind of reasoning reduces to absurdity when you try to apply it to other things in life. Should you respond to all chain letters just in case it actually curses you? Of course not. And this doesn't change just because you slap infinite rewards and infinite punishments on it. The chain letter could say following its instructions leads to infinite pleasure instead of just meeting your crush and leads infinite torment instead of someone just dying. You won't now do what the chain letter says, I hope.

And let's be very clear. Not only must the person using Pascal's wager provide evidence for a God for it to work as an argument from self interest, but they must provide evidence specifically for the kind of God that punishes and rewards people. Do you find the first cause argument convincing? Doesn't matter. That only supports a deistic God. Like fine tuning arguments? Too bad, that also only supports a deistic God. The philosophical arguments typically made in favor of God lend no credibility to a God that punishes or rewards people, and sadly you need to lend credibility to that idea before Pascal's wager works.

Point is, it's a nonsense argument. It doesn't provide actual evidence that God exists and even if someone purely wants to appeal to your self interest, they have to actually make at least one good argument for a very specific kind of God prior for it to land. Anyone who just comes out using this argument makes their position look very flimsy, which is why literally no one ever leads with this argument.

Yarub said:
Amusingly, I really don't see how you (and some other people in this thread) think that if the wager doesn't apply to other Gods, then it doesn't make sense? The wager only applies to Abrahamic God simply because he is the only "God" by nature. The creation of the universe only won't cut it. And you lose no time to contradict yourself. The wager's whole premise is the ambiguity of God's existence. And here you are asking for it to validate the self-validated argument. Good job.

And then your chain mail analogy is flawed. These are eliminated using proof by contradiction.

Pascal argues that a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does not actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas he stands to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (eternity in Hell)

Luchse said:
Oh my such an enlightened being you are... How about you bring something of use to this discussion instead of calling people out?

Cookies said:
Why did you reply to me when clearly I don't associate with people of your lowly stature? Do not respond to this message.

Luchse said:
You clearly "associated" with me by replying to it and since you did so, it appears to be that you are of the lesser kind yourself.

Cookies said:
A King may speak to whoever they wish, but a lowly peasant dare not speak back to the king.

Cookies said:
Update: I am having you executed publicly in the royal gardens at precisely 2 o'clock.

YossaRedMage said:
Hey. Neckbeards. It's a thought experiment. There's nothing to debunk. The level of autistic smug atheist energy in this thread is off the charts.

Now, I don't subscrube the any religions particularly, but I'll play devils advocate in facvor of Pascal's Wager becase there are some pretty bad arguments being used against it.

1. It ignores the other relgions / false dichotomy etc.

Easy to amend the wager for that. Chossing any religion is still a much better bet than being atheist. Atheist option remains the same. That is; nothing changes if you're right, but if it's one of the religions is right and you're wrong, you could be punished if it's a religion that has something like hell or similar punishments.

But if you pick a religion - any religion - you have a chance at some sort of afterlife maybe. The best choice would be the religion with the biggest difference in outcome for believer and non-beliver. One of the chistian ones with extreme heaven / hell kinds of deals.

2. It assumes there is no cost to becoming a follower of the religion during ones life.

True, but if it's church on a Sunday or eternal torture and suffering then it doens't really compare. Honestly, when you get in to heaven / hell, or reincarnation as a big or lion (though tbf any animal other than human would suck), then the afterlife ramifications we are talking about make any cost during ones life irrelevant.

3. God can't be fooled.

Probably the best argument. I'd be interested to hear from people with actual theological knowledge (I'm sure there's tons on here...) as to how relevant it is to most religions how much one actually believes. There are lots of stories of famous relgious figures who struggled with their faith but I'm pretty sure God would forgive them as long as they wanted to believe.

If one looks at Pascals Wager and honestly says, "you know what, I'm going to subscribe to religion" then that counts as wanting to believe. And if one follows all the rituals and maybe even promotes the religion to others...

As I say, I don't know how this stuff works in most religions but I wouldn't surprised if the truthfulness of ones faith is all that important.

Continuing his remarks to the Pharisees, Jesus relates an illustration that features two men whose status, or situation, is eventually changed dramatically. Can you determine who are represented by the men and what the reversal of their situations means?

“But a certain man was rich,” Jesus explains, “and he used to deck himself with purple and linen, enjoying himself from day to day with magnificence. But a certain beggar named Lazarus used to be put at his gate, full of ulcers and desiring to be filled with the things dropping from the table of the rich man. Yes, too, the dogs would come and lick his ulcers.”

Jesus here uses the rich man to represent the Jewish religious leaders, including not only the Pharisees and the scribes but the Sadducees and the chief priests as well. They are rich in spiritual privileges and opportunities, and they conduct themselves as the rich man did. Their clothing of royal purple represents their favored position, and the white linen pictures their self-righteousness.

This proud rich-man class views the poor, common people with utter contempt, calling them ‛am ha·’aʹrets, or people of the earth. The beggar Lazarus thus represents these people to whom the religious leaders deny proper spiritual nourishment and privileges. Hence, like Lazarus covered with ulcers, the common people are looked down upon as spiritually diseased and fit only to associate with dogs. Yet, those of the Lazarus class hunger and thirst for spiritual nourishment and so are at the gate, seeking to receive whatever meager morsels of spiritual food may drop from the rich man’s table.

YossaRedMage said:


3. God can't be fooled.

Probably the best argument. I'd be interested to hear from people with actual theological knowledge (I'm sure there's tons on here...) as to how relevant it is to most religions how much one actually believes. There are lots of stories of famous relgious figures who struggled with their faith but I'm pretty sure God would forgive them as long as they wanted to believe.

Luchse said:
Pascal's wager is an argument that people place their lives on the line by betting on the existence of god. I have never been much of a religious person and I most certainly do not plan on becoming one in the future either (I'm too deep down the Atheism hole) but his argument makes sense.

Have you ever thought of your religious belief in this way and what are your general thoughts on this subject?

Edit: I love how people keep on bringing videos of other people debunking pascal's wager even tho I made it clear that I want to hear your thoughts...

Luchse said:
Pascal's wager is an argument that people place their lives on the line by betting on the existence of god. I have never been much of a religious person and I most certainly do not plan on becoming one in the future either (I'm too deep down the Atheism hole) but his argument makes sense.

Have you ever thought of your religious belief in this way and what are your general thoughts on this subject?

Saucy said:
Personally, my favourite argument for God's existence is rather simple, though still unconvincing:
1. We can all agree that if we can think of something existing, that thing would be better if it could actually exist. Ex: Me having an awesome Ferrari in my mind would be better if I had it in real life.
2. If we can think of God as the greatest being in the universe (omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent), then surely God would be better if He existed in the real world.
3. But nothing can be greater than the greatest thing.
C: Therefore, God exists in the real world.

Railey2 said:
what?? Pascals wager has been refuted for centuries lmao. Do you just not do your research or..

In short, Pascals Wager is a false dilemma, it posits that the only two options are

A) Christian god real - everyone but Christians get punished
B) God doesn't exist - nobody gets punished

now if those were the only two options, Pascals argument would work, and following the Christian faith would always be the better action. But this is obviously wrong, because there's more than A) and B).

How about
C) A scientifically-minded God who punishes people if they turn their back to understanding the world and instead worship things they have no evidence of
D) Hindu gods who punish everyone who isn't Hindu
E) An apathetic god who punishes nobody
F) An evil god who punishes everyone
G) A god that flips coins and punishes randomly
H) A god that is so alien to us that his methods actually don't make sense to us at all, some people get punished but we never know who

so much for Pascals Wager.

Saucy said:



That's actually not a correct characterization of the argument and I don't know why you think someone hasn't "done their research" if they think it's a convincing argument. Just because many people of various levels of credibility have attempted to refute this argument does not mean that you can't be convinced by the argument more than by the counter-arguments. Arguments from probability theory and a priori reasoning are far from being knocked down by counter-arguments.


I don't think it's accurate to say that Pascal is arguing for a Christian God, per se. He would argue that Christians got it right when it comes to the concept of God, but I believe he would also treat Muslims the same way. The argument rests on the conception of an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good, God because He is the only one capable of giving you eternal reward or punishment. Now, that idea itself can be attacked, but the point is that you don't need to be Christian or go to church or any of that in order to make the wager.

The argument is simply about utility and whatever the rewards are, they outweigh the losses in any event. Even if the chance is infinitely small that God exists, you're better to believe it for that same reason.

Railey2 said:




Blowjobs and eating ass are better when it's just in your head, so it seems that your first premise is mistaken and the relationship between how good something is in your mind vs. how good it is IRL isn't as clear cut as you thought it was. Also I have no idea how you get from 3 to C. Complete non-sequitur mode, even if the other premises were correct which they aren't.
Like I can think of the greatest banana, but that doesn't mean that therefore a banana just starts existing because nothing can be greater than the greatest thing, and the incoherency of the greatest banana existing in my mind will force the universe to make a better banana pop into being in the real world.
Idk who first came up with this ridiculous argument, but it certainly requires an extremely indoctrinated mind to even conceive of such monumental nonsense.

Railey2 said:
Pascal clearly couldn't conceive of a god who punishes believers and lets non-believers go, so whatever you're saying, it's pretty clear that his argument presupposes the God of the Abrahamic religions, or at least the type of God that would think and act similarly.

As I said before, the type of God that I suggested with C) immediately collapses his wager, but the thought of such a god being a possibility never entered his mind, because he went through decades of abrahamic religious "education". In short, he was a religiousnut who lived in the 1600s, and his wager clearly reflects that. Not blaming the guy here, he's a product of his time, so it's not like we can expect him to be rational about it, but at least today we can see through it, no?

Saucy said:


That's actually not true. He addressed pagan gods and other types of gods as being a "genuine" option because they lack the consequences of his proposed God. Like I said before, the fact that the Abrahamic God fits his conception of God in general is no happy coincidence, but it's also not a "religiousnut" bias. It's generally accepted in philosophy of religion that whatever God exists must have three properties: omnipotence, omniscience, and benevolence. This was the prevailing view of religious scholars and philosophers for a good reason. It allows us to explain the creation of the universe and the direction of humanity. Nowhere in his argument does he compel you to become a christian. The wager simply states that if you were to act reasonably, you'd have to wager that God exists because you have more to lose by wagering otherwise.

As I said in my criticism of the wager, the fault lies in the prerequisite of the wager being belief. Your objection would fall by the wayside because you're asking people to perform specific things which Pascal isn't. This argument is just about belief in God, not the actual practice of a religion. You don't even need to think of what kind of God may exist, all you have to do is believe.

Railey2 said:
@Saucy yeah still doesn't make sense. If you're getting so hung up on acts vs. objects (I don't even wanna ask why your logic now only applies to objects and that's somehow fine), then just let me change my example from "eating ass" to "ass".

And there you go. You really could've gone the extra mile yourself too.



I understand the argument. Even if I suppose that the premises hold up, it still assumes that the universe somehow has to step up and fix the "inconsistency", it completely ignores that we're perfectly capable of thinking of things that don't exist in the real world.

It assumes that it's somehow impossible for us to think of the perfect being without it being real, but meanwhile I can think of a spinach-pineapple-earthworm pizza and that doesn't mean that there now exists such a pizza IRL that is better than the pizza in my mind.

Not sure why Anselm would assume that this logic somehow changes when you think about things that are perfect, but many things can suddenly make sense if your worldview hinges on it being true.

Why is it impossible that there's a theoretical perfect being that would be better than the image of the perfect being that we have in our minds, except it just doesn't exist? But it would be better IF it was real. That's perfectly compatible with Anselms logic, because that way God still exists on paper, but just not in the real world. Like say you're an engineer and you conceive of a machine that's pretty neat, but you haven't built it yet. The theoretical machine that exists on paper would be greater than the idea of the machine that you have in your head, but it's not necessary for the machine to already have been built for the logic to be true. Existence in the real world is a non-sequitur to Anselms argument, god could just exist "on paper", like that and there would be no contradiction.



And you're wrong, what if there's an alien race whose conception of "perfection" looks exactly like the most yellow banana? Does that then mean that god is in fact a banana that is more yellow than their mental conception of the most yellow banana, because nothing can be more perfect than the perfect being (read: the godly most yellow banana)? According to Anselm, I suppose that would have to be the case.


As I said, absolute nonsense. If your argument allows you in favor of most yellow godly banana gods, it's time to take a step back and reconsider if you're making sense.


yeah, as I said, clearly he couldn't conceive of a god who punishes you when you believe. His Christian faith is shining through, don't you think?
Eternal punishment for having faith isn't something that he thought would be possible, and that's the option C) that I mentioned, which collases his wager because suddenly the penalty for believing is potentially just as high as the penalty for not believing.

traed said:
It's an argument for people ignorant of the existance of other religions. The whole argument relies on a binary but the possabile religions are in the millions.

Railey2 said:
what?? Pascals wager has been refuted for centuries lmao. Do you just not do your research or..

In short, Pascals Wager is a false dilemma, it posits that the only two options are

A) Christian god real - everyone but Christians get punished
B) God doesn't exist - nobody gets punished

now if those were the only two options, Pascals argument would work, and following the Christian faith would always be the better action. But this is obviously wrong, because there's more than A) and B).

How about
C) A scientifically-minded God who punishes people if they turn their back to understanding the world and instead worship things they have no evidence of
D) Hindu gods who punish everyone who isn't Hindu
E) An apathetic god who punishes nobody
F) An evil god who punishes everyone
G) A god that flips coins and punishes randomly
H) A god that is so alien to us that his methods actually don't make sense to us at all, some people get punished but we never know who

so much for Pascals Wager.

Railey2 said:
@Luchse the point is no matter what you apply Pascal's Wager to, it strictly doesn't work as an argument, because in the end we don't know if there's an afterlife, and if it exists we still don't know what exactly we'll be punished for.
The wager argues that believing in God makes sense because that way your chances of not getting eternally punished are better, but as I explained above, this is simply untrue.

It's not tunnel vision. I provided a general refutation of the argument. Pascal used it to argue for the abrahamic faith, but it doesn't really matter because the argument fails no matter what you use it for.

Luchse said:
Yes but the general principle of it is that humans bet their lives on the existence of god which is true. I think orhunaa said how even if someone were to act like he belives in god that omnipotent deity will be able to see through those lies. This is the kind of argument I wanted to see but all I got was "there are other gods so the argument is invalid".

Freshell said:
It's a problem I similarly have with subjective Bayesians. The moment you assign a subjective probability to the negation of a hypothesis is the moment you have assigned an infinite amount of possibilities that are mutually exclusive with a finite probability while assigning a discrete single possibility with a different finite probability.

Which is why I brought up the flying spaghetti monster. It's an old meme, of course, but I wanted to stress the point that people really only take this as a serious argument because they have a cultural bias for the Christian God existing. They're not only ignoring what Gods that have been proposed to exist, but Gods that haven't even been proposed to exist but can be. There is an effective infinity of possibilities such that your starting point for any given individual possibility ought to be zero. And if we're looking at the infinite possibilities of mutually exclusive things you can do to get into heaven, we can't do a probability density function trick to say, "but ahah, we can consider this category and assign a probability and the argument still works."

So my point was simply that for this argument to work, you have to actually provide us a reason why your single case is particularly credible in that sea of possibilities. You don't need to give us the 100% proof, so there was no contradiction in me saying that.

You're missing the whole point of the wager. The whole wager is dependent on God having the qualities of the Abrahamic God (and quite frankly, he's the only proper God is most of religions), there's no point in adding or asking me to try to compensate for "other Gods" because the circumstances of the wager would be paradoxical.

So you're saying is that we cannot release any weather information unless we know the position, momentum, velocity, mass and direction of every gaseous particle in the sky. If the topic at hand is sufficient enough, you either improve it or go along with it.

1. We can all agree that if we can think of something existing, that thing would be better if it could actually exist. Ex: Me having an awesome Ferrari in my mind would be better if I had it in real life.
2. If we can think of God as the greatest being in the universe (omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent), then surely God would be better if He existed in the real world.
3. But nothing can be greater than the greatest thing.
C: Therefore, God exists in the real world.

Freshell said:
@Yarub
There are an infinity of possible Gods with an infinity of possible doctrines who require you to believe in them and their doctrine to get to the afterlife. I can't bet on all of them. Why should I specifically decide to bet on the God of Abraham?

Not at all. I don't know how you derived that from that. I'm saying I only take a claim seriously once there's been evidence that specifically points to it.