Pascal's Wager

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Kadark

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"Pascal's Wager (or Pascal's Gambit) is the application by the French philosopher Blaise Pascal of decision theory to the belief in God. It was set out in the Pensées, a posthumous collection of notes made by Pascal towards his unfinished treatise on Christian apologetics.

The Wager posits that it is a better "bet" to believe that God exists than not to believe, because the expected value of believing (which Pascal assessed as infinite) is always greater than the expected value of not believing."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager

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Essentially, here are the options Pascal outlines:

Believing God exists:

If God exists, you go to heaven: your gain is infinite.
If God does not exist, you gain nothing & lose nothing.

Believing God doesn't exist:

If God exists, you go to hell: your loss is infinite.
If God does not exist, you gain nothing & lose nothing.

Would any rational gambler risk eternal damnation for a few sinful pleasures?

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So, let's hear your thoughts on Pascal's wager. A good, compelling argument against atheists, or is it flawed?

NOTE: If this thread is a repeat, then I apologize. I haven't been around here too long, so please be considerate. Thank you.
 
It's a repeat, but the wager is indeed flawed.

If you believe in God, but God doesn't exist, it's not true that you lose nothing. There could be a Thor, in which case you're screwed.

God may exist, but heaven may not. Screwed.

If God exists and you believe in him just so you don't go to hell, He would see through that.

If God doesn't exist, and you don't believe in Him, then you may be compelled to find alternative explanations for your existence, which means you might have everything to gain.
 
If you believe in God, but God doesn't exist, it's not true that you lose nothing. There could be a Thor, in which case you're screwed.
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I am not too knowledgeable on Thor, other than the fact that he was a mythological character. Does Thor say he created all the universe? Does he say anything about life after death? Any religious followers? Any religious books?

God may exist, but heaven may not. Screwed.
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I believe Pascal would be referring to the Judaeo-Christian God, so hence, the Bible and Christianity. Islam, too, would claim heaven to exist. Many religions to my knowledge claim some sort of afterlife for the believers. I suppose it depends on which denomination of God you believe.

If God exists and you believe in him just so you don't go to hell, He would see through that.
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Not true. A belief in God is enough to warrant heaven, be it from fear/love/etc.

If God doesn't exist, and you don't believe in Him, then you may be compelled to find alternative explanations for your existence, which means you might have everything to gain.
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But ultimately, when you die, there is nothing in it for you (assuming no God).
 
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I am not too knowledgeable on Thor, other than the fact that he was a mythological character. Does Thor say he created all the universe? Does he say anything about life after death? Any religious followers? Any religious books?
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I just use Thor as a convenient example. There are innumerable mythologies that could just as well be true. The point is that it's a false dichotomy. It's not just Christian vs. Atheist, but Christian vs. every other religion in history. Believe in one, and you disbelieve another (mostly).

I believe Pascal would be referring to the Judaeo-Christian God, so hence, the Bible and Christianity. Islam, too, would claim heaven to exist. Many religions to my knowledge claim some sort of afterlife for the believers. I suppose it depends on which denomination of God you believe.
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I'm just suggesting that God, even if He exists, may not exist with all the attributes reported in the Bible.

Not true. A belief in God is enough to warrant heaven, be it from fear/love/etc.
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That is not true for all brands of Christianity. Belief from fear is not the same as belief just to hedge your bets.

But ultimately, when you die, there is nothing in it for you (assuming no God).
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I happen to think when you die, there is no more "you". However, you might have much to gain from being an atheist. Some of those "trivial sins" (like sex) might just be the things that make life worth living. In other words, they may be central to life, not trivial. Living for the promise of a future paradise after death can (and does) have severe consequences to your personality and mental health, to say nothing of the state of humanity on Earth.
 
A belief in God is enough to warrant heaven
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This assumption is one of the most significant flaws of pascal's wager: you cannot proove that this is true, and if it isnt, then you loose. Perhaps god only allows those into heaven who do their best to find truth (eg philosophers, even atheistic ones,) rather than those who simply believe in god for an easy ticket to paradise.

Now pascal's wager talks about possibilities, but let's analyze the possibilities as Pascal's wager hardly takes them all into account, presenting: the Not Pascals-Wager Wager.
Since this is a question of beleif in an unprooven idea, the possibilities become limitless. That is, there are an infinite many beleifs one could have, and they could be mutualy exclusive (eg, a god that wants you to commit suicide vs the catholic god. Having no evidence, neither one is more correct) Thus we now have an infinite many options to cast our beleifs in.
If we assume equal probability in each idea (we have no basis to say one would be more likely) then the chance of you picking one idea to be your faith, and you getting it right is: 1/the number of possibilities. there are infinite possibilities, thus the chances of your belief being right is: 0.
the limit of 1/x as x approaches infinity is 0.
Since now your beleif will be wrong by this probability, you might as well take what joy you can during your lifetime on earth, and hope god is understanding.

Anyway, just food for thought.

-Andrew
 
Kadark said:
"Pascal's Wager (or Pascal's Gambit) is the application by the French philosopher Blaise Pascal of decision theory to the belief in God. It was set out in the Pensées, a posthumous collection of notes made by Pascal towards his unfinished treatise on Christian apologetics.

The Wager posits that it is a better "bet" to believe that God exists than not to believe, because the expected value of believing (which Pascal assessed as infinite) is always greater than the expected value of not believing."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager

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Essentially, here are the options Pascal outlines:

Believing God exists:

If God exists, you go to heaven: your gain is infinite.
If God does not exist, you gain nothing & lose nothing.

Believing God doesn't exist:

If God exists, you go to hell: your loss is infinite.
If God does not exist, you gain nothing & lose nothing.

Would any rational gambler risk eternal damnation for a few sinful pleasures?

---

So, let's hear your thoughts on Pascal's wager. A good, compelling argument against atheists, or is it flawed?
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very flawed

IF god is ALL KNOWING,it knows you are sucking up,
you are spineless groveling irrational blindly faithful wuss,whos got no balls to stand up and face reality on your own,

so if this god was truly righteous he would not like anyone like that,
he would apreciate those who think on their own,who use reason, logic in their lifes and have guts enough (even when threatened with hell) to say :
SHOW yourself ...god!
and prove to me you exist.
 
Belief isn't something that can be switched on and off at will. Pascal's Wager basically states "You should pretend to believe in God just in case he exists", and as far as I know just pretending to believe would get you nowhere anyway.

So, it's flawed.
 
Hair-splitting aside, the problem with Pascal's Wager is that it elevates greed as the motivation of faith.

If God exists, who here thinks It won't notice what's in a person's heart?
 
Yep, the two major problems with Pascal's wager were dealt with with alacrity :) (the q. of which god, and the q. of insight into pretense at faith).

It also assumes of course that christianity is right in that being a non-believer damns one to a hell. God's existence or non-existence has little to no effect on what humans think are his motives. Side note, a god's existence does not prove hell's existence, or even heaven's.
 
Kadark said:
If God does not exist, you gain nothing & lose nothing.
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I always find it hilarious when people who obviously don't actually know anything about Pascal and haven't read his writings try to paraphrase his arguments.

Obviously you have something to lose if you believe in a false god - you will lose your one chance to lead a life that is free of superstition and arbitrary restrictions. That's pretty freakin' obvious! So what's the deal? Was Pascal an idiot? No, Pascal was actually a really intelligent guy. It's the people who try to paraphrase him without having ever actually read his works who are idiots.

Pascal himself very explicitly states that you do have something to lose if you believe in god when he doesn't actually exist. When talking about his "wager," Pascal wrote:

"You have two things to lose, the true and the good; and two things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and misery."

So it's a little more complicated than "you gain nothing and lose nothing." Pascal's wager is actually a pretty sophisticated argument that relies on the mathematical concept of "expected value," which was a field of mathematics that he helped found. If you want a really through analysis of Pascal's wager, check out:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/
 
I always find it hilarious when people who obviously don't actually know anything about Pascal and haven't read his writings try to paraphrase his arguments.
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I have read his arguments, and I posted the same wager that wikipedia shows, along with a myriad of other websites which show the identical argument.

"You have two things to lose, the true and the good; and two things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and misery."
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Are they trying to keep this information secret? Even websites which discredit and "disprove" Pascal's Wager display the same argument I showed at the starting of this thread.

So it's a little more complicated than "you gain nothing and lose nothing." Pascal's wager is actually a pretty sophisticated argument that relies on the mathematical concept of "expected value," which was a field of mathematics that he helped found. If you want a really through analysis of Pascal's wager, check out:
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And how many people, by show of hand, understand the "sophisticated mathematical argument"? I was trying to make a thread in which everybody could comprehend and give their own viewpoint in. If I was trying to discuss the mathematical aspects of Pascal's Wager, I would have posted this in the math and physics forum.
 
Kadark said:
Are they trying to keep this information secret? Even websites which discredit and "disprove" Pascal's Wager display the same argument I showed at the starting of this thread.
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Well, it's in Pascal's Pensées, the book where the whole idea originated. There are plenty of English translations...surely there are some available online. I suspect that many of the web pages that want to disprove Pascal's wager prefer to use the dumbed-down "you have nothing to lose" version because it's trivially easy to rebut – all you have to do it point out that you do, in fact, have something to lose. Rebutting the actual argument is somewhat harder.
And how many people, by show of hand, understand the "sophisticated mathematical argument"? I was trying to make a thread in which everybody could comprehend and give their own viewpoint in. If I was trying to discuss the mathematical aspects of Pascal's Wager, I would have posted this in the math and physics forum.
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The problem is that the usual dumbed-down version of the argument (in which people claim that there is nothing to lose if one believes in a god that does not exist) is so obviously absurd that it's not really worth serious discussion. Even if you don't think that the truth has any inherent value, it's blindingly obvious that Christianity places many arbitrary restrictions upon people's lives that will end up costing a believer if the Christian god turns out to not exist. The bulk of Pascal's writing on his "wager" was using the mathematics of expected value theory to compare the two alternatives, since clearly you can't just say "you stand to lose nothing if you believe in god."
 
Suppose I were to tell you that if you believe in Grimmy, King of the Elves, there is a 50% chance that he will appear before you some day and give you his pot of gold.

In fact, I *am* telling you: if you believe in Grimmy, King of the Elves, there is a 50% chance that he will appear before you some day and give you his pot of gold.

Using the logic of Pascal's Wager, you have nothing to lose by believing in King Grimmy, and a 50% chance of gaining a fortune. There is no advantage to not believing and no cost to believing. Even if I told you that I just made Grimmy up, you are still better off believing in him on the off chance that either (i) I was magically inspired by Grimmy or his many elfin servants or (ii) that I am lying when I say "I just made him up."

Are we to believe that Pascal would have therefore accepted the existence of Grimmy?
 
This Grimmy parallel is oversimplified, since Pascal's wager includes a restriction of one's life based on following the rigors of christianity. "Grimmy" has no religion to follow.
 
Pandaemoni said:
Using the logic of Pascal's Wager, you have nothing to lose by believing in King Grimmy, and a 50% chance of gaining a fortune. There is no advantage to not believing and no cost to believing. Even if I told you that I just made Grimmy up, you are still better off believing in him on the off chance that either (i) I was magically inspired by Grimmy or his many elfin servants or (ii) that I am lying when I say "I just made him up."
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That's a humorous, but also very accurate description of one of the major problems with Pascal's wager. Using the exact same logic, you can justify belief in an infinite number of different things.
 
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