Pascal's Wager

Great Debates
1

Another thread veered off into discussing Pascal’s Wager, and it seemed to me that the question merited its own thread.

As I understand it, Pascal’s Wager is, in essence:

Please correct me if I’m wrong or I’ve left something out.

Now, I have some questions about the terms of this wager.

The first of which is the oft-mentioned “which God?” If you have to pick the right God, then the wager is no longer a no-brainer.

The second of which is, “what exactly do you mean by ‘believe?’” Is it enough to utter the words “I believe in God”? Must one submit utterly to the authority of His priests and/or holy writ? Is it enough to hold values substantially similar to the values promulgated by the priests and the writ?

And would someone please define “genetive God” vs. “ablative God”? It’s been far too long since I took Latin, and I have no idea what y’all are talking about!

He’s the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armor, shouting ‘All Gods are Bastards!’

2

You have the essential formulation right, singledad. I have seen variations, but the core argument remains the same.

You left out some objetions, though:
Is belief actually free? (think tithe, martyrdom, religious obligation, restriction on free choices, etc.)

Is God honest? (Can we in fact know, prior to belief, that the terms outlined will be honored? If not, then how can we factor thoes promises into a rational decision?)

Is it unassailable that the “heaven” promised by a religion will necessarily be the most desired outcome? If I promised you a severe lobotomy combined with continual stimulation of the pleasure centers in your brain, would you tak it? (Yes – this is an extreme example. It is not meant to characterize any particular “heaven”, simply to point out that one man’s “eternal paradise” might not be another’s.)

ablative and genitive are cases denoting separation from and posession by, respectively (well, that is their most common functions, they can also indicate other relationships.) You will have to ask Lib how he expected those concepts to be interpreted with respect to God.

The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*

3

It probably depends on to whom you speak, but when Blaise Pascal mentioned the “wager” in his Pensées, he meant the Christian God. Pascal was a strict Christian and almost certainly would not have considered belief in another God as being acceptable. Pascal’s phrasing:

4

I mention “which God?” because that is the refutation most often cited.

However, let us stipulate for the sake of argument that the choice is truly between the Christian God of the Bible and Atheism. And, let us also stipulate that God will honor the terms of the “wager.” And, let us further stipulate that paradise is indeed the ideal existence for me (since I am considering the wager). Note that IMHO the objections based on the negation of these stipulations are pretty persuasive.

With the above stipulations, the character of the wager is still very dependent on the nature of belief. The question that I’m most interested in is: By what objective means can I be assured that I am “believing” in the correct manner?

If there is no objective means by which I may test my own “belief,” I simply define that I believe and I live my life as before. In which case everyone by definition “believes,” which hardly seems an interesting outcome.

Note that I don’t require an external objective test of my belief, whereby I might prove to another that I believe, only an internal test, whereby I can be assured in my own mind that I am correctly fulfilling the requirement.

He’s the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armor, shouting ‘All Gods are Bastards!’

5

I think we also have to stipulate that this God is dumb/gullible enough to accept that someone’s “belief” is true even when he/she is just in it for the prizes.

6

SingleDad, in Pascals’ writings, he assumed that people believing in God would believe in the God of the Bible, and obey the precepts as set forth in the Bible.

His wager is more a “mathematical” argument for belief (remember that Pascal was a mathematician.) Pretty much it says:

a) Belief in God: infinite gain (perfect happiness) in an infinity of lifetimes.

b) Disbelief in God: no gain for a finite lifetime, unhappiness for an infinite number of lifetimes.

Therefore, to the mathematician, the choice should be clear.

But his “mathematical” argument falls short in many ways: e.g. should there be more “columns” in the “decision matrix” (multiple Gods), or more “rows” (would God reward equally someone that bases their belief in a “mercenary” reasoning vs. someone that had faith without needing evidentiary reasons).

My opinion: it’s an interesting postulate that falls short of the truth but is a good basis for thought.

7

Golf and Arnold both make excellent points. PW seems to be the flimsiest of reasons to hold to a religion. I bring it up only because it appeared in another thread, and it seemed to have proponents, and because I could be wrong and I’m willing to debate it on its merits.

I wished to bring it up specifically in this thread so that its proponents could give it their best shot without distracting from the theme of any other threads.

So let’s have it! If you believe that Pascal’s Wager has rational validity, post now or forever hold your peace!

He’s the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armor, shouting ‘All Gods are Bastards!’

8

SingleDad wrote:

Christ on a weeping rhood! Why don’t we just stipulate that we already know there’s a God, since we know so many things for sure?

The problem that you want to focus on:

Is essentially the same issue as the Many Gods objection that you’ve already stipulated away, if what you mean is `what does God want from me?’

As to what the nature of belief is, it seems distracting to no advantage to couch the question in terms of Pascal’s Wager.

Is this not what your question boils down to?

  1. What counts as belief in God such that it fulfills the requirement to get into heaven. 2) How will I know whether I’ve attained it?

Of course, we run into the old Problem of the Criterion here with belief just as we do with truth. To know whether a proposition is a genuine belief, you’d have to have a valid criterion for belief. To know whether your criterion for belief was valid, you’d have to already know some proposition was a genuine belief.

9

Some refutations of Pascal’s Wager: www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/wager.html www.infidels.org/news/atheism/arguments.html#pascal (This is just one of many arguments on that page.)
www.abarnett.demon.co.uk/atheism/wager.html

Amen, brother!

(You’ll note that on one site, there is an ad that says a Darwin fish makes a nice Christmas gift. Hope the recipient has a sense of humor!)

When all else fails, ask Cecil.

10

Jab - While not supporting Pascal’s wager, I thought I would point out how the argument you’ve quoted is just as weak.

If one enjoys these activities, how can another decide them waste? By this definition it would also be a “waste of a large portion of your life” to belong to any fraternal or charitable organization, meditate in any form, read most books - fact and fiction, and engage in any idle discussion with your friends and acquaintances. Who decides what constitutes a life wasted? Or conversly, a life well lived? I would say it is solely up to each individual.

Logically, then, since churches often use that money similarly to other fraternal or charitable organizations, any charitable giving should be a considered a waste of money.

The brain, like a muscle, is strengthened by use. Even “silly” uses like games, message board debates, and riddles. Strengthening of the brain is what makes intelligence possible. It’s why play is so important in childhood development.

Or perhaps this means that intelligence spent on any endeavor which turns out, after one’s death, to be wrong is “wasted”. If so, I could name a great number of scientist who wasted their life.

This appears to be a benefit for the one arguing against Pascal, rather than a detriment to one who would agree. It’s saying “You shouldn’t do X, because I have no interest in it.”

As we always see in matters of faith, attempts at rational arguements on either side usually fail miserably.

The overwhelming majority of people have more than the average (mean) number of legs. – E. Grebenik

11

I am not particularly a proponent of PW, but I do see his reasoning.

Right quick let me respond a bit to the text Jab quoted.

You could see the time spent as being lost, but you could also see it as performing that which is good for society.

We are social animals. We congregate with people that have similar interests. Going to church and spending time with fellow church goers helps us to keep a connection with other people. We make friends we do things with those friends. We give money not to the church but to help those around us. Churches usually do things for the people of the community. We provide shelters for battered women and children, counseling for the same, shelters for the homeless, money and food for those in need, enlish for non-english speaking people, gyms to give children a safe place to play. These are just a few of the things that churches do. What I am saying is, is that it is not a life wasted.

Back to the OP. Singledad, I can see where Pascal would arrive at this idea. From a believer’s point of view (especially back then) it really is a simple as this. If God does not exist ( and I believe he does, but for sake of argument) then I have truly lost nothing. I have lived a happy life and hopefully I have made the world a better place, so I am no worse off having believed in a non-existant God. If he does exist, then I get all that heaven has to offer.

Now, on your questions about the belief required. It is not enough just to say you believe.

Consider this. Given your above assumptions, also assume that the figure known as Satan in the bible exists.

Satan not only believes that God exists, but he has choosen not to follow him. Therefore belief in God is not enough. One must choose to follow his will.

Christ said that he is the only way to God. “No man comes to the father but through me.” You must believe that God is real and that Jesus came to earth, died for your sins, rose from the dead and is alive in heaven now. Admit that you are a sinner and do not deserve God’s mercy or grace. Repent of your sins (feel sorry for your sins, and choose to not commit those sins again) Ask him into your heart and believe that he lives there and gives direction to you. Follow his direction and live for him.

Is there a test? Not really. As I have said to Glitch in other threads. God does not necessarily appear the same way to all people. You just have to believe that he will do what he said he would do.

Believing in God just for fire insurance is not a very good reason. You need to believe in him because he is just as real to you as others who are important to your life. You choose to either follow him or not.

PW is a no-brainer for the believer, but not necessarily so for the non-believer.

Jeffery

12

The cutting retorts to this are just too easy, so I wil simply point out that Pascal’s Wager is framed in terms of making a decision. If you already believe, PW does not apply to your situation.

I might also point out that een if one accepts the artificial dualism of atheism|christianity, the “requirements” of faith are not clear. Mormonism, Calvanism, Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Manichaeans, Arians, Gostics, etc. have all looked at the Bible, accepted in some manner the divinity of Christ, and come up with radically different answers for what is required of a true believer.

As to the question of whether belief “costs” anything. It does. The cost is demonstrable. You may say that those costs can have other benefits associated with them (charity, fraternity, etc.), but the question of whether those benefits balance teh costs is both beyond the scope of PW and unanwerable in teh general case. I might also point out that not all costs associated with church membership have easily identifiable secular benefits for the individual.

The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*

13

I made the various stipulations in my earlier post not because I necessarily believed in them, but because I want to focus in on what I see as the crux of the bisquit, to wit: ‘if you lose {i.e. if you believe in God and he does not exist}, you lose nothing’

The validity of that statement necessarily depends on the nature of ‘belief.’

The “Problem of criterion” does not really apply; I’m not asking for a means of proving my belief to another (an objective criterion), but of proving it to myself (a subjective criterion).

Let us suppose that I am a sane, rational, peaceful human being. I have been given no information regarding any sort of ‘God’, and I have formed a personal philosophy based only upon reasoning from the evidence of my senses.

Now a Christian comes along, makes the claim of eternal paradise if only I ‘believe’ and presents Pascal’s wager as an inducement.

According to Doctor Jackson, the necessary criteria for acceptable belief are that “one must choose to follow his will” and “Follow his direction and live for him.”

Here’s the rub. If acceptance of this belief, in and of itself, causes me to change my behavior, then the loss is not ‘nothing’. What I have lost is the opportunity to live my one and only life according to my own will and the objective truth of my senses.

Thus, the wager is not so one-sided as Pascal claims. Whichever way I choose, if I win or lose, I win or lose everything.

To my mind, this analysis, combined with the refutations of other aspects of the wager noted by Arnold, jab, pretty much demolishes the original terms of Pascal’s Wager: Instead of wagering everything against nothing, one is wagering everything against everything.

Note: This is my analysis. I could be wrong. I post it here so that if I am wrong, I will learn and grow from exposure to another’s view.

He’s the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armor, shouting ‘All Gods are Bastards!’

14

Spiritus, I guess I should clarify my earlier statement that for the believer PW is a no-brainer.

What I meant was since a believer does believe then it seems to the believer that PW should be a no-brainer to the non-believer. That is if the non-believer were to believe they would lose nothing but potentially gain everything. The believer (not believing in the gods or beliefs outside of their own) can easily see a simple option and not understand why everyone (when presented with this easy decision) does not run to make the same decision that the believer has already made.

However, to the non-believer, they see that there is not only belief in the Christian God, but also possible belief in numerous other religion’s gods and that picking the wrong god is roughly equivalent to not choosing a god at all. And maybe not choosing a god at all is better than choosing the wrong god, because God may can handle your non-belief better than he can handle your believing in a god other then Him.

So, to recap, to a believer, it is an easy two option decision. To a non-believer, it can be a complex matrix, that maybe best left alone.

Hope that explains my point better. Sorry for the confusion Spiritus and others.

Jeffery

15

If I wanted to give money to the poor and downtrodden it could be done FAR more efficiently than to filter it through the coffers of the Church. When I’m driving down the interstate and see some of the Multimillion dollar buildings, it makes me sad to see the money wasted in such a way when people don’t have decent housing in which to live. But of course the preppy middle-class must have new carpet and new paint to further insulate them from the rabble out in the street.

As far as the belief criterion go, I can just see the only question on the Heaven Entrance Exam (HEE) as:

  1. Do you believe in Me?
    (a) Yes (b) No

I guess at that point I’d check yes, but I don’t really expect to get that far.

Here’s a new question, what if I live my life such that it is accordance with your god’s will with the exception of any belief that he exists? I’m a nice guy. I believe in the golden rule. I try to leave things better than I found them. I “feel sorry for” what I feel are my insurgences on others “and choose to not commit those [things] again”. Quite frankly, it seems to me that I’m more repentant for my transgressions than a typical bible thumper is of his. For example, Mardi Gras (translation: Let’s get shit faced and run around naked before we promise not to drink for a few days.) Personally, I’ve got nothing against getting shit faced and running around naked, but I’m not the one making a point out of it, the Catholics are making a point out of not doing such things because it is sinning and yet they are the ones instigating it. Of course, you’ll find a lot of Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, every other Christian and non-Christian faiths ad infinitum. but I’m off on a tangent.

More succinctly, what if I follow God’s will and yet lack belief? What then? If Blaise can get credit for his passionless, empty devotion, I think I should get credit for my faithless devotion. Of course this brings us back to the incredulity expressed by the theist community at the thought that morals exist without It. I’ll refer you now to this same discussion between Lib and Gaudere since Gaudere argued this with much more deftness than I can. I might can find a link if you’d like. I believe it’s in the Atheist Religion thread.

StrTrkr777:

“for the believer PW is a no-brainer.” So you’ve got to be a believer for this to make any sense? I kind of thought that to begin with.

16

I think Pascal was just in essence, saying, "Look, if there is a Good God, and you follow him, Heaven will be yours. But if you don’t, and there is a Just God, you’re cooked. If there isn’t a God at all, you’ll never know. " I think he was just trying to bring people to God’s door; think a little about the possible existence, and let them take it from there.

You can get into the nature/existence of God, but I don’t think you need to go there. He was just talking about the Judeo-Christian God.

Patrick Ashley

‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’ -Edmund Burke

17

The Problem of the Criterion is exactly as relevant no matter to whom you’re trying to prove something. The issue is whether you are justified in believing that you believe as God intended, not whether you can convince someone else that you believe. Any time the question is, `how do we know?’ the Problem of the Criterion arises.

Again, I don’t think we’d find Pascal’s Wager useful in an inquiry on the nature of belief, even if it is what got you thinking about the issue to begin with.

More zany stipulations. =) Let’s suppose I’m the Pope.

18

The context, or frame of reference, is as critical with Pascal’s Wager as it is with anything else.

The most serious arguments against the decision making portion of the Wager, in my opinion, are these:

  1. The Gracious God — Rescher states that it might be God’s nature to bestow His infinite grace indiscriminately to everyone, believer and nonbeliever alike. If true, this would trivialize, or render moot, the Wager.

  2. The Impotent God — Jeffrey argues the God cannot offer an infinite reward because infinite utility is an absurdity, just as God cannot make a rock so heavy that He can’t move it. If true, this would make the Wager a paradox.

  3. The Ambiguous God — Some have said that God might be a slippery worm Who surprises us by being something altogether different than we expected. Mackie in particular holds that there might be no free-will at will, that God might already have preordained who will and who will not be rewarded, and therefore belief and nonbelief have the same effect. If true, this argument makes the Wager pointless and irrelevant.

  4. The Subdivided God — This is probably the most popular of the arguments in this set and you can attribute it to almost any of the writers on it, although I think it was original to Diderot in the nineteenth century. It states basically that Pascal’s God, the Roman Catholic God, might not exist, but some other God, say the God of Wax Paper might. If this argument is true, then the Wager has to be recast with more columns in the decision matrix.

  5. Last, and probably least, there is this more recent argument by James that basically says there could be different ways to wager. Maybe God requires belief a certain way. Maybe you must face West and click your heels three times while you believe. If this argument is true, you’ll have to recast the Wager with more rows in the decision matrix.

I’ll give the probability assignment objections next, and split all this it out so this post doesn’t get too long.

(I might not answer responses until I get the whole thing done, including my objections to the objections, and it might all take a few days. But then, it might not.)

:wink:

19

SingleDad - Picking nits, but:

Those quotes belong to Jeffery, not I.

20

Don’t need to go there? Ricki, it was Pascal brought it up in the first place! He’s a dawg, Ricki! Tryin’ to present me with his clever little wager like it’s that simple! Well, I’m not havin’ it, and he’s gettin’ kicked to the curb! A-B-C-ya, Blaise, you playa!

(to borrow a sig)The Poster Formerly Unknown as Rodimus

“Are you frightened of snakes?”
“Only when they dress like werewolves.”
-Preacher