Your conclusion was not that a Jr. High football team was superior to an NFL team.
Actually, you’ve shown the opposite. You’ve shown that the Jr. High team is quite inferior, since you have to offer such an absurd bet.
I’m afraid you’ve only reinforced Pascal’s premise. If the bet costs nothing, only a fool will not take it, provided there must be some probability of winning.
Spiritus, great post.
Okay, there is no such thing as objective meaning, can we all agree with that?
Woah Nellie. That’s not what Pascal’s wager is about. Here’s a slightly twisted version of your football scenario:
You’re having a decidedly lame Saturday so you decide to go to a football game. You know the Packers are playing, but you don’t know who. When you arrive at the stadium you find out that it’s the Goddard Middle School Jr. Varsity football team. As you sit down you notice the guy next to you is Bill Gates. Bill makes some comment about how lame this game is going to be and turns to you. “Let’s add a little excitement in this game tonight”, says Bill. "Let’s make a wager. You can choose whichever team you want, but the stakes are a bit interesting. If you choose Goddard and they win, I give you my entire fortune. If you choose Goddard and they lose, you pay me a penny. If you choose the Packers and they win, you owe me nothing and I owe you nothing. If you choose the Packers and they lose, I take everything you own and your my personal slave for the rest of your life. Oh and by the way, refusing to place your bet is the same as choosing the Packers… in other words, you have to play.
The question, in this case, is not who you think is going to win. It’s who are you going to bet on, given the stakes.
[faux Bill Gates]
If you choose Goddard, you become my personal slave for the duration of teh game. If Goddard wins, I will give you my entire fortune at the end of the game. If Goddard loses, you have paid me with your service.
If you choose the Packers, you may watch the game as you wish, determining your own actions. If the Packers win, you walk away with your enjoyment of the game. If teh Packers lose, I will ruin and torment you for the rest of your life.
[/faux Bill Gates]
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*
Let’s put aside Pascal’s Wager and look at Abdul’s Wager.
As I’m sure many of you are aware, it is a central tenet of Islam that the one thing you need to do to be a true Muslim is to say with belief “there is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet”. You don’t even need to say it out loud, Allah will hear it in your heart.
Now the Koran tells us that there is an afterlife and only Muslims will participate in it. With millions of believers, you have to admit there’s a reasonable chance this is true. So the logical thing to do is to say the words and become a Muslim.
Some of you may protest that you’re Christians not Muslims. Not a problem, you can still be Christians; after all, your belief costs you nothing and you stand to gain an eternal afterlife of reward. Rationally, you should choose to believe as a Muslim.
Now can anyone who has been arguing in favor of Pascal’s Wager point out why Abdul’s Wager isn’t logically equal?
Well, I’m not necessarily arguing in favor of Pascal’s wager, but I can see the flaw in your argument… Not really a flaw, so much as a delimma. The Christian God says, “believe in me and only me and that Jesus is my prophet on Earth and you shall have an eternity of bliss.” The Islam God says, “believe in me and only me and that Mohammed is my prophet on Earth and you shall have an eternity of bliss.” This suggests that, not only do you have to choose between God or not God, but you have to choose the right God. Of course the choices are not limited to the Christian God and the Islamic God. The human race have a number of Gods to choose from - all with similar requirements. Some might even argue that they are all really the same God and it doesn’t matter which you believe in. I think Pascal would say that your odds of eternal bliss are zero if you choose not to believe in any God, where belief in one of the many Gods you have to choose from gives you some hope of eternal bliss. Again, I’m not saying that I necessarily agree with this, but I think that’s the argument that Pascal would make.
So going back to your question. Yes they are logically equal, but the terms require that they are also mutually exclusive. I believe that this has already been pointed out as one of the flaws of Pascal’s wager, but maybe you’re headed somewhere with this line of reasoning???
My point was that Pascal and a number of his defenders claim that belief costs nothing. Yet most of them would refuse to proclaim their belief in another religion. So obviously belief must cost something.
There are a lot of things greater than myself that I can rationally determine without faith in any deity: My family, my nation, my ideals and principles, the human race.
