If there is no afterlife, And you don’t believe there is an afterlife, Then you will have lost nothing.
If there is no afterlife, And you do believe there is an afterlife, Then you will have wasted all of that effort you put into preparing for an afterlife that never comes.
If there is an afterlife, And you don’t believe there is an afterlife, Then you have lost nothing, because the afterlife will happen to you no matter what and will be icing on the cake after a full life.
If there is an afterlife, And you do believe there is an afterlife, Then you have gained nothing, because the afterlife would have happened to you whether you believed in it or not. Therefore, not believing in an afterlife is a safe bet.
I think that the point that most Judeo/Christian/Muslim folks would make is that it’s the quality of the afterlife that is important, not the existence or non-existence.
As for the second If clause, the belief in an afterlife, and the incentive to do good works and lead a good life because of said belief, is hardly a wasted effort.
A helluva lot of Christians, notably the former His4Ever (using her for example because she has explicitly stated so) posit their belief structure on a fear of Hell.
I’d observe that Tracer’s mechanism, whether valid or invalid, presupposes this causality.
But many Christians and most Jews believe out of love for God, not out of concern for “whether they’re going to spend eternity in the smoking section or not.”
In my opinion, if there is no afterlife, whatever occurs during our lives is inconsequential. No matter who you are or how you lived, plainly put, you will cease to exist.
Now say there is an afterlife ( that obviously we know nothing about ). Out of the seemingly infinite possiblilities of afterlife existence, who knows, maybe the real one is the one similar to Judeo/Christian teachings (or any religious views…). Therefore, isn’t the safe bet to prepare for the afterlife in the best way you see fit?
The human ego for the most part resists the possibility that it will eventually cease to exist. Whenever I fathom the possibility that there may be no afterlife, I simply remind myself that it will be the same as before I was born.
In Buddhism this thirst for existence and becoming (bhava-tanha) is said to be the “most palpable and immediate cause” of dukkha (often translated as “suffering”, but encompassing also impermanence, imperfection, and conditioned states). It is bhava-tanha that is believed to cause rebirth. To escape the cycle of samsara, Buddhism encourages its practitioners to extinguish this thirst (indeed, all desires) and cultivate detachment.
References:
Rahula, Walpola. What the Buddha Taught. New York: Grove Press, 1959.
The thing is, if we really do know nothing about the afterlife, and if there really are a seemingly infinite number of possibilities as to what the afterlife is going to be like … then how can you “prepare” for the afterlife at all? Any preparations you do are going to be wasted if the “real” afterlife doesn’t work like the “imaginary” afterlife you’re preparing for.
What is the merit in arguing against Pascal’s Wager on the same grounds as it’s illogical basis? IANA philosopher or mathematician, but decision theory certainly seems to be paradoxical for cases with infinite values, as mentioned here.
Using the same illogical premise, I think the issue of infinite possible afterlives can be side-stepped. From a fundamentalist Christian style viewpoint, the afterlife is dichotomous and you either get an infinite reward or infinite punishment. The existence of other religions is irrelevant to the 2x2 matrix, the only thing that matters at all is whether their particular model of afterlife exists or not. If it does, then all those who haven’t been “saved” will suffer eternal punishment and the small finite amount of time they enjoyed on earth will be completely negated by an eternity of boiling in a vat of custard, or whatever they do in hell. And only those who are “saved” will have the potential for an infinite pay-off. So no matter how small the odds of them getting this pay-off, it is still worth their while getting their eternal fire-insurance policy by attending church every sunday and following their rule-books and the like.
Say if evolution has a 10^-30 chance of being incorrect, then according to a creationist 2x2 Pascal’s wager style matrix we would be completely deluded if we believed in evolution, as decision theory would dictate to us that their is a greater pay-off to be had by not believing in it, due to the ridiculousness of introducing variables with a potential infinite outcome into a 2x2 matrix and using decision theory to show us the best course of action.
Of course, there is not just one religion that believes that all it’s adherents have a pleasureable afterlife and all others have a displeasurable afterlife. Cults are often a prime example of this. So if I determined the 2x2 Pascal’s Wager matrix for such cults, I would again find that I would be out of my mind not to give them all my money and eat nothing but pumpkin soup for the remainder of my physical existence, or do whatever other rituals they may promote. However, it would be simple enough to find two such groups that are mutually exclusive in terms of membership and as such decision theory has nothing to offer in terms of advice. You’re on your own.
These ridiculous, illogical and contradictory conclusions that can be drawn when mixing infinite values and decision theory. Thus, ANY conclusion drawn by logic such as Pascal’s wager regarding religious affiliation and potential afterlives is flawed. There is NO best course of action predicted by decision theory in this case because decision theory is invalid in cases involving infinity.
as hinted by mrsam, the problem with pascal’s wager is that it presupposes certain beliefs without justifying them.
take, for example, the following:
suppose:
if there is a god, he punishes everyone who is nice to others eternally, and rewards murderers. the more people you kill, the bigger your reward.
is there any reason to believe in pascal’s estimation of god over this one? if this is the god we consider in the wager, we really ought to be out killing people instead of talking about it.
This assumes:[list=A][li]That the “real” afterlife is a kind of afterlife that can be prepared for at all (e.g. maybe the ancient Greeks were right and you end up in Hades no matter what),[/li]
[li]That preparations for one kind of afterlife won’t end up hurting you in a different kind of afterlife (e.g. Ramanujan’s example of an afterlife where murderers are rewarded and nice guys are punished), and[/li]
That afterlife preparations won’t reduce the quality of your life while you’re still alive (e.g. tithes to churches, being jailed for murdering people in an attempt to get Ramanujan’s afterlife reward, etc.).[/list]
The wager in all forms presupposes an ultimate method of evaluating outcomes. When discussing things like perfect metaphysical beings, the reasoning becomes quite circular. The idea Pascal wants to present is that there is a definite way to evaluate “goodness” and there is a belief system that maximizes it based on rewards for being good as well. The infintesimally small probability of its existing is supposedly overshadowed by its infinite goodness ie reward, by seeking the maximum expectation value (The sum of the products of (probability and reward)).
This requires knowledge which is not necessarily undisputed to properly evaluate, since unknown rewards can lead to the Allais Paradox, apparently violating the independence axiom. It also requires a final method of evaluating all alternatives, but since the method of valuation necessarily changes from god to god, there is no context in which to actually compare them.