Why is Pascal's Wager a Dead Letter?

[Farmer_Jane]

@Paul_in_Qatar

OK, play nice, I want a real answer here.

Why is Pascal’s Wager invalid? Over in the Pit people are saying it is not worth discussion. Why not?

The Wager certainly does not prove God’s existence. I maintain there can be no such proof, but what is wrong with the argument itself?

I think I can go from memory and say the line of reasoning is something along the lines of, “Ought I to believe in God? Well if I do and I am wrong, I lose nothing. If I don’t and I am wrong I lose a great deal. Therefore I ought to act as if God exists in order to be safe.”

Why is that so unworthy of consideration?

I followed the same line except for the ‘safe’ part. It was, “Acting as though I do won’t bring harm.”

(But…you can take that to mean lot of different things…)

[BrainGlutton]

Look, here’s the Straight Dope: From Revelation X: The “Bob” Apocryphon, Chapter 8: “Heaven and Hell”:

Everything written regarding Hell in all bibles, from the Zoroastrian up through Dante to Chick Comics, is literally true (except the name of the author). The traditional Hell exists, complete with Lake of Fire, demons, and eternal torment; they aren’t lying about that. What they don’t tell you is that only religious people go there.

It’s a rare SubGenius that ends up in this Normal Hell, the lowest rung of the Ladder of Beforelives. THE HELL CLAUSE states that Hell is reserved for those who believe in it, and the lowest Circle is for those who think that if they don’t believe in it, they’ll go there. Hell is JHVH-1’s revenge on those who insult His intelligence by thinking He is as simple-minded, cruel and vengeful as THEY are. The Devil’s job is to pester them, to milk out every last drop of human faith and credence. Satan manages Hell, and it’s a very busy place these days, but his responsibilities regarding earthly life cover only religious nuts. JHVH-1 assigned him to create some kind of secondary Hell on earth, so Satan devised the idea of multiple religions, all believing in his existence but hating each other even more than they hate him. (In the end it doesn’t really matter whether those Normals are “good” or “bad” in life; Satan and JHVH-1 divvy up the souls 50-50, at random.)

<snip>

Pink Heaven (frequently misidentified as Christian Heaven or Islamic Paradise) is nothing but a more sophisticated Hell, with air conditioning. In many ways, it is far worse. At least in Hell, you know where you stand. The sheep in Heaven can’t even guess how utterly doomed they truly are.

“Heaven” is only the second rung up the Beforelife ladder, and, like Hell, is reserved for believers. It consists of an absence not only of pain, but also of pleasure.

Great deal, huh? You’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. Disobedient souls burn in Hell forever, but obedient souls “belong to God.” As if making you an employee all your LIFE wasn’t bad enough, you’re enslaved in the AFTERLIFE as well! You get all the joy of a fundamentalist’s lifestyle, with no hope of release – not even death!

<snip>

In “Heaven” there dwell certain hungry, rapacious predator spirits, called Theocrats, which vampirize the PPQF of weaker spirits in order to “live” forever at the expense of their victims.

"The Theocrats enslave other spirits to provide psychic energy, just as slaves or employees on Earth provide physical labor . . . They obtain these victims by posing as gods and persuading the religious believers to come to them voluntarily after death thinking they are entering “eternal bliss in Heaven.”

"Many notorious tyrants, conquerors, evil religious leaders, black magicians and criminals have become Theocrats after death, but so have some saints and benign geniuses. Power corrupts and the prospect of achieving immortality corrupts even more. Many people with highly developed souls, whose earthly lives were lived quite ethically, chose to become Theocrats after death . . . This has been especially true for people who were religiously devout, then found out the horrible truth about the gods after death.

"The daily activities of a Fundamentalist Theocratic band organized as Heaven are similar to a church service as such sects hold them on Earth, except that they go on perpetually. The Theocrat in charge poses as the Lord God Jehovah, and subordinate Theocrats pose as Christ, various Angels and Apostles, and so forth. “God” quotes the same Biblical passages and preaches the same sermons as preachers in the same sect do on Earth, and the congregation joins in singing the same hymns. . . . The Theocratic leaders then channel this collective psychic energy . . . For instance, there are dead Christians who think they are in Heaven, sitting around the throne of Jehovah “eternally singing his praises,” when they’re really just his slaves and possibly his dinner as well. Now you understand the real significance of “Holy Communion.”

". . . As fanatical belief in organized religion declines in the modern era, the Theocrats have even devised ways to persuade atheists and agnostics to join Theocratic bands after death. The most common is simply to invite them to join what appears to be a community of spirits that includes some of their previously-deceased relatives or friends, or some famous person they greatly admire . . . There are also “Heavens” whose “gods” claim to be politicians, movie stars, writers, scientists, rock stars, or even fictional characters."

– excerpted from Kyle Griffith’s War in Heaven.

The most insidiously cruel aspect of Pink Heaven/Normal Hell is that it’s all self-inflicted punishment. Nothing happens to those souls that they didn’t ask for, that wasn’t self-devised down to the smallest detail. And nastiest of all, just as their store of anguish is about to be used up, they are TOLD they could escape if only they would stop believing – BUT THAT ONLY MAKES IT WORSE. For, there they are, right in the thick of it, with flames searing their skin, or etheric vampires slowly devouring their very essence . . . so it’s just a bit difficult NOT to believe in it.

But there is hope! Now you can save your soul from Heaven! Just send it with $30 for shipping & handling costs to:

The Church of the SubGenius
c/o Reverend Ivan Stang
P.O. Box 181417
Cleveland Heights, OH 44118-1417

Eternal salvation guaranteed – OR TRIPLE YOUR MONEY BACK!

[colonial]

[COLOR=black]Any statement made by the great literary and mathematical genius[/COLOR]
[COLOR=black]Blaise Pascal commands attention. However, this is a case where [/COLOR]
[COLOR=black]he [/COLOR][COLOR=black]succeeds only in being provacative, for there are many [/COLOR][COLOR=black]reasons [/COLOR]
[COLOR=black]his [/COLOR][COLOR=black]“Wager” is philosophically unsuccessful. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=black]Others have already pointed out two problems, namely that the God[/COLOR]
[COLOR=black]presumed by Pascal is not the only one possible, and that the God Pascal[/COLOR]
[COLOR=black]does presume would know the motivation for the choice, and might[/COLOR]
[COLOR=black]take offence.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=black]Following up on the Nature of God, almost everyone of Pascal’s day[/COLOR]
[COLOR=black]believed in eternal damnation. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=black]Somehow the complete and utter depravity of a God capable of passing[/COLOR]
[COLOR=black]such judgment seems to have occurred to no one. Somehow the incoherence[/COLOR]
[COLOR=black]of attributing a capacity for love to such a God seems to have occurred [/COLOR]
[COLOR=black]to no one. Somehow it seems to have occurred to no one that such a God [/COLOR]
[COLOR=black]could only be a satanic beast, and his own AntiChrist.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=black]A foundation tenet of philosophical Pragmatism is that if faced with a choice [/COLOR]
[COLOR=black]of unproven alternatives always choose the one which most enhances human [/COLOR]
[COLOR=black]existence. An existence where anyone might be condemned to Hell by their [/COLOR]
[COLOR=black]Creator is the worst possible choice. Pascal and others should have taken that [/COLOR]
[COLOR=black]into account. [/COLOR]

[tim314]

@Paul_in_Qatar

You mean you automatically believed in (say) the First Law of Thermodynamics without pondering it for a few days and then deciding?

Being convinced that something is true is not the same thing as “deciding to believe”. As someone who believes in the First Law of Thermodynamics, I can’t just decide not to believe it anymore because I don’t want to. I would have to see some evidence that made me not believe in it. Likewise with belief about God.

But lets take a simpler example. I believe the world is round. I can’t make myself believe the world is flat. Can you?

[billfish678]

@Czarcasm

Pascal’s Wager only needs one flaw to be proven wrong. It has many, but listing them all won’t make it any wronger. If you haven’t already dismissed it as viable, how many fatal errors will convince you?

Uhhh, because it MIGHT be interesting to hear ALL the problems/ways it could be wrong/not so good. Thats kinda the point of debates and discussions ya know.

[Paul_in_Qatar]

Thank you all, I do appreciate your thoughts. There is no need to continue the conversation of course. Czarcasm has so declared.

[Lobohan]

@Paul_in_Qatar

Thank you all, I do appreciate your thoughts. There is no need to continue the conversation of course. Czarcasm has so declared.

And we should do what Czarcasm wants, so we aren’t banned. It doesn’t cost us anything, and we should just be on the safe side.

[fumster]

Let’s look at the 1st commandment: You shall have no other Gods before me …You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me

So there he has laid down the gauntlet. Not only do you need to believe in him, you can’t believe in any other God or he is going to go ape shit on you and your kids. All well and good if he is the right one, but if he is the wrong one (which is likely, don’t you think? What kind of God worth worshiping is going to punish your kids. But we’ll put that aside for now) and there are one or more other Gods that think the same thing you are fucked whomever you pick.

And there are other possibilities as well: The God of the Bible may actually be an evil entity recruiting followers and if you willingly go along then you are fucked or the actual God may not care if you believe in him or not, but get pissed off if you pick someone else.

Like many arguments for God, Pascal’s wager only makes senses if you start with the position that there is either no God or the Abrahamic God of the Bible. This made sense in his day, but now we have cable and can see that there are other places in the world than Europe.

[Buck_Godot]

Well in hopes of giving the sort of thing that Paul in Qatar is looking for, I’ll posit an entirely different argument against Pascal. I don’t like Pascal’s wager on mathematical grounds. The wager seems to be basically saying the following.

[QUOTE=Pascal]

let p= probability god exists.
let H= the eternal happiness of heaven you get if you believe in an existent god.
let I= be the minor inconvenience of believing in a non existent god.

So if this were a gambling game, your expected winnings for believing in god would be

Expected wins = p*H-(1-p)*I

now if heaven is infinitely good H=infinity

so your expected wins are p*infintity - (1-p)*I, which is infinite no matters how small p is.
[/QUOTE]

The trouble with this is that expected value is not always the best way to make a wagering decision. For example Suppose I made the following offer. You give me $100,000 an in exchange I’ll let you flip a coin. If you get N heads before the first tail I’ll give you (2^N)/N cents. This game has infinite expectation for you, but you would be a fool to play it because only in the most extreme circumstances do you not lose about $100,000.

Similarly if there is a 10^-30 chance that god exists, and I is 10% of you salary (due to tithes) Then it really doesn’t matter how good heaven is, it’s a fools game.

[Czarcasm]

@Paul_in_Qatar

Thank you all, I do appreciate your thoughts. There is no need to continue the conversation of course. Czarcasm has so declared.

I’ve seen too many conversations(some on this forum) where someone put’s forth The Wager, and when the obvious reason is given as to why it should be dismissed, the OP says something along the line of, “Well, yeh…but what about this part of it?” What the clearly obvious dismissal is given to that argument is given, the OP rises up and says, “Well, o.k…but what about..?”
I don’t mind talking about all the ways that Pascal’s Wager is screwed up, But I’d like to see an acknowledgment that an argument is valid before we move onto the next one, otherwise it might seem as if you are dismissing them as they are presented, and that might give a wrong impression.

[Paul_in_Qatar]

Please excuse me. I thought I quite clearly admitted the ‘wrong God’ argument to be a darn good one.

[Paul_in_Qatar]

@Buck_Godot

Well in hopes of giving the sort of thing that Paul in Qatar is looking for,

I am very sorry if I gave you the impression I was looking for one sort of thing or another.

[Who_me_1]

The wrong god reason is a good, probably the best (worst?) problem with it, but I have another one that bugs me.

If I tell everyone that I believe in a god, but really don’t… that’s hypocritical. Hypocrisy is a sin according to the Bible, so all I’ve really done (provided there’s is a perfect Christian god) is add one more sin to my total.

[Implicit]

@Paul_in_Qatar

Please excuse me. I thought I quite clearly admitted the ‘wrong God’ argument to be a darn good one.

How about the pretending to believe arguments? Or the arguments that it does in fact cost you something?

If you want more arguments/explanations for why the wager isn’t valid, why don’t you explain which part of the wager appeals to you?

[Meatros]

@Paul_in_Qatar

I suppose if we keep them coming we will see. Stick around, someone might come up with a real corker.

A pretty substantial treatment (if my memory serves) of Pascal’s wager is brought up in Michael Martin’s “Atheism: A Philosophical Justification”, if you are interested.

[Sitnam]

@Candyman74

I’m not sure you can actually choose whether to believe something. You can certainly choose to act as though you believe or don’t believe, but whether or not you actually believe something isn’t - I don’t think - a conscious choice.

If I tell you something, you automatically know whether or not you believe it (or if you’re unsure), but I don’t think that you decide whether or not believe it.

This is why I am highly skeptical that anyone on the planet has ever truly been converted.

Either they’ve decided to begin practicing a faith they learned when they were young or decided to commit themselves to a different faith with the same false bravado of their previous one.

[Voyager]

@Implicit

How about the pretending to believe arguments? Or the arguments that it does in fact cost you something?

Given that not long before Pascal’s time the church was busy forcing people to convert, I’m not sure the “really believe” argument works. At least some religious leaders thought that verbally professing faith was good enough for God.

I’m not sure the cost argument works either (at least not secular cost) because it is trivial as compared to the benefit of eternal life.

The cost of possibly choosing wrong and getting toasted by the real god is another story. Pascal has an unstated assumption that there was only one god of a given characteristic or none, which just goes to show the provincialism people had before mass media.

[ITR_champion]

@Paul in Qatar

I think I can go from memory and say the line of reasoning is something along the lines of, “Ought I to believe in God? Well if I do and I am wrong, I lose nothing. If I don’t and I am wrong I lose a great deal. Therefore I ought to act as if God exists in order to be safe.”

@Meatros

The other problem is that you’d have to believe that God wasn’t omniscient in order to believe that he’d be fooled into your false faith.

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

Then, if you chose to believe in god, which one’s the right one? There’s all those gods and goddesses mankind has so far come up with to choose from, plus it’s entirely possible that nobody’s got it right so far, such that no currently available choice is correct.

Most people today who bring the topic up don’t really understand Pascal’s Wager. Blaise Pascal placed it in his book Pensees, but Pensees isn’t really a book in the traditional sense. Pascal was assembling notes for a massive work of Christian apologetics. He never finished that work. Pensees is simply the various fragments that he left behind, poorly organized, rambling, and often unattached to each other. It is, nonetheless, one of the most fascinating works that I’ve ever read, and there’s no doubt that Pascal was a great genius.

The entire text of Pensees from Project Gutenberg.

The section on the wager.

The two most common objections, which I quoted from meatros and Half man half wit above, are that faith based on such a thing must be phony and that the wager doesn’t say anything about which God to worship. Neither of those would have come as a surprise to Pascal himself. He simply didn’t intend for the wager to cover those topics. Instead he addressed them elsewhere, to the tune of hundreds of pages.

[Ludovic]

@Paul_in_Qatar

I suppose if we keep them coming we will see. Stick around, someone might come up with a real corker.

Well it certainly seems like you are looking for something else despite your protestations. What did you mean by that last sentence? The reason the above arguments are the most often presented is because they are the best arguments.

If you’re looking for some secret, yet more convincing, arguments that just haven’t been presented yet, you’re probably going to be disappointed.

[Meatros]

@ITR_champion

The two most common objections, which I quoted from meatros and Half man half wit above, are that faith based on such a thing must be phony and that the wager doesn’t say anything about which God to worship. Neither of those would have come as a surprise to Pascal himself. He simply didn’t intend for the wager to cover those topics. Instead he addressed them elsewhere, to the tune of hundreds of pages.

In fairness, this thread is about how modern people use the argument that goes by the name “Pascal’s Wager”, it is not about the Pensees or what Pascal might have meant.