Winning Pascal's Wager

Great Debates
41

Really? If someone you know and trust told you they believed there was an envelope with $10 million at a certain McDonalds in New Zealand (and let’s say they tell you it’s being held specifically for you), you’d go down there?

I wouldn’t. I’d ask my trusted friend if they were feeling all right. Then I’d ask them for their sources. Then I’d see if I could independently confirm them.

If I couldn’t, then I’d conclude that my friend’s belief was false. I wouldn’t go down to Wellington without independent corroboration.

And that’s for money that I know exists somewhere. A God is far more implausible to me.

At any rate, though, my point with the card originally wasn’t a cost-benefit point. My point was that my disbelief in a card at each McDonald’s, Hardee’s and Steakback Outhouse in the land is not a separate disbelief for each eatery, nor is it a single disbelief that covers all cards with my names in all restaurants (because then I’d need to have a disbelief in all glittery baseballs in chimneys, in all glow-in-the-dark ostriches in all canyons, and so forth). It’s a generalized lack of belief in anything for which I lack evidence. One single disbelief covers all that.

Your question was whether I have multiple disbeliefs, one for each god. Nope: my disbeliefs in all gods is only one small part of my lack of belief in that for which I lack evidence.

Daniel

42

Which is my point. The only way in which Pascal’s Wager makes sense is if you already have a predisposed belief that the existence of God is a possibility - and as Pascal himself admits there is no evidence of God’s existence. So Pascal’s Wager ultimately depends on faith.

43

As I understand Pascal, his advice does nto consist of the idea that you can simply make yourself believe when you do not, but rather that you go through the motions of believing with the intent of trying to belief and that this will eventually become a true belief. I have to say: I don’t think that method is all that implausible. Certainly, its being somewhat dishonest to yourself to begin with, but I imagine that over time, enough duitiful church attendance, prayer, and communion with other believers would just sort of sink in after awhile, perhaps even without you noticing crossing the threshold.

44

I would think your best chance of success would be to follow what most people believe. I would expect the true god would have the most followers. And if you’re wrong, you’ll have a lot of people to commiserate with.

Another strategy would be to follow what most of your friends follow. That way if there is an afterlife, whether it’s good or bad, at least you’ll be with people you like.

45

I didn’t know we were still talking about the New Zealand McDonalds. (But what if I thought it would be fun to visit New Zealand, and I was just looking for an excuse? Or have we stretched this analogy as far as it will go, yet?)

That’s not really what he says, at least not in the passage quoted earlier. Rather, he says that reason can’t decide one way or the other. Not necessarily because there’s no evidence; there could be inconclusive evidence, or evidence both for and against.

Assuming your friends are the people you’d most want to spend eternity with. And that the afterlife doesn’t have solitary confinement.

46

I was just thinking about this. Like this morning, &/or last night. Pascal’s Wager is perhaps like faro, or betting on football, but I live my life hedging my bets like a roulette player, or a crapshooter. (Or not betting, like someone who knows the house will screw him. But that’s beside the point.)

If there is such a species of entity as a god, is there more than one? Is the will of a god to be taken as equivalent to the Good? Is the will of a singular Demiurge good by definition? I don’t know.

Do my actions incur reward or punishment? Does karma mean anything? I don’t know. But my actions can affect others, & so goodness means something, anyway.

I then choose to seek the Good rather than the will of unknowable gods. But what is good? Weirdly, even as a consequentialist, my ideas of good often run back around to teleological arguments, incorporating something like the purpose of the Demiurge or the order of Nature.

Fine, then. I have to choose a view that makes sense to me. Or a compromise ethic that works with multiple views. I endeavor to live as if no god exists to clean up my messes, but as if a god exists to judge me. The “safer” bet in each case.

And some ideas of good I must reject, for they run afoul of too many other plausibilities.

For example: The idea of human rights as The Great Sacred Thing is popular in our culture, & tempting, to a point. But social anthropology tells me that the idea may survive not because it is truly good, but because it is attractive, indirectly self-reinforcing, & successful, up to a point. While there may be a Gnostic god who loves man above all else; there may be a ornithophile god who hates us for exterminating the passenger pigeon, the great auk, & the dodo; the true god may love men, but only to a point; there may be many gods, whose opinions are no more absolute than men’s; there may be no gods at all. And without a god to guide me, I see that individual human rights can only go so far in a world of limited resources; at some point a man’s life may be cheaper than the environmental cost of the agriculture to feed him & the waste of his bowels.

So absolute devotion to human rights is a belief I had to give up. It went against too much.

Etc.