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hiua25
Joined: 03 Feb 2006
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 Posted: Sat Jul 08, 2006 8:33 pm Post subject: |
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Has anyone ever heard of Pascal's wager? A French philosopher thought it up in the seventeenth century I think. Anyway the theory goes like this. Nobody can 100% prove or disprove the existence of god in a scientific manner, nobody can say for sure so with your personal belief in God you are always having a wager on whether or not you are right.
If you believe in God, you live in a pious way etc, and you are right.......happy days you go to heaven which is more happy than you can possibly imagine. But if you are wrong and god doesn't in fact exist you don't have as much fun in your life and you waste some time but you don't lose that much.
If you choose not to believe in god and you are right, again that's great because you probably had more fun in life than all those stupid christians and when you die it doesn't matter. But if you don't believe and you are wrong you will still have fun on earth but when you die you are in massive trouble because you will go to hell and that is worse than you can ever possible imagine.
So if you balance it all up logically you might as well believe in god because the potential advantages of believing far out-weigh the potential dis-advantages. Yet the potential advantages of not believing are small in comparison to the potential dis-advantages. If you look at it like that not believing in god is an insane and completely illogical risk to take.
I am not an evangelical btw. I just want to contribute to the discussion. |
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Zulu
Joined: 28 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Sat Jul 08, 2006 8:44 pm Post subject: |
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| WorldWide wrote: |
If the rapture comes and I'm left behind... then I might believe  
Otherwise God is no more real than Harry Potter! |
Naw man, even 99.9% of Norks believe in God. He has a wicked 'fro, platform soles, a happenin' jumpsuit and a bevy of imported babes. Why just the other day he magically lit up the skies so the faithful could rightfully grovel in awe at His greatness. |
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flotsam
Joined: 28 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Sat Jul 08, 2006 9:39 pm Post subject: |
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| hiua25 wrote: |
If you choose not to believe in god and you are right, again that's great because you probably had more fun in life than all those stupid christians and when you die it doesn't matter. But if you don't believe and you are wrong you will still have fun on earth but when you die you are in massive trouble because you will go to hell and that is worse than you can ever possible imagine.
So if you balance it all up logically you might as well believe in god because the potential advantages of believing far out-weigh the potential dis-advantages. Yet the potential advantages of not believing are small in comparison to the potential dis-advantages. If you look at it like that not believing in god is an insane and completely illogical risk to take.
I am not an evangelical btw. I just want to contribute to the discussion. |
Pascal's wager is nothing but a not-so-clever device that provides more boogeyman scare-tactics a la the old church under the guise of decision theory. And the "logical balance" you suggest could easily be extrapolated into all kinds of "potentially advantageous" scenarios like believing in Santa bacause you want your stocking stuffed or the Easter Bunny because you like egg-salad sandwiches or the dude with the 'fro up north because if the South and the U.S. end up not being evil puppet and puppeteer, it will all work out in the end anyway, and you want your tree bark naengmyeon in the meantime. It doesn't take a genius to see the flaw in this wager.
Logic like this is limited and only of use to the weak-minded. But if it makes you feel better, carry on. Fortunately for the sake of the species, there are a plenty of people in the world who feel obssessing on fear and focusing faith on fictional future rewards is the best way to devalue the life we lead on this planet, now. In the end, we still all die alone, and when the moment comes to take that final breath and there is no angel or deity waiting on the other side, I think those who opted to not roll the dice but just picked up some books, thought for themselves and reviewed existence with a discriminating but open eye may shake off this mortal coil with a bit more dignity and grace than those whose ghosts have abandoned them.
Mull over the insanity and illogic in that, and here's hoping you decide not to take the risk. |
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KittyLover
Joined: 20 May 2006
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| Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 1:55 am Post subject: |
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| The problem with Pascal's Wager is that it assumes that the God that if God exists, most religious types have the right idea about 'him'. There could be a God that doesn't care either way. A god, but no hell. A god, a hell, and a one way ticket there just for being born...who knows? So, no. People who believe in the existance of God would not theoretically be rewarded simply for being right. |
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hermes.trismegistus
Joined: 08 Sep 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 1:58 am Post subject: Re: What would it take to convince you that . . . |
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| tomato wrote: |
| If the extraterrestrials were after Bush, I'm sorry they missed. |
Agreed. 
| Quote: |
All three are reasonably priced on the Amazon Website.
I'll order them as soon as I find out my new address. |
I'd recommend Radin over Schmicker - if that makes a difference. Schmicker gets off on too many tangents. Radin sticks with meta-analysis.
Kudos for allowing for alternative viewpoints. Even if you read some Radin and remain skeptical, I'm optimistic you'll benefit from the data. I've found that precious few have much exposure to the actual data. If they do, it seems limited to a few select studies. I like Radin's approach much better. He doesn't look for the "home run". He looks for evidence that something occurs in certain situations. The RNGs return interesting values at times and crap values at others, but taken in toto, it looks exciting and promising for future technologies.
Namaste. |
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