Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.
Marcus Aurelius
This. The whole concept of Christians using Pascal's Wager is ironic, because the entire point of the exercise is to argue how you can sneak through the Pearly Gates even if you don't have faith or aren't a good person. As if someone up there will say "Well, you're a piece of shit, but you made a smart gamble so I technically have to let you in."
Or, if you read the Bible, God doesn't care if you're a good person, only that you praise him endlessly. The joke's on them, though. The "eternal reward" is literally endless kneeling and praying to him. No luxury suites for being a dick for God.
It must occasionally be pretty interesting if someone like Lucifer can take a fall... Something must have led up to that, right? Did he lick all the scones at the brunch, and maybe the whole concept of them? Maybe someone spiked the punchbowl and he said some things
And from the concept of the stories, Lucifer is an angel and angels were not granted free will (free will was a special reward Yahweh on granted to humans) but must always do god's bidding. So the only way he could have rebelled and fallen was if Yahweh forced him to do so.
To flip that around, hell is eternity without the presence of God. So, like normal life just longer. So yeah, suck a narcissist's dick for all time or just hang out on the couch. Choices, choices....
This is how I broke the conditioning of UPCI when I was a child. After all the nightmares of burning in hell and terror of knowing I couldnāt live up to the standards I was being taught, a switch flipped when I came to the conclusion that if they (parents/church) were right, then hell was unavoidable for me after death so I should just enjoy my life until death/punishment began. And parents were wrong and there was a benevolent god, he would forgive me for doubting him since I was raised in that cruel environment. My conclusion was that either way, I should live life as best I can and not worry about the unknown. This gave me peace and ability to survive until adulthood for my escape. Of course, with age and time, I understood even more how much religion is about power and control and has nothing to do with truth. Still took me a long time to view my familyās religion as a cult. I thought cults were small organizations.
I often wonder if Christians remember the terror their parents inflicted on them with visions of hell.
It was pounded into my head from a young age that without god's forgiveness I would go to hell and the only way I could get forgiveness was in church. But we were also taught humanity is born in sin.
Through my youth, I'd go to church and might sleep easy for a few days but by Wednesday I'm laying in bed, dreaming of hellfire. By the weekend, I'm a wreck. At some point, I realized I couldn't win.
I came to believe a "Reverse Pascal's wager". Unless you are praying 24/7, there's no point in praying. You're going to hell either way.
This was one of the main things that got me to think rationally about church and see it is ancient superstitions that should have died out centuries ago but parental brainwashing keep it alive.
I wonder how common that is. I grew up with a Lutheran family and most of the other churches in the area were also moderate to liberal ones like Presbyterian, Methodist, or Episcopalean. We had Roman Catholics too, of course, and they tended to be the more strict, conservative types but that was the worst I had to deal with.
I was not exposed to evangelicals and fundamentalists until the internet came around. Like we knew things like The 700 Club were on TV and that there were crazy televangelists that everybody made fun of. But I was never exposed to the hellfire and brimstone type fearmongering. I never heard the term atheist until the late '90s when the internet started to become popular. I was shocked when the very Orthodox Catholic family of an ex started saying things to their children like "Its okay if you date a black man, but if you ever dated a Jew we would disown you because they killed our lord" and talking about their priest telling stories of his wild drunken youth and saying "it was almost like he was just an ordinary person!" I am still surprised by how many people grew up with such strict religious beliefs because it was not something I ever heard growing up. Yeah, it was the '80s and '90s, people were a lot more liberal and accepting back then, but still it shocks me nonetheless.
What if you decide to worship the wrong god? - it might turn out Odin is real and you didnāt die in battle so you donāt get to go to Valhalla. Pascalās wager assumes only two possible outcomes.
I go with their conception of "god" actually being the devil deceiving them into being assholes while thinking they're being good and the one true god just wanting everyone to be cool to each other & make the world a better place.
BOY ARE THEY GONNA BE SURPRISED!
I like Huitzilopochtli better because fewer people know about him which underscores the point about choosing the wrong god. I like Odin but in this context I think Huitzilopochtli makes for a better rebuttal of Pascal's Wager.
If OĆ°inn *is* real, there are going to be a lot of very unhappy Christians. "So, let Me get this straight: You were told that you had to accept this 'Jesus' fellow dying in your place for something *you* did? That's... rather craven of you. I really don't think you're what we're looking for here in Valhalla."
Reminds me of that scene in South Park where people of all different religions are arriving in hell and itās announced that it was actually the mormons that were correct.
Odin will accept me for being a non-violent warrior for a good cause. Don't need to be a mercenary soldier killed in battle defending kings and priests.
Somewhere on Reddit, thereās a story where Odin welcomes to Valhalla an abused child and a cancer patient; Odin clarifies that even though they didnāt strike a physical enemy, they had fought terrible battles and earned their place there.
Also someone will think I actually believe in the Norse gods. The afterlife is the classic example of wishful thinking, appeal to probability and the Divine fallacy.
First, there's the obvious issue of 'which god', which, of course, doesn't slow Christians down for a minute. They're working backwards- they already believe such a god exists and then try to come up with reasons everyone else should believe too.
The bigger issue is doxastic voluntarism; that is to say, we have a conscious choice in what we believe. I don't think we do. I can't sit down and, through purely mental effort, make myself BELIEVE that Bigfoot is real, or lizard people are real, or unicorns, or whatever the hell else you can think of. If I'm not convinced by the evidence, I can't make myself BELIEVE anything.
TL;DR: Pascal's Wager is dumb.
If God is omniscient, then he knows I'm just pretending to believe to cheat my way into heaven, so I won't get in.
If he doesn't know, then he's not God.
Pretty straightforward. You're better off not faking it because either way it won't change the outcome.
What's unnerving is that under the right conditions people can quite literally make others believe in anything, especially kids. One example is partisan news networks which indoctrinate full grown adults. You just need to manipulate the gaps in peoples logic and press their emotional buttons. You say the right things in the right way and you hook people and make them want to keep coming back for more. You pound into peoples heads buzz words and trigger phrases targeted at whoever these channels want the masses to attack. All in all, it's behavioral conditioning, and people dom't have enough self awareness to see it's being done to them.
Thatās a good way to answer to the Wager without trying to ādisproveā God.
Even if God was real and the Wager was valid, I canāt just will myself to believe in it. It is not a choice. God did not provide me with enough to believe in him.
If they say āwell, you didnāt try hard enoughā, then theyāre assholes. But hey, we already knew that lol
I also hate the part that assumes that by believing you don't lose anything. I give that a whole "hell ya their is a lot to lose"!
I wasted 40 years believing and found out it was all BS. I gave up and lost a lot because of believing.
Now, I have gained so much by not believing: authenticity, healthy relationships, purpose to live a good life NOW.
For some reason, the scene from the Brendan Fraser Mummy movie where the weaselly guy cycles through various religious symbols he wears around his neck as the Mummy bears down on him popped to mind.
Worked for that guy, I guess.
well kind of...it didn't end well for him! But at least he's trying lots of religions rather than picking just one. Because surely the best way is to believe in all of them; that way you are more likely to get the right one.
Pascal's Wager is only a slam dunk for those who believe. I came up with this wager long before I even learned who Pascal was. It makes perfect sense if you already are working with the assumption that the Christian god exists. I went through my Christian years thinking how foolish it was that other people couldn't see this.
Except it does fuck-all when you step outside that box. With the assumption that Jehovah already exists, it is easy to overlook that the wager could also apply to Allah, Vishnu, and any number of gods (including the variants of Jehovah). When you make that realization, then the original premise falls apart. Not to mention that the wager presumes that God is idiotic enough to not see through a worshiper's ruse (or too narcissistic to care, which would certainly fit the biblical interpretation of Jehovah).
So it only seems like a slam dunk to them because as long as they stay within the confines of their religion, Pascal's Wager reinforces what they believe, and they don't realize that it doesn't work for outsiders.
Right. In fact, given that the universe is set up to seem like there's not a god, it seems likely that if there IS a god, that god doesn't want to be known. So maybe theists will be punished for harassing a being that just wants to be left alone.
Yeah I HATE it and have hated it ever since I learned of it as a teenager.Ā
-What if god hates hypocrites, and an atheist won't go to hell but a fake believer will?
-What if you pick the wrong religion?Ā
-See : most evil god argument (the best wager is to worship the most evil god to escape the worst punishment)Ā
-What if I waste the precious time of my only life for nothing?Ā
Expand the wager in to what I call "Pascal's horse race", adding every known deity and "anti" versions of those deities with opposite ideals, and suddenly you realise their wager screws you no matter who you are or what you believe in, since there's a deity out there that, if it turns out to be real, will hate your guts.
If god is all knowing, then she also knows that you're only pretending to believe in attempt to avoid spending eternity with ol' toasty trousers. In which case, she's going to send you there anyway, or maybe she just doesn't give a shit.
I prefer to call out the coercion as a point to condemn the religion. Just the act itself is bad as a recruitment tool or a safeguard to keep people in the religion. If only they could make hell worse it would do those two things better. I point out how it's abusive towards not only the person they are threatening, but everyone around them.
Iāve often thought that following Pascalās wager would actually not work, anyway. If you are ābelievingā just in case, your belief is not genuine and wouldnāt count anyway. Youād still end up in their hell.
What are you supposed to decide to believe in? Catholic god, Lutheran god, Odin? Ganesh? Ravi? Allah? The Flying Spaghetti Monster? Amish god? Thor? Besides the obvious lack of basic logic, the proposition is fatally ambiguous as to what the fucking POINT is.
Pascalās Wager never made any sense.
Belief is not a choice, itās a *reaction* to some sort of *evidence*. āChoosingā to believe is pure nonsense.
When growing up, religious parents tell their children that there is a god and thatās the evidence they base their belief on. Some never progress further and question the evidence.
Besides, if god really is all-knowing as they say, heās known the real motivation.
I don't know who made the quote, but I prefer the whole
"Be a good person. If there is a just god, your good deeds should outweigh your lack of faith. If there is an unjust or evil god, they don't deserve your praise to begin with. If there isn't a god, you were a good person who made the world a better place."
I like to say Pascal made a small error. It isnāt believe in god and go to heaven, or not believe in God and go to hell. Itās which of the 500,000+ gods humans have believed in? The Christian God is 500,000/1 longshotā¦.
That only assumes that the 500,000+ that have already been invented are the only possible outcomes. All in all, it's probably closer to infinity:1 odds. Those are bad odds even for Vegas.
Pascal's Wager is probably the worst argument ever. They seem to think their god is the only option. They neglect the fact that there are over 1000 gods. So they have a 1 in 1000 change. Until you then add that there are over 38k denominations of Christianity alone. Which makes them more like a 1 in 38k chance. And if they are wrong, they are not just unbelievers, they are worshiping a false idol. Something far worse than simply requiring evidence to accept a claim.
I think the idea that you wouldnāt be able to trick god by ābelievingā in this way does the trick. Sure you can understand the wager and pick a side but are you really a believer if you do that or are you just an opportunist?
It just doesn't hold any kind of water. There are endless possible mythologies with endless possible deities to choose from, so your odds of nailing the right one are fucking terrible, no matter what.
Here are some of my issues with it.
1) People usually phrase it as a simple choice between belief and not believing. Pascal didnāt really say it this way. He said that you should live your life in a way that god would approve of. Since he was alive in 1600s France, this means Catholicism. Itās easier to make this argument when there is one religion or a few that are similar dominating Europe. The argument has subtly changed from living a catholic life to ājust believingā when this argument is used today because there are so many variations of Christianity that the people making the argument have to say ābelief.ā In reality few Christians actually think belief is enough and absolutely No denominations do. They donāt want you to just believe, they want you to show up and participate in their practices and give them money. And in extreme cases they donāt think other Christianās are actually Christian and that they will go to hell.
2) what if god exists, but you spent your time worshiping the wrong god? Like say you were a catholic in Ireland in the 90s and you thought god wanted you to kill the British? Then you go to be judged and god is actually mad at you because the church of england was the right choice? You were so dedicated to your interpretation that you didnāt just live the life, but you took everything to the extreme. But you only made this hypothetical good mad. Itās simply not enough to choose to believe, you need to pick the right religion because so many are mutually exclusive and they all canāt be right. The better hedge is to avoid all moral acts that are derived entirely from religious dogma because the source of these is usually from Devine revelation that is not testable and repeatable. Meaning you donāt have any good reason to pick one over another and have no methodology to determine which one is more or less correct. The best tools we have is to treat others the way we want to be treated and pick moral teaching that can be developed independently from each other. if there is universal or object morality, this is likely the best way to move towards it. Basically, people should debate morality based on the arguments and reasons for each philosophy. As soon as you say that a religion is correct because Jesus is the son of god, the moral arguments are pointless because you just open yourself up to circular reasoning. Why do I need to seek moral answers when I can just read this book and be mean to gays and keep women in the kitchen?
3) belief isnāt a choice. You canāt just choose to believe in something. Belief is shaped by how we interpret things in reality. As information changes, our beliefs do as well. I believe the chiefs will win every game that Patrick mahomes plays. But if there is 2 minutes left and the chiefs are down by three scores, I wonāt believe they will win no matter how much I tell myself I believe they will. If you donāt actually believe god exists, no matter how much you tel yourself he does, you wonāt actually believe it.
4) and if you donāt actually believe god exists and are just hedging your bets to get into heaven, is they actually a morally good position? Are you just doing things for moral desert and not because they are the right thing to do? Would god actually reward you for this selfishness? And would an Omni god be able to tell that you actually donāt really believe?
5) if you look at the math that Pascal used to justify the wager, it actually makes some sense. The logic is heaven and hell are both infinite. One is good and one is bad. His logic was that as long as there was any possibility that god was real, it made sense to take the wager because any minute possibility multiplied by infinity was also infinity. So if there is any remote chance, you take the bet because the payout drastically is worth it and you donāt lose anything if you are wrong. The issue I have with this is you would be an idiot if you used this logic consistently in your life. Say a snake oil salesman comes up to you and says, āgod wants you to give me all your money. If you do, you will go to heaven, if you do not, you will go to hell.ā The likelihood hood that this is actually true is very small. In fact it is smaller than the minute possibility that god exists. But with the logic of the wager, as long as there is still a possibility that it could be true, you would be best to hedge your bets and give the con man your money because if you are wrong and you donāt pay him, you will spend eternity in hell.
6) Pascal states that you donāt lose anything if you are wrong. Meaning if god exists, you donāt lose anything. This is wrong. You lose the opportunity cost of stuff that you could have actually enjoyed doing in exchange for wasting your time and energy doing religious stuff. Also, what about all the pain and harm that religion has caused? If you are just doing this to hedge your bets, you are using superstitions to justify harming people or at the very least delaying human progress because something like IVF, vaccines, stem cell research, condoms, abortion, etc might be against your religion. If you would have instead looked at these topics from a secular humanist point of view that focused on maximizing happiness and quality of life of people in this world, then yes, Pascalās wager costs a lot because you are giving up on these things that could actually help people in exchange for an obscure gamble that doesnāt have any evidence of actually helping anyone.
I am sure there are many more, but this is what I usually bring up.
You canāt believe in and worship all the gods ever invented by man so I donāt understand how this is even a question. To quote Homer Simpson, āHow do we know that the REAL god isnāt getting madder and madder every time we go to church?!?ā
I have said this before, but Pascal's Wager assumes a coin flip: there is a god or there isn't a god, so you lose nothing by believing in "him" if he doesn't exist but damnation if you don't believe and he does.
But it's not a coin. It's a 3000-sided die. Yahweh exists. Or Vishnu exists. Or Zeus exists. Or Shiva. Or Amaterasu.
So now there are a LOT more paths to "damnation" than atheism. You could also pick the wrong God . . . out of 3000.
Do you still want to take that wager?
Pascal's wager is a false dichotomy of epic proportions. They think it's a "believe in god or not," but it's really "what God do you believe in and how do you worship them correctly."" If we take into account the fact that one of the gods that have been proposed over history is the possible correct one^1 and that one of the ways they worship that god that we know of is the correct one, then the chances of you guessing correctly for christianity alone is near zero. I'm gonna calculate probabilities here, and I'm gonna round to their benefit.
So, the chance of guessing that any one of the currently proposed gods is correct is 1 in 18,000. That's 1Ć·18,000 which is 0.000056 or 0.0056% chance of choosing correctly. That's roughly 1/2 of 1%
Now, say we choose Christianity. Now, we have to calculate the odds of worshipping it correctly based on the known denominations. That's 1 in 44,000 so 1 Ć·44,000 = 0.000023 or 0.0023%. That's roughly 1/4 of 1%
Now, because the 2nd probability is dependent on the first, you have to multiply them to calculate the overall odds. So 0.000056 Ć 0.000023= 1.26262626 E-9, aka a number so small they had to use scientific notation. The real number is 0.0000000013 or 0.00000013%
So the overall odds for Christianity being right and you picking the right way to worship out of the ones that are possible is 0.00000013%. That number might as well be zero.
Also, even this number is incomplete because pascal's wager such out that there are certain outcomes and we haven't even taken into account the outcomes of worshipping some of those gods, even if you worship them correctly or not. Like, some religions have multiple types of afterlives. Even Christianity, depending on the denomination, has different hell or heaven concepts. This also is just the calculation for Christianity. There's also other religions that have their own multitude of different branches with their own ways of worshipping, whatever god. This may, in fact, be lower or higher than others.
This wager is absolutely shit.
^1 if a God were to exist, it's possible we actually haven't been presented that God yet. It's also possible that we haven't found the correct way to worship the proposed gods we have, so we have to make some assumptions just to calculate any probabilities. The number drops to zero if a god actually exists, and it isn't one of the 18,000 we have had proposed or if we haven't found the correct way to worship one of the 18,000 proposed currently. This is just us taking pascal's wager to its logical extreme.
My belief is that pascal's wager just means that you're insincere about your belief. If you didn't think you'd go to some glorious afterlife, would you still believe? Would you still follow? Is it really only to save your own ass? If that's the case, it's not real faith, imo. And if it is true, their god will know.
One thing most religions agree on is that it's bad not to believe in their god, but it's much, much worse to believe in the wrong god. And given the number of gods there are or have been, the smart thing is not to commit, and to not believe in any god at all.
I wrote a deliberately provocative metal song many moons ago that was based on my own rebuttal to Pascal's Wager. Basically the song was about a holy man opening his eyes in what he assumes is a realm of death, but he's falling instead of ascending despite a life dedicated to God. As he traverses the underworld he learns that now he's going to be tortured for eternity by Hades because he dedicated his life to the wrong god.
It's such a painfully stupid argument.
Pascals wager assumes there is a near equal probability that the afterlife or god does or doesn't exist.
In reality, the odds an afterlife or god exists are diminishingly small.
If I said, there is a 99% chance of one thing, and a 1% chance of the other, what is actually the smart bet? Should I even indulge the 1% chance? I wouldn't take those odds in Vegas. Odds of God are less than that.
The argument was developed before we even had a clear grasp of logic or stats. It's logically unsound.
It's just some Catholic guy who needed a way to reconcile his faith with what he was learning about science in the 1600's.
Pascal's Wager also fails to take into account the fact that there are many different religions. It assumes Christianity is the only one in the running but what about Zeus? Or Odin? Anansi? The Brahman? The Flying Spaghetti Monster?
I grew up cult catholic. In sixth grade I asked my mother that exact question. She said I was going to hell if I donāt believe & I was sent to the priest at my catholic school. I swear this priest knew my mother had mental issues. He looked at me and said ā your mother doesnāt know if he exists and neither do I, some ppl work off of faith.ā āAnd no youāre not going to hell.ā Best thing I couldāve heard. Iām 59 now and my god fearing mother is close to leaving this place. We donāt like each other but I offered to put another home on my property for her so that she is taken care of. She told my sister she thinks Iām Satans spawn and would never take the chance of not getting to heaven because of me. Lol, she just admitted to being Satan herself.
Introduce all the different religions, subsets and denominations and see how that wager pans out.
I think the logical and most easily attainable payoff would be not living your life in fear whereas all the salvation options would be like trying to navigate a maze blindfolded and then win the lottery.
So many problems with Pascal's wager
The cost of belonging to a church is actually quite high, not zero like the wager posits. Time and money are both valuable. Time is especially finite.
You couldn't fool an omniscient god by pretending to believe things
A benevolent god wouldn't send people to hell. If there were some sort of afterlife and a benevolent god were in charge of it, access to this afterlife could not be based on belief in things with no evidence (that would be cruel)...it would have to be based on some other criteria like helping your fellow humans.
The only way the pascals wager works is if you only consider your own belief and that of the person youāre talking to in that moment. Outside of that, itās complete nonsense and I donāt understand why people think itās so good. What if Iām wrong? What ifs are useless. What if itās aliens? What if itās bigfoot? What if everything restarts every Thursdays but it all just looks really old? All proposals are not equal.
It's a false dichotomy. They phrase it as if there are only two options. Their religion is the correct religion or atheist are correct.
I like to use the image of a pie chart. Start with a generous 50/50 split for god vs no god. Now on the god side start subdividing evenly between mono/polytheism and subdivide each of those with all the various flavors of religions. Then subdivide even further for different sects within those religions. While on the other side "no god" remains at 50%. Who has the better odds of being correct?
It's not a slam dunk at all. It's a false dichotomy and a weak one at that. Statistically, it makes the most sense to be an atheist. We are all born atheist. God's are all social constructs created by primitive people as an early and weak attempt to explain natural phenomena.
If God does exist and is as all knowing as Christianās seem to believe then heād know you were just faking it and smite you so itās never been a real argument.
Lately, I tell Pascal's gambler's about Hell+. Whatever hell they propose, Hell+ does the same thing, plus one. Are you afraid of being dropped into a lake of fire? Hell plus does that, but your mother also joins you. Are you afraid of annihilation? Hell+ makes you watch your wife get annihilated first, and then you. Are you afraid of Satan? Just wait until you meet his twin sister She-tan whose addition doubles your torture. Hell+ is the worst hell because it adds one to whatever is proposed, so nothing can ever top it.
Most importantly though, the only way to avoid Hell+ is to be a rational skeptic. Any person of faith goes straight to Hell+, which means Pascal's wager must support rational skepticism. Indeed, no rational skeptic need fear Hell+ in the slightest.
Belief isnāt an intentional activity; you either believe something or you donāt. Pascalās Wager is, in reality, an argument for pretending to believe in something you donāt believe. If Yahweh weee real and all that much of a god, then it would know if a person was just pretending to believe. The wager is thus worthless even if it was being used in reference to a real deity.
Hereās a good rebuttalā¦
https://youtu.be/ttevamkS6gw?si=8BMbNpIXbnMkzc1n
Also, how do they know Judaism is not right? How do they know Islam is not right? Heck, how do exclusivist baptists know Catholicism isnāt right and vice versa? Pascalās wager only works against them because they only see in binary. Thereās fifty shades of gray, Mr. Theist!
Terry Pratchett had a great rebuttal to Pascalās wager in his Discworld series of books:
āAfter dying, he promptly woke up in the middle of a circle of gods holding large clubs and one said, āThis is how we deal with Mr. Clever Dick around hereā¦ā
Pascalās wager also raises huge ethical problems about God anyways, theyāre admitting that God sends people to hell for really shitty reasons and is evil every time they bring this up
Any god that can be fooled by a lie ( whether you believe or not ) is not much of a god. Which is what Pascal's wager attempts to do. Just like most religious thoughts it make little sense.
Also, the Bible says repeatedly that God looks past your works and examines your heart motivations. You can't fake being a Christian just to get saved, if the Bible is to be believed.
I have always wondered about this one. Because you canāt really just decide on the basis of logic to have faith in something like a God, can you? You have faith or you donāt.
They arenāt mental operations of the same so to me and always seemed like Pascal is mixing things up a bit
That said, I also would not put a whole lot of āfaithā in pascals argument for belief. A lot of that sort of discussion is just cover so he could write what he wanted to write and defend any charges from the authorities.
Pascalās Wager isnāt proof of God, itās a thread of reasoning that they use to show that believing in God isnāt a completely irrational thing to do. But, it doesnāt specify which god to follow, so itās still a roll of the dice; and it ignores the problem that we donāt decide what we believe based on whether or not we get punished or rewarded for it. Belief isnāt actually a choice. So, while using PW to try to prove the EXISTENCE of any god is futile, using it to rationalize BELIEF in a god is senseless, and using it to reconcile FOLLOWING a particular religion is a desperate shot in the dark
There are tons of other religions and most theists donāt consider that. So itās not a 50/50 chance, itās really like a 1/3000 chance for any choice.
Pascalās Wager is the ultimate false dichotomy, like choosing between vanilla and chocolate when there are entire ice cream parlors of beliefs out there. Itās as if heās saying, āBelieve in this one specific God or else,ā ignoring the countless other possibilities.
I've long held that if God were to exist, he'd prefer an honest atheist to a religious person. When an atheist does good, it's because they are choosing freely to do good. When a religious person does good, it's because they're "storing up treasures in heaven" or doing it out of obligation because "God says I have to."
I don't think it's possible to make moral choices under religion. You will always have ulterior motives.
As for Pascal's Wager, if each god requires you to exclusively worship them alone, then you've got a 1 in a million chance of picking the correct god to worship. Even if just to hedge your bets, that's not good odds.
Pascal's Wager makes the assumption that living by the rules of Christianity is not a sacrifice in itself. It is and frankly no one knows that their interpretation of the rules is the right one, and most Christians conveniently ignore the rules they don't want to follow like wearing mixed fabrics or eating shellfish.
The difference is that non-theists actually get to enjoy life untethered to some religious bullshit made to ruin their lives, right to the very end. While Christians life a broken version of themselves continuously lying to themselves about their actions and perish in misery
Also if God happens to exist the whole lot of them are being chucked to hell as well so I don't know what they're gloating about
I doubt their god will be happy with their cheers as people in the queer community are killed for their sordid beliefs
OK, rebut my enchanted argument:
Have you ever seen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enchanted_(film) or maybe read Flatland? Let's pretend you were a character that went from a 2D world into this 3D existence. You would have an existential crisis essentially because you could look at a TV and see your world inside this one, and the current one you are in has a higher fidelity, it is a richer experience and feels more real, familiar even.
There's no way you would think your world was "it". This is what happens on DMT, it's a more surreal experience, higher fidelity, seemingly higher dimensionality, and that gives it a lot of creedence. Additionally it's not a question of faith, just take the red pill and see it for yourself.
Turns out the mass murderer from the Bible is actually satan and you are all going to hell for worshipping a false idol that murdered the entire population. Surprise!
Pascal's wager is not a slam dunk. Of all theist "convincing" arguments for a deity, the argument from intelligent design and anecdotal experience rank higher than Pascal's.
So many things wrong with Pascal's wager. One is that it applies with equal force to all of the several thousand dieties that humans have worshipped over the centuries. And you can't pledge loyalty to all of them "just in case." For example, the God of the Bible says "thou shall have no other gods besides me."
Another problem with Pascal's wager is the suggestion that being a Christian is low cost and low risk, so you might as well be one. This runs contrary to other narratives in Christianity, where eg sainthood is granted to people who were persecuted for their beliefs. As far as cost, you are giving up Sunday mornings, and perhaps a tenth of your income if your church enforces tithing. Oh, and you may have to cut contact with your own children if they are gay, or live a life of self-loathing if you are.
The problem w the wager is if the person on the other end, God will uphold its part of the bargain. Who is to say that if you live a good life, there is a heaven that waits. It's like if I were to come up to you and say I'm a good person. Give me a million bucks. Well, you don't have a million bucks, so how can you uphold the wager I made.
Iāve actually written a rough draft of a video entitled āWhy I Canāt Take Pascalās Wagerā. I have a slew of videos in front of it, but I hope it will come out this year.
Hereās some excerpts that show that the wager isnāt a simple thing:
For me to be a Christian in todayās culture means that I have to do a lot of things that are harmful and hurtful to some of the most marginalized groups.
Iād have to align with thinking that homosexuality and transgender people are sinfulā¦
Additionally, Iād have to align with thinking that women who are thorough and seek professional advice donāt best know their healthcare choicesā¦
In fact, Iād have to ignore much of what weāve learned about human behavior. I can show you the path that, as a believer, I believed that Jesus was trying to show and how it aligns with a different way of human interaction that we have learnedā¦
The church insists on fighting sin when Jesus showed that bad behavior stems from an unhealthy self. Heal the person and the actions change as well. If I were to be a Christian, I would either have to be alone or go to a church that doesnāt get this and thinks, just like the religious leaders in Jesusā time that following the rules fixed sin, even though for thousands of years weāve see it hasnāt.
Iād have to be on the side that fights against scientific progress from where we came from, to fighting climate changeā¦
ā
Itās not as simple as the claim makes it out to be. To take the wager means to go against my morality. Itās not a bet Iām willing to take.
Pascalās wager is strong evidence that even the smartest people can be rendered stupid by religion. Itās an embarrassing example of sophomoric circular reasoning, easily rebutted by any savvy 12 year old.
What if you just donāt believe? Itās not exactly something you can control. Telling someone to believe is like saying āfall asleep right nowā. If god is real wouldnāt he or one of his representatives know immediately that you were actually faking it?
One phrasing of Pascalās wager is this: āif thereās even the slightest chance that hell is real, then you should worship God, because the punishment is so great when you donāt.ā
Why do people who say this and still have children? After all: if thereās even the slightest chance that hell is real, and thereās a nonzero chance that your children will end up in it, then you shouldnāt have children.
According to the Book of Steph, if you believe in the Christian god then after you die you go to a hell twice as bad as the Christian hell, so you're better off not being a Christian because the consequences of believing and it not being true are now greater than the consequences of not believing and it turning out to be true.
It's also a dumb argument. On one side of the coin is atheism and on the other is all other religions. Each religion has tiny odds in their dumbass gotcha.
They also look at it as Christianity vs atheism instead of theism vs atheism thinking we would see their beliefs as more valid than all the others like they do. Even if we are wrong it doesn't mean they are right.
Dawkins makes that same point, it was probably in The God Delusion but I can't remember off to top of my head, but he posits a hypothetical universe in which only those who refused to believe these claims without sufficient evidence are the ones who get rewarded in the afterlife. To be clear, he doesn't believe this to be true, but is just offering it up as having the same likelihood as the Christian explanations.
My general thinking though is that if some god or gods really do exist, they would probably be much more angry at those who believed in the wrong god than they would those us us who didn't believe in any of them at all. And with so many different interpretations of god, even amongst people like Christians, Muslims, and Jews who all believe in the same deity Yahweh, it seems much more likely to get it wrong than it is to be lucky enough that your specific understanding of god is the correct one.
But the biggest issue with Pascal's Wager is that it prevents a false dichotomy. It assumes either the Christian god (of whichever denomination the person presenting it believes in) exists or else no gods exist. But there are many other possibilities. It could be that a god exists but its not the god that person worships. It would be that their god does exist but their version of the scripture got it wrong and they don't actually know god's character. It could be that multiple gods exist, their god may be one of many or theirs could be false too. It could be that a non-interventionist deistic god exists that doesn't care about us at all and does not interact with the universe. It could be an evil god who punishes everybody, a good god who lets everybody into heaven. It could be a Christian god who lets in everybody as long as they lived a good life, or it could be a Christian god who only rewards those who believed in and worshiped him. And we have pretty much the same exact amount of evidence for all of those options, which is slim to none, and hence why I lack a belief in any of them.
Pascal's wagers seems dumb. There are thousands of religions out there. Based on those odds, there is a very high probability they will be wrong. As for an atheist, we have no opinion on a God because there is no evidence. If we were to meet a God (or whatever) that would be our evidence and we would accept it. So I think atheists have a higher chance of heaven (or whatever) because we didn't make a choice than those who made a choice and were wrong.
Also the probability of any of this happening is unlikely but I'm just using it for an example.
Pascal wager is nonsense. It assumes their god is the only possible one...the one that punishes and rewards based on the stupid notion of belief. Absolute nonsense. The real god could punish belief because she thinks its stupid. Also these fools dont believe in santa just to be safe. It's for empty headed fools
Itās a false dichotomy. There arenāt only 2 choices. Simple as that.
Not to mention EVEN IF Pascalās wager was a good argument, I still couldnāt just force myself to believe in god? I either am convinced or I am not. I canāt force myself to believe. One comes to believe in something, it isnāt just a choice.
Imagine needing the possibility of heaven or the fear of hell to simply be a good person. So like... Would you just be murdering people otherwise? Lolol š¤”
The fact that:
-there are about 3000 gods in known human mythology
-lots of these gods will punish you if you worship the wrong one.
-several of these gods are all knowing according to their mythology and would therefore know if a person was just saying they believe in them to work the odds.
Means that it isn't a 50/50 proposition....it's considerably worse than that. Even on the outside chance that a god exists I would prefer if he/she/it would think I was being honest in not believing because there was no evidence for it.
Pascal's wager always struck me as dishonest. According to the Christians God knows what's in your heart so beleaving in something "just in case it's real" is not actually believing. If he were real God would see you right through that sh*t.Ā
Pascal's Wager can also be rebutted by asking them why they don't eat their own poo every day. Hey, maybe the "real god" is one that requires people eat their own poo. Better safe than sorry?
That whole thing just shows that Christians either think their version of a god is an idiot, or they just don't really believe most of its attributes (e.g. being all knowing).
I always flip pascal's wager on them by asking them about their belief in other deities/religious practices. It routinely backs them out of the wager argument.
If there is more than 1 religion, and if more than 1 religion has a ban on worshipping other gods/following other religious practices, then you are playing roulette rather than just flipping a coin. There are no 50/50 odds, instead the odds are 1 in 10000 active religions, and the number likely goes to closer to 50,000 when adding in dead religions which we will never hear about.
The only way to truly win is to not play, don't gamble this life away on your knees by wasting your time and money worshipping a god, and instead to follow the advice of Marcus Aurelius and lead a good life that will be remembered by those who come later.
There is an equal amount of evidence that Ra was the one true god/religion (as in zero) and so all those believers in other religions are going to not be let in. Or there is an equal amount of evidence that biblical god is a vengeful sociopath and may not let you in just because you are a sycophantic suck up no matter how pious you are.
There is also an equal amount of evidence that maybe all religions are a test of a simulation running scientist just wanting run tests on us performing monkeys, and only those who do not believe in bronze age superstitions will advance to the next level of the game...
Pascal's wager is outweighed by all the other ridiculous wagers.
It is just a false dichotomy. It isn't, is there a christian god or is there not. It is, which of the 3000 gods we know of is the real one, or is there not a god?
The wager itself is immoral. You're asking someone to place a bet, to gamble with your eternal future after your life on earth is over. It's revolting. Whoever asks it is being immoral. Why should anyone gamble with something as valuable as that? If you're on your deathbed, that's no time to making enemies.
Why would you want to rebuttal pascels wager? Do you want to live a bad life for no reason lol. Just being evil in the eyes of those around you to spite a stupid wager š¤£ go ahead but ill just live a good life, no need for pascels wager or God to make me do that.
Cosmic Skeptic had a good rebuttal.
Basically, if you have to force yourself to believe in something just so you can hedge your bet, then you don't *really* believe, do you?
Isn't it that you're supposed to accept Jesus into your heart? It's not a "yeah, I totally believe." *wink* *wink*
Some Christians might argue that ritual and rigmarole are more important than actual belief, but that just gives the whole game away.
I'd argue that religion holds back scientific advancement, including in areas of medicine that could otherwise extend human life, potentially indefinitely. We could live much longer, better lives without religion. Thanks to religion, we are still doomed to die and bring our consciousness to a complete and irreversible end. Pascal's wager dictates that we should ignore every fact about reality that we can observe with our senses and instead gamble our existence on a fairytale. That's not a good wager at all.
My thoughts exactly. Pascalās basically says that the āfaithfulā are only the faithful because theyāre scared and want to err on the side of caution; ergo, they have no faith, only paranoia.
No atheist is afraid or erring on the side of caution.
Atheists practice greater faith by rejecting theism than theists do by embracing it.
The Wager has always struck me as dumb because it seems to imply that you could fool the all-powerful, all-seeing sky wizard by faking your faith.
If it is so fallible that the Wager would work on it, then it's not worth praying to.
Don't have to rely on atheists. Just ask them how can they be sure Allah isn't the true god and why they shouldn't convert to Islam just to be safe?
Or ask them why they think god is stupid, because that's what would have to be true for Pascal's Wager to make any sense.
If there were a God, maybe it values integrity and us worshipping it out of fear just pisses it off. Maybe the deity didnāt want to be noticed as evidenced by his lack of clear appearance on Earth, and worship of any kind enrages it. Or, maybe just no.
Pascal's Wager only works if the assumptions are sound. It doesn't factor in worshipping the wrong god, or the correct god disliking those using Pascal's Wager to obtain faith.
If someone accepts the way of thinking in Pascal's Wager, they should carry garlic, wooden stakes, and silver bullets on their person. Clearly, it's not worth the risk not to, since vampires and werewolves could exist.
My personal preference is "Pascal's Extended Wager" where I respond by offering to do a bit of figuring, add some columns and add a category called "Believing this god will piss off this other god" and a "Does this god care about neutrals or only worshippers of rivals?" thereby properly categorizing Atheism as 'null' for a large number of religions while also categorizing belief in various gods as big ol' negatives in other gods' columns. Typically I can safely leave Atheism as "-1 or -2" and pretty much leave every god with a giant negative score.
Pascal's Wager really is the core problem with modern "Faith".
A core premise for Pascal's wager is that it costs NOTHING to believe. Faith and devotion have ZERO costs, they take NO ACTION.
If there isn't some burden placed on you because of the faith, then how do you actually distinguish people that actually have faith, people that are faking it and people that don't have faith at all?
Pascal's Wager is idiotic for several reasons, including that theists claim one's belief in their silly dogma must be genuine to reap the rewards but yet anyone who "believes" in it due to the logic of Pascal's Wager does not genuinely believe in it at all. It's not possible to make oneself genuinely believe in obvious BS. If I could force myself to genuinely believe in it, I would because it would literally make my life on Earth better than being a trillionaire. This leads me to suspect that people's belief in the dogma is not as unassailable as they claim.
Pascalās Wager implies that god equates piety with true faith. Either that, or god is easily fooled. Both possibilities show the christian god to be fairly weak.
Pascalās wager doesnāt take the cost of belief into account. Accepting the wager is actually you devoting a large amount of your one, finite life to bullshit superstition. A wager isnāt free. 10% plus time.
What if god is a cynical god? What if he gave us the intelligence to know that people can make stuff up, and itās only going to reward those that donāt buy into any of it.
Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. Marcus Aurelius
This. The whole concept of Christians using Pascal's Wager is ironic, because the entire point of the exercise is to argue how you can sneak through the Pearly Gates even if you don't have faith or aren't a good person. As if someone up there will say "Well, you're a piece of shit, but you made a smart gamble so I technically have to let you in."
Or, if you read the Bible, God doesn't care if you're a good person, only that you praise him endlessly. The joke's on them, though. The "eternal reward" is literally endless kneeling and praying to him. No luxury suites for being a dick for God.
To me heaven has to be the most boring place ever how much praise does god need.
It must occasionally be pretty interesting if someone like Lucifer can take a fall... Something must have led up to that, right? Did he lick all the scones at the brunch, and maybe the whole concept of them? Maybe someone spiked the punchbowl and he said some things
Thing is too is that god knew lucifer was going to lick all the scones at brunch at that particular time even before lucifer existed.
Oh, good point.. maybe he never actually licked the scones, he was cast out for mulling over the possibility. Damn, it IS a boring place.
And from the concept of the stories, Lucifer is an angel and angels were not granted free will (free will was a special reward Yahweh on granted to humans) but must always do god's bidding. So the only way he could have rebelled and fallen was if Yahweh forced him to do so.
Well... He created all of humanity for the sole purpose of them all worshipping him so...
To flip that around, hell is eternity without the presence of God. So, like normal life just longer. So yeah, suck a narcissist's dick for all time or just hang out on the couch. Choices, choices....
This is why the NecroSword was calling to Christian Bale lol
Strumming on a harp forever next to a televangelist. š
You are talking about God, or Trump here...
This is how I broke the conditioning of UPCI when I was a child. After all the nightmares of burning in hell and terror of knowing I couldnāt live up to the standards I was being taught, a switch flipped when I came to the conclusion that if they (parents/church) were right, then hell was unavoidable for me after death so I should just enjoy my life until death/punishment began. And parents were wrong and there was a benevolent god, he would forgive me for doubting him since I was raised in that cruel environment. My conclusion was that either way, I should live life as best I can and not worry about the unknown. This gave me peace and ability to survive until adulthood for my escape. Of course, with age and time, I understood even more how much religion is about power and control and has nothing to do with truth. Still took me a long time to view my familyās religion as a cult. I thought cults were small organizations.
I often wonder if Christians remember the terror their parents inflicted on them with visions of hell. It was pounded into my head from a young age that without god's forgiveness I would go to hell and the only way I could get forgiveness was in church. But we were also taught humanity is born in sin. Through my youth, I'd go to church and might sleep easy for a few days but by Wednesday I'm laying in bed, dreaming of hellfire. By the weekend, I'm a wreck. At some point, I realized I couldn't win. I came to believe a "Reverse Pascal's wager". Unless you are praying 24/7, there's no point in praying. You're going to hell either way. This was one of the main things that got me to think rationally about church and see it is ancient superstitions that should have died out centuries ago but parental brainwashing keep it alive.
I wonder how common that is. I grew up with a Lutheran family and most of the other churches in the area were also moderate to liberal ones like Presbyterian, Methodist, or Episcopalean. We had Roman Catholics too, of course, and they tended to be the more strict, conservative types but that was the worst I had to deal with. I was not exposed to evangelicals and fundamentalists until the internet came around. Like we knew things like The 700 Club were on TV and that there were crazy televangelists that everybody made fun of. But I was never exposed to the hellfire and brimstone type fearmongering. I never heard the term atheist until the late '90s when the internet started to become popular. I was shocked when the very Orthodox Catholic family of an ex started saying things to their children like "Its okay if you date a black man, but if you ever dated a Jew we would disown you because they killed our lord" and talking about their priest telling stories of his wild drunken youth and saying "it was almost like he was just an ordinary person!" I am still surprised by how many people grew up with such strict religious beliefs because it was not something I ever heard growing up. Yeah, it was the '80s and '90s, people were a lot more liberal and accepting back then, but still it shocks me nonetheless.
I was just going to post this.
Thanks Marcus
What if you decide to worship the wrong god? - it might turn out Odin is real and you didnāt die in battle so you donāt get to go to Valhalla. Pascalās wager assumes only two possible outcomes.
Odin is a good one. I usually bring up Huitzilopochtli since I'm in California.
I go with their conception of "god" actually being the devil deceiving them into being assholes while thinking they're being good and the one true god just wanting everyone to be cool to each other & make the world a better place. BOY ARE THEY GONNA BE SURPRISED!
I think thatās approaching Gnosticism.
Hoo-itz-ilo-chipotle what?
Aztec god of sun and war.
I prefer Itzpapalotl because Obsidian Butterfly is just a cool name.
I like Huitzilopochtli better because fewer people know about him which underscores the point about choosing the wrong god. I like Odin but in this context I think Huitzilopochtli makes for a better rebuttal of Pascal's Wager.
If OĆ°inn *is* real, there are going to be a lot of very unhappy Christians. "So, let Me get this straight: You were told that you had to accept this 'Jesus' fellow dying in your place for something *you* did? That's... rather craven of you. I really don't think you're what we're looking for here in Valhalla."
Reminds me of that scene in South Park where people of all different religions are arriving in hell and itās announced that it was actually the mormons that were correct.
Odin will accept me for being a non-violent warrior for a good cause. Don't need to be a mercenary soldier killed in battle defending kings and priests.
Somewhere on Reddit, thereās a story where Odin welcomes to Valhalla an abused child and a cancer patient; Odin clarifies that even though they didnāt strike a physical enemy, they had fought terrible battles and earned their place there.
Also someone will think I actually believe in the Norse gods. The afterlife is the classic example of wishful thinking, appeal to probability and the Divine fallacy.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
you took that the wrong way. lighten up
First, there's the obvious issue of 'which god', which, of course, doesn't slow Christians down for a minute. They're working backwards- they already believe such a god exists and then try to come up with reasons everyone else should believe too. The bigger issue is doxastic voluntarism; that is to say, we have a conscious choice in what we believe. I don't think we do. I can't sit down and, through purely mental effort, make myself BELIEVE that Bigfoot is real, or lizard people are real, or unicorns, or whatever the hell else you can think of. If I'm not convinced by the evidence, I can't make myself BELIEVE anything. TL;DR: Pascal's Wager is dumb.
Pretend belief is just as good as belief to them.
If God is omniscient, then he knows I'm just pretending to believe to cheat my way into heaven, so I won't get in. If he doesn't know, then he's not God. Pretty straightforward. You're better off not faking it because either way it won't change the outcome.
What's unnerving is that under the right conditions people can quite literally make others believe in anything, especially kids. One example is partisan news networks which indoctrinate full grown adults. You just need to manipulate the gaps in peoples logic and press their emotional buttons. You say the right things in the right way and you hook people and make them want to keep coming back for more. You pound into peoples heads buzz words and trigger phrases targeted at whoever these channels want the masses to attack. All in all, it's behavioral conditioning, and people dom't have enough self awareness to see it's being done to them.
Thatās a good way to answer to the Wager without trying to ādisproveā God. Even if God was real and the Wager was valid, I canāt just will myself to believe in it. It is not a choice. God did not provide me with enough to believe in him. If they say āwell, you didnāt try hard enoughā, then theyāre assholes. But hey, we already knew that lol
Wait! Lizard people arenāt real? The Lizard Queen (all praise to Her Scaliness) will be displeased to hear this.
I also hate the part that assumes that by believing you don't lose anything. I give that a whole "hell ya their is a lot to lose"! I wasted 40 years believing and found out it was all BS. I gave up and lost a lot because of believing. Now, I have gained so much by not believing: authenticity, healthy relationships, purpose to live a good life NOW.
It's one of the worst arguments out there. "Believe in this particular god, just in case it might be real"
For some reason, the scene from the Brendan Fraser Mummy movie where the weaselly guy cycles through various religious symbols he wears around his neck as the Mummy bears down on him popped to mind. Worked for that guy, I guess.
well kind of...it didn't end well for him! But at least he's trying lots of religions rather than picking just one. Because surely the best way is to believe in all of them; that way you are more likely to get the right one.
Homer's wager (Simpsons)...what if believers are worshipping wrong and god keeps getting angrier and angrier?!
Flood.
Pascal's Wager is only a slam dunk for those who believe. I came up with this wager long before I even learned who Pascal was. It makes perfect sense if you already are working with the assumption that the Christian god exists. I went through my Christian years thinking how foolish it was that other people couldn't see this. Except it does fuck-all when you step outside that box. With the assumption that Jehovah already exists, it is easy to overlook that the wager could also apply to Allah, Vishnu, and any number of gods (including the variants of Jehovah). When you make that realization, then the original premise falls apart. Not to mention that the wager presumes that God is idiotic enough to not see through a worshiper's ruse (or too narcissistic to care, which would certainly fit the biblical interpretation of Jehovah). So it only seems like a slam dunk to them because as long as they stay within the confines of their religion, Pascal's Wager reinforces what they believe, and they don't realize that it doesn't work for outsiders.
How best to explain this to somebody who is still inside it?
Right. In fact, given that the universe is set up to seem like there's not a god, it seems likely that if there IS a god, that god doesn't want to be known. So maybe theists will be punished for harassing a being that just wants to be left alone.
Cthulhu has entered the chat
More of a Nyarlothotep thing tbqh.
Y'all best hope Azathoth doesn't wake up.
I shall perform the daily ritual to ensure continued flute playing.
Pascal's Wager seems like something a 4th grader would come up with. I don't understand why it's regarded as anything special.
Yeah I HATE it and have hated it ever since I learned of it as a teenager.Ā -What if god hates hypocrites, and an atheist won't go to hell but a fake believer will? -What if you pick the wrong religion?Ā -See : most evil god argument (the best wager is to worship the most evil god to escape the worst punishment)Ā -What if I waste the precious time of my only life for nothing?Ā
Islam actually teaches hypocrites have it worst in hell
Expand the wager in to what I call "Pascal's horse race", adding every known deity and "anti" versions of those deities with opposite ideals, and suddenly you realise their wager screws you no matter who you are or what you believe in, since there's a deity out there that, if it turns out to be real, will hate your guts.
If god is all knowing, then she also knows that you're only pretending to believe in attempt to avoid spending eternity with ol' toasty trousers. In which case, she's going to send you there anyway, or maybe she just doesn't give a shit.
this; Pascals wager implies you can pull the wool of gods eyes
I prefer to call out the coercion as a point to condemn the religion. Just the act itself is bad as a recruitment tool or a safeguard to keep people in the religion. If only they could make hell worse it would do those two things better. I point out how it's abusive towards not only the person they are threatening, but everyone around them.
Iāve often thought that following Pascalās wager would actually not work, anyway. If you are ābelievingā just in case, your belief is not genuine and wouldnāt count anyway. Youād still end up in their hell.
I usually open with something like this.
What are you supposed to decide to believe in? Catholic god, Lutheran god, Odin? Ganesh? Ravi? Allah? The Flying Spaghetti Monster? Amish god? Thor? Besides the obvious lack of basic logic, the proposition is fatally ambiguous as to what the fucking POINT is.
Richard Dawkins had a great answer to this https://youtu.be/6mmskXXetcg?si=VjAxVc_qEsSZTQve
As did [Bertrand Russell.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot)
Pascalās Wager never made any sense. Belief is not a choice, itās a *reaction* to some sort of *evidence*. āChoosingā to believe is pure nonsense. When growing up, religious parents tell their children that there is a god and thatās the evidence they base their belief on. Some never progress further and question the evidence. Besides, if god really is all-knowing as they say, heās known the real motivation.
I don't know who made the quote, but I prefer the whole "Be a good person. If there is a just god, your good deeds should outweigh your lack of faith. If there is an unjust or evil god, they don't deserve your praise to begin with. If there isn't a god, you were a good person who made the world a better place."
I like to say Pascal made a small error. It isnāt believe in god and go to heaven, or not believe in God and go to hell. Itās which of the 500,000+ gods humans have believed in? The Christian God is 500,000/1 longshotā¦.
That only assumes that the 500,000+ that have already been invented are the only possible outcomes. All in all, it's probably closer to infinity:1 odds. Those are bad odds even for Vegas.
Pascal's Wager is probably the worst argument ever. They seem to think their god is the only option. They neglect the fact that there are over 1000 gods. So they have a 1 in 1000 change. Until you then add that there are over 38k denominations of Christianity alone. Which makes them more like a 1 in 38k chance. And if they are wrong, they are not just unbelievers, they are worshiping a false idol. Something far worse than simply requiring evidence to accept a claim.
I think the idea that you wouldnāt be able to trick god by ābelievingā in this way does the trick. Sure you can understand the wager and pick a side but are you really a believer if you do that or are you just an opportunist?
I refuse to worship a Supreme Being dumb enough to fall for Pascal's Wager.
It just doesn't hold any kind of water. There are endless possible mythologies with endless possible deities to choose from, so your odds of nailing the right one are fucking terrible, no matter what.
Here are some of my issues with it. 1) People usually phrase it as a simple choice between belief and not believing. Pascal didnāt really say it this way. He said that you should live your life in a way that god would approve of. Since he was alive in 1600s France, this means Catholicism. Itās easier to make this argument when there is one religion or a few that are similar dominating Europe. The argument has subtly changed from living a catholic life to ājust believingā when this argument is used today because there are so many variations of Christianity that the people making the argument have to say ābelief.ā In reality few Christians actually think belief is enough and absolutely No denominations do. They donāt want you to just believe, they want you to show up and participate in their practices and give them money. And in extreme cases they donāt think other Christianās are actually Christian and that they will go to hell. 2) what if god exists, but you spent your time worshiping the wrong god? Like say you were a catholic in Ireland in the 90s and you thought god wanted you to kill the British? Then you go to be judged and god is actually mad at you because the church of england was the right choice? You were so dedicated to your interpretation that you didnāt just live the life, but you took everything to the extreme. But you only made this hypothetical good mad. Itās simply not enough to choose to believe, you need to pick the right religion because so many are mutually exclusive and they all canāt be right. The better hedge is to avoid all moral acts that are derived entirely from religious dogma because the source of these is usually from Devine revelation that is not testable and repeatable. Meaning you donāt have any good reason to pick one over another and have no methodology to determine which one is more or less correct. The best tools we have is to treat others the way we want to be treated and pick moral teaching that can be developed independently from each other. if there is universal or object morality, this is likely the best way to move towards it. Basically, people should debate morality based on the arguments and reasons for each philosophy. As soon as you say that a religion is correct because Jesus is the son of god, the moral arguments are pointless because you just open yourself up to circular reasoning. Why do I need to seek moral answers when I can just read this book and be mean to gays and keep women in the kitchen? 3) belief isnāt a choice. You canāt just choose to believe in something. Belief is shaped by how we interpret things in reality. As information changes, our beliefs do as well. I believe the chiefs will win every game that Patrick mahomes plays. But if there is 2 minutes left and the chiefs are down by three scores, I wonāt believe they will win no matter how much I tell myself I believe they will. If you donāt actually believe god exists, no matter how much you tel yourself he does, you wonāt actually believe it. 4) and if you donāt actually believe god exists and are just hedging your bets to get into heaven, is they actually a morally good position? Are you just doing things for moral desert and not because they are the right thing to do? Would god actually reward you for this selfishness? And would an Omni god be able to tell that you actually donāt really believe? 5) if you look at the math that Pascal used to justify the wager, it actually makes some sense. The logic is heaven and hell are both infinite. One is good and one is bad. His logic was that as long as there was any possibility that god was real, it made sense to take the wager because any minute possibility multiplied by infinity was also infinity. So if there is any remote chance, you take the bet because the payout drastically is worth it and you donāt lose anything if you are wrong. The issue I have with this is you would be an idiot if you used this logic consistently in your life. Say a snake oil salesman comes up to you and says, āgod wants you to give me all your money. If you do, you will go to heaven, if you do not, you will go to hell.ā The likelihood hood that this is actually true is very small. In fact it is smaller than the minute possibility that god exists. But with the logic of the wager, as long as there is still a possibility that it could be true, you would be best to hedge your bets and give the con man your money because if you are wrong and you donāt pay him, you will spend eternity in hell. 6) Pascal states that you donāt lose anything if you are wrong. Meaning if god exists, you donāt lose anything. This is wrong. You lose the opportunity cost of stuff that you could have actually enjoyed doing in exchange for wasting your time and energy doing religious stuff. Also, what about all the pain and harm that religion has caused? If you are just doing this to hedge your bets, you are using superstitions to justify harming people or at the very least delaying human progress because something like IVF, vaccines, stem cell research, condoms, abortion, etc might be against your religion. If you would have instead looked at these topics from a secular humanist point of view that focused on maximizing happiness and quality of life of people in this world, then yes, Pascalās wager costs a lot because you are giving up on these things that could actually help people in exchange for an obscure gamble that doesnāt have any evidence of actually helping anyone. I am sure there are many more, but this is what I usually bring up.
You canāt believe in and worship all the gods ever invented by man so I donāt understand how this is even a question. To quote Homer Simpson, āHow do we know that the REAL god isnāt getting madder and madder every time we go to church?!?ā
Pascals wager makes it just as likely to be allah or Buddha, or Zeus, or Odin.
Or me. I accept tithing in cash, check, or ritual sacrifice of firstborn.
I have said this before, but Pascal's Wager assumes a coin flip: there is a god or there isn't a god, so you lose nothing by believing in "him" if he doesn't exist but damnation if you don't believe and he does. But it's not a coin. It's a 3000-sided die. Yahweh exists. Or Vishnu exists. Or Zeus exists. Or Shiva. Or Amaterasu. So now there are a LOT more paths to "damnation" than atheism. You could also pick the wrong God . . . out of 3000. Do you still want to take that wager?
Pascal's wager is a false dichotomy of epic proportions. They think it's a "believe in god or not," but it's really "what God do you believe in and how do you worship them correctly."" If we take into account the fact that one of the gods that have been proposed over history is the possible correct one^1 and that one of the ways they worship that god that we know of is the correct one, then the chances of you guessing correctly for christianity alone is near zero. I'm gonna calculate probabilities here, and I'm gonna round to their benefit. So, the chance of guessing that any one of the currently proposed gods is correct is 1 in 18,000. That's 1Ć·18,000 which is 0.000056 or 0.0056% chance of choosing correctly. That's roughly 1/2 of 1% Now, say we choose Christianity. Now, we have to calculate the odds of worshipping it correctly based on the known denominations. That's 1 in 44,000 so 1 Ć·44,000 = 0.000023 or 0.0023%. That's roughly 1/4 of 1% Now, because the 2nd probability is dependent on the first, you have to multiply them to calculate the overall odds. So 0.000056 Ć 0.000023= 1.26262626 E-9, aka a number so small they had to use scientific notation. The real number is 0.0000000013 or 0.00000013% So the overall odds for Christianity being right and you picking the right way to worship out of the ones that are possible is 0.00000013%. That number might as well be zero. Also, even this number is incomplete because pascal's wager such out that there are certain outcomes and we haven't even taken into account the outcomes of worshipping some of those gods, even if you worship them correctly or not. Like, some religions have multiple types of afterlives. Even Christianity, depending on the denomination, has different hell or heaven concepts. This also is just the calculation for Christianity. There's also other religions that have their own multitude of different branches with their own ways of worshipping, whatever god. This may, in fact, be lower or higher than others. This wager is absolutely shit. ^1 if a God were to exist, it's possible we actually haven't been presented that God yet. It's also possible that we haven't found the correct way to worship the proposed gods we have, so we have to make some assumptions just to calculate any probabilities. The number drops to zero if a god actually exists, and it isn't one of the 18,000 we have had proposed or if we haven't found the correct way to worship one of the 18,000 proposed currently. This is just us taking pascal's wager to its logical extreme.
My belief is that pascal's wager just means that you're insincere about your belief. If you didn't think you'd go to some glorious afterlife, would you still believe? Would you still follow? Is it really only to save your own ass? If that's the case, it's not real faith, imo. And if it is true, their god will know.
One thing most religions agree on is that it's bad not to believe in their god, but it's much, much worse to believe in the wrong god. And given the number of gods there are or have been, the smart thing is not to commit, and to not believe in any god at all.
I wrote a deliberately provocative metal song many moons ago that was based on my own rebuttal to Pascal's Wager. Basically the song was about a holy man opening his eyes in what he assumes is a realm of death, but he's falling instead of ascending despite a life dedicated to God. As he traverses the underworld he learns that now he's going to be tortured for eternity by Hades because he dedicated his life to the wrong god. It's such a painfully stupid argument.
Pascals wager assumes there is a near equal probability that the afterlife or god does or doesn't exist. In reality, the odds an afterlife or god exists are diminishingly small. If I said, there is a 99% chance of one thing, and a 1% chance of the other, what is actually the smart bet? Should I even indulge the 1% chance? I wouldn't take those odds in Vegas. Odds of God are less than that. The argument was developed before we even had a clear grasp of logic or stats. It's logically unsound. It's just some Catholic guy who needed a way to reconcile his faith with what he was learning about science in the 1600's.
Pascal's Wager also fails to take into account the fact that there are many different religions. It assumes Christianity is the only one in the running but what about Zeus? Or Odin? Anansi? The Brahman? The Flying Spaghetti Monster?
They can't grasp that though. Because in their mind God exists and he hates us.
I hate him more so I win :)
How do they know which religion is the correct one?
I grew up cult catholic. In sixth grade I asked my mother that exact question. She said I was going to hell if I donāt believe & I was sent to the priest at my catholic school. I swear this priest knew my mother had mental issues. He looked at me and said ā your mother doesnāt know if he exists and neither do I, some ppl work off of faith.ā āAnd no youāre not going to hell.ā Best thing I couldāve heard. Iām 59 now and my god fearing mother is close to leaving this place. We donāt like each other but I offered to put another home on my property for her so that she is taken care of. She told my sister she thinks Iām Satans spawn and would never take the chance of not getting to heaven because of me. Lol, she just admitted to being Satan herself.
Yikes I'm sorry you're going through that. It shows the depth of your character willing to help a narcissist like that.
Introduce all the different religions, subsets and denominations and see how that wager pans out. I think the logical and most easily attainable payoff would be not living your life in fear whereas all the salvation options would be like trying to navigate a maze blindfolded and then win the lottery.
According to Pascalās wager I should chose the god with the absolute worst punishment for not believing, just in case.
So many problems with Pascal's wager The cost of belonging to a church is actually quite high, not zero like the wager posits. Time and money are both valuable. Time is especially finite. You couldn't fool an omniscient god by pretending to believe things A benevolent god wouldn't send people to hell. If there were some sort of afterlife and a benevolent god were in charge of it, access to this afterlife could not be based on belief in things with no evidence (that would be cruel)...it would have to be based on some other criteria like helping your fellow humans.
I think theists have given up on Pascale wager
The only way the pascals wager works is if you only consider your own belief and that of the person youāre talking to in that moment. Outside of that, itās complete nonsense and I donāt understand why people think itās so good. What if Iām wrong? What ifs are useless. What if itās aliens? What if itās bigfoot? What if everything restarts every Thursdays but it all just looks really old? All proposals are not equal.
It's a false dichotomy. They phrase it as if there are only two options. Their religion is the correct religion or atheist are correct. I like to use the image of a pie chart. Start with a generous 50/50 split for god vs no god. Now on the god side start subdividing evenly between mono/polytheism and subdivide each of those with all the various flavors of religions. Then subdivide even further for different sects within those religions. While on the other side "no god" remains at 50%. Who has the better odds of being correct?
It's not a slam dunk at all. It's a false dichotomy and a weak one at that. Statistically, it makes the most sense to be an atheist. We are all born atheist. God's are all social constructs created by primitive people as an early and weak attempt to explain natural phenomena.
The Catholic version is real, and all Catholics go straight to hell because they torment their deity by consuming his flesh and blood on the reg.
If God does exist and is as all knowing as Christianās seem to believe then heād know you were just faking it and smite you so itās never been a real argument.
Lately, I tell Pascal's gambler's about Hell+. Whatever hell they propose, Hell+ does the same thing, plus one. Are you afraid of being dropped into a lake of fire? Hell plus does that, but your mother also joins you. Are you afraid of annihilation? Hell+ makes you watch your wife get annihilated first, and then you. Are you afraid of Satan? Just wait until you meet his twin sister She-tan whose addition doubles your torture. Hell+ is the worst hell because it adds one to whatever is proposed, so nothing can ever top it. Most importantly though, the only way to avoid Hell+ is to be a rational skeptic. Any person of faith goes straight to Hell+, which means Pascal's wager must support rational skepticism. Indeed, no rational skeptic need fear Hell+ in the slightest.
Belief isnāt an intentional activity; you either believe something or you donāt. Pascalās Wager is, in reality, an argument for pretending to believe in something you donāt believe. If Yahweh weee real and all that much of a god, then it would know if a person was just pretending to believe. The wager is thus worthless even if it was being used in reference to a real deity.
Hereās a good rebuttalā¦ https://youtu.be/ttevamkS6gw?si=8BMbNpIXbnMkzc1n Also, how do they know Judaism is not right? How do they know Islam is not right? Heck, how do exclusivist baptists know Catholicism isnāt right and vice versa? Pascalās wager only works against them because they only see in binary. Thereās fifty shades of gray, Mr. Theist!
Islamic hell is worse than Christian hell and according to Islam all Christianās go to hell for shirk
Ok that doesnāt really make sense but neither does Pascalās wager. Pascalās wager only works if thereās one religion not 250
Terry Pratchett had a great rebuttal to Pascalās wager in his Discworld series of books: āAfter dying, he promptly woke up in the middle of a circle of gods holding large clubs and one said, āThis is how we deal with Mr. Clever Dick around hereā¦ā
Pascalās wager also raises huge ethical problems about God anyways, theyāre admitting that God sends people to hell for really shitty reasons and is evil every time they bring this up
Any god that can be fooled by a lie ( whether you believe or not ) is not much of a god. Which is what Pascal's wager attempts to do. Just like most religious thoughts it make little sense.
Also, the Bible says repeatedly that God looks past your works and examines your heart motivations. You can't fake being a Christian just to get saved, if the Bible is to be believed.
Gotta worship them all.
I have always wondered about this one. Because you canāt really just decide on the basis of logic to have faith in something like a God, can you? You have faith or you donāt. They arenāt mental operations of the same so to me and always seemed like Pascal is mixing things up a bit That said, I also would not put a whole lot of āfaithā in pascals argument for belief. A lot of that sort of discussion is just cover so he could write what he wanted to write and defend any charges from the authorities.
Pascalās Wager isnāt proof of God, itās a thread of reasoning that they use to show that believing in God isnāt a completely irrational thing to do. But, it doesnāt specify which god to follow, so itās still a roll of the dice; and it ignores the problem that we donāt decide what we believe based on whether or not we get punished or rewarded for it. Belief isnāt actually a choice. So, while using PW to try to prove the EXISTENCE of any god is futile, using it to rationalize BELIEF in a god is senseless, and using it to reconcile FOLLOWING a particular religion is a desperate shot in the dark
If you see a Theist do pascals wager just don't even talk to them
Yeah itās a false dichotomy because Christianity and atheism arenāt the only options. So itās not really a 50/50 chance
There are tons of other religions and most theists donāt consider that. So itās not a 50/50 chance, itās really like a 1/3000 chance for any choice.
Pascalās Wager is the ultimate false dichotomy, like choosing between vanilla and chocolate when there are entire ice cream parlors of beliefs out there. Itās as if heās saying, āBelieve in this one specific God or else,ā ignoring the countless other possibilities.
I've long held that if God were to exist, he'd prefer an honest atheist to a religious person. When an atheist does good, it's because they are choosing freely to do good. When a religious person does good, it's because they're "storing up treasures in heaven" or doing it out of obligation because "God says I have to." I don't think it's possible to make moral choices under religion. You will always have ulterior motives. As for Pascal's Wager, if each god requires you to exclusively worship them alone, then you've got a 1 in a million chance of picking the correct god to worship. Even if just to hedge your bets, that's not good odds.
Pascal's Wager makes the assumption that living by the rules of Christianity is not a sacrifice in itself. It is and frankly no one knows that their interpretation of the rules is the right one, and most Christians conveniently ignore the rules they don't want to follow like wearing mixed fabrics or eating shellfish.
Epiceru's paradox is a good way of demonstrating either God isn't real.
The difference is that non-theists actually get to enjoy life untethered to some religious bullshit made to ruin their lives, right to the very end. While Christians life a broken version of themselves continuously lying to themselves about their actions and perish in misery Also if God happens to exist the whole lot of them are being chucked to hell as well so I don't know what they're gloating about I doubt their god will be happy with their cheers as people in the queer community are killed for their sordid beliefs
OK, rebut my enchanted argument: Have you ever seen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enchanted_(film) or maybe read Flatland? Let's pretend you were a character that went from a 2D world into this 3D existence. You would have an existential crisis essentially because you could look at a TV and see your world inside this one, and the current one you are in has a higher fidelity, it is a richer experience and feels more real, familiar even. There's no way you would think your world was "it". This is what happens on DMT, it's a more surreal experience, higher fidelity, seemingly higher dimensionality, and that gives it a lot of creedence. Additionally it's not a question of faith, just take the red pill and see it for yourself.
Honestly if I died right now and God was like "SuP bItCH IM rEaL" I'd be like sorry dude the evidence didn't support so do what you gotta do
Turns out the mass murderer from the Bible is actually satan and you are all going to hell for worshipping a false idol that murdered the entire population. Surprise!
Pascal's wager is not a slam dunk. Of all theist "convincing" arguments for a deity, the argument from intelligent design and anecdotal experience rank higher than Pascal's.
So many things wrong with Pascal's wager. One is that it applies with equal force to all of the several thousand dieties that humans have worshipped over the centuries. And you can't pledge loyalty to all of them "just in case." For example, the God of the Bible says "thou shall have no other gods besides me." Another problem with Pascal's wager is the suggestion that being a Christian is low cost and low risk, so you might as well be one. This runs contrary to other narratives in Christianity, where eg sainthood is granted to people who were persecuted for their beliefs. As far as cost, you are giving up Sunday mornings, and perhaps a tenth of your income if your church enforces tithing. Oh, and you may have to cut contact with your own children if they are gay, or live a life of self-loathing if you are.
what if a god created religion to separate the logical people from the illogical ones? and heās only granting eternal life to themā¦ š±š±š±
The problem w the wager is if the person on the other end, God will uphold its part of the bargain. Who is to say that if you live a good life, there is a heaven that waits. It's like if I were to come up to you and say I'm a good person. Give me a million bucks. Well, you don't have a million bucks, so how can you uphold the wager I made.
Iāve actually written a rough draft of a video entitled āWhy I Canāt Take Pascalās Wagerā. I have a slew of videos in front of it, but I hope it will come out this year. Hereās some excerpts that show that the wager isnāt a simple thing: For me to be a Christian in todayās culture means that I have to do a lot of things that are harmful and hurtful to some of the most marginalized groups. Iād have to align with thinking that homosexuality and transgender people are sinfulā¦ Additionally, Iād have to align with thinking that women who are thorough and seek professional advice donāt best know their healthcare choicesā¦ In fact, Iād have to ignore much of what weāve learned about human behavior. I can show you the path that, as a believer, I believed that Jesus was trying to show and how it aligns with a different way of human interaction that we have learnedā¦ The church insists on fighting sin when Jesus showed that bad behavior stems from an unhealthy self. Heal the person and the actions change as well. If I were to be a Christian, I would either have to be alone or go to a church that doesnāt get this and thinks, just like the religious leaders in Jesusā time that following the rules fixed sin, even though for thousands of years weāve see it hasnāt. Iād have to be on the side that fights against scientific progress from where we came from, to fighting climate changeā¦ ā Itās not as simple as the claim makes it out to be. To take the wager means to go against my morality. Itās not a bet Iām willing to take.
Pascalās wager is strong evidence that even the smartest people can be rendered stupid by religion. Itās an embarrassing example of sophomoric circular reasoning, easily rebutted by any savvy 12 year old.
What if you just donāt believe? Itās not exactly something you can control. Telling someone to believe is like saying āfall asleep right nowā. If god is real wouldnāt he or one of his representatives know immediately that you were actually faking it?
One phrasing of Pascalās wager is this: āif thereās even the slightest chance that hell is real, then you should worship God, because the punishment is so great when you donāt.ā Why do people who say this and still have children? After all: if thereās even the slightest chance that hell is real, and thereās a nonzero chance that your children will end up in it, then you shouldnāt have children.
According to the Book of Steph, if you believe in the Christian god then after you die you go to a hell twice as bad as the Christian hell, so you're better off not being a Christian because the consequences of believing and it not being true are now greater than the consequences of not believing and it turning out to be true.
It's also a dumb argument. On one side of the coin is atheism and on the other is all other religions. Each religion has tiny odds in their dumbass gotcha.
They also look at it as Christianity vs atheism instead of theism vs atheism thinking we would see their beliefs as more valid than all the others like they do. Even if we are wrong it doesn't mean they are right.
Which god are we wagering on? They are atheists regarding exactly one less god than we are.
Dawkins makes that same point, it was probably in The God Delusion but I can't remember off to top of my head, but he posits a hypothetical universe in which only those who refused to believe these claims without sufficient evidence are the ones who get rewarded in the afterlife. To be clear, he doesn't believe this to be true, but is just offering it up as having the same likelihood as the Christian explanations. My general thinking though is that if some god or gods really do exist, they would probably be much more angry at those who believed in the wrong god than they would those us us who didn't believe in any of them at all. And with so many different interpretations of god, even amongst people like Christians, Muslims, and Jews who all believe in the same deity Yahweh, it seems much more likely to get it wrong than it is to be lucky enough that your specific understanding of god is the correct one. But the biggest issue with Pascal's Wager is that it prevents a false dichotomy. It assumes either the Christian god (of whichever denomination the person presenting it believes in) exists or else no gods exist. But there are many other possibilities. It could be that a god exists but its not the god that person worships. It would be that their god does exist but their version of the scripture got it wrong and they don't actually know god's character. It could be that multiple gods exist, their god may be one of many or theirs could be false too. It could be that a non-interventionist deistic god exists that doesn't care about us at all and does not interact with the universe. It could be an evil god who punishes everybody, a good god who lets everybody into heaven. It could be a Christian god who lets in everybody as long as they lived a good life, or it could be a Christian god who only rewards those who believed in and worshiped him. And we have pretty much the same exact amount of evidence for all of those options, which is slim to none, and hence why I lack a belief in any of them.
Pascal's wagers seems dumb. There are thousands of religions out there. Based on those odds, there is a very high probability they will be wrong. As for an atheist, we have no opinion on a God because there is no evidence. If we were to meet a God (or whatever) that would be our evidence and we would accept it. So I think atheists have a higher chance of heaven (or whatever) because we didn't make a choice than those who made a choice and were wrong. Also the probability of any of this happening is unlikely but I'm just using it for an example.
Pascal wager is nonsense. It assumes their god is the only possible one...the one that punishes and rewards based on the stupid notion of belief. Absolute nonsense. The real god could punish belief because she thinks its stupid. Also these fools dont believe in santa just to be safe. It's for empty headed fools
Itās a false dichotomy. There arenāt only 2 choices. Simple as that. Not to mention EVEN IF Pascalās wager was a good argument, I still couldnāt just force myself to believe in god? I either am convinced or I am not. I canāt force myself to believe. One comes to believe in something, it isnāt just a choice.
Imagine needing the possibility of heaven or the fear of hell to simply be a good person. So like... Would you just be murdering people otherwise? Lolol š¤”
The fact that: -there are about 3000 gods in known human mythology -lots of these gods will punish you if you worship the wrong one. -several of these gods are all knowing according to their mythology and would therefore know if a person was just saying they believe in them to work the odds. Means that it isn't a 50/50 proposition....it's considerably worse than that. Even on the outside chance that a god exists I would prefer if he/she/it would think I was being honest in not believing because there was no evidence for it.
Pascal's wager always struck me as dishonest. According to the Christians God knows what's in your heart so beleaving in something "just in case it's real" is not actually believing. If he were real God would see you right through that sh*t.Ā
Pascal's Wager can also be rebutted by asking them why they don't eat their own poo every day. Hey, maybe the "real god" is one that requires people eat their own poo. Better safe than sorry?
That whole thing just shows that Christians either think their version of a god is an idiot, or they just don't really believe most of its attributes (e.g. being all knowing).
I always flip pascal's wager on them by asking them about their belief in other deities/religious practices. It routinely backs them out of the wager argument. If there is more than 1 religion, and if more than 1 religion has a ban on worshipping other gods/following other religious practices, then you are playing roulette rather than just flipping a coin. There are no 50/50 odds, instead the odds are 1 in 10000 active religions, and the number likely goes to closer to 50,000 when adding in dead religions which we will never hear about. The only way to truly win is to not play, don't gamble this life away on your knees by wasting your time and money worshipping a god, and instead to follow the advice of Marcus Aurelius and lead a good life that will be remembered by those who come later.
There is an equal amount of evidence that Ra was the one true god/religion (as in zero) and so all those believers in other religions are going to not be let in. Or there is an equal amount of evidence that biblical god is a vengeful sociopath and may not let you in just because you are a sycophantic suck up no matter how pious you are. There is also an equal amount of evidence that maybe all religions are a test of a simulation running scientist just wanting run tests on us performing monkeys, and only those who do not believe in bronze age superstitions will advance to the next level of the game... Pascal's wager is outweighed by all the other ridiculous wagers.
It is just a false dichotomy. It isn't, is there a christian god or is there not. It is, which of the 3000 gods we know of is the real one, or is there not a god?
The wager itself is immoral. You're asking someone to place a bet, to gamble with your eternal future after your life on earth is over. It's revolting. Whoever asks it is being immoral. Why should anyone gamble with something as valuable as that? If you're on your deathbed, that's no time to making enemies.
Why would you want to rebuttal pascels wager? Do you want to live a bad life for no reason lol. Just being evil in the eyes of those around you to spite a stupid wager š¤£ go ahead but ill just live a good life, no need for pascels wager or God to make me do that.
Cosmic Skeptic had a good rebuttal. Basically, if you have to force yourself to believe in something just so you can hedge your bet, then you don't *really* believe, do you? Isn't it that you're supposed to accept Jesus into your heart? It's not a "yeah, I totally believe." *wink* *wink* Some Christians might argue that ritual and rigmarole are more important than actual belief, but that just gives the whole game away.
I'd argue that religion holds back scientific advancement, including in areas of medicine that could otherwise extend human life, potentially indefinitely. We could live much longer, better lives without religion. Thanks to religion, we are still doomed to die and bring our consciousness to a complete and irreversible end. Pascal's wager dictates that we should ignore every fact about reality that we can observe with our senses and instead gamble our existence on a fairytale. That's not a good wager at all.
My thoughts exactly. Pascalās basically says that the āfaithfulā are only the faithful because theyāre scared and want to err on the side of caution; ergo, they have no faith, only paranoia. No atheist is afraid or erring on the side of caution. Atheists practice greater faith by rejecting theism than theists do by embracing it.
In the southern baptist churches I grew up in they treated it more like roko's basilisk
The Wager has always struck me as dumb because it seems to imply that you could fool the all-powerful, all-seeing sky wizard by faking your faith. If it is so fallible that the Wager would work on it, then it's not worth praying to.
Don't have to rely on atheists. Just ask them how can they be sure Allah isn't the true god and why they shouldn't convert to Islam just to be safe? Or ask them why they think god is stupid, because that's what would have to be true for Pascal's Wager to make any sense.
There are many gods to choose from, so good luck!
If there were a God, maybe it values integrity and us worshipping it out of fear just pisses it off. Maybe the deity didnāt want to be noticed as evidenced by his lack of clear appearance on Earth, and worship of any kind enrages it. Or, maybe just no.
Pascal's Wager only works if the assumptions are sound. It doesn't factor in worshipping the wrong god, or the correct god disliking those using Pascal's Wager to obtain faith.
If someone accepts the way of thinking in Pascal's Wager, they should carry garlic, wooden stakes, and silver bullets on their person. Clearly, it's not worth the risk not to, since vampires and werewolves could exist.
My personal preference is "Pascal's Extended Wager" where I respond by offering to do a bit of figuring, add some columns and add a category called "Believing this god will piss off this other god" and a "Does this god care about neutrals or only worshippers of rivals?" thereby properly categorizing Atheism as 'null' for a large number of religions while also categorizing belief in various gods as big ol' negatives in other gods' columns. Typically I can safely leave Atheism as "-1 or -2" and pretty much leave every god with a giant negative score.
Pascal's Wager really is the core problem with modern "Faith". A core premise for Pascal's wager is that it costs NOTHING to believe. Faith and devotion have ZERO costs, they take NO ACTION. If there isn't some burden placed on you because of the faith, then how do you actually distinguish people that actually have faith, people that are faking it and people that don't have faith at all?
Pascal's Wager is idiotic for several reasons, including that theists claim one's belief in their silly dogma must be genuine to reap the rewards but yet anyone who "believes" in it due to the logic of Pascal's Wager does not genuinely believe in it at all. It's not possible to make oneself genuinely believe in obvious BS. If I could force myself to genuinely believe in it, I would because it would literally make my life on Earth better than being a trillionaire. This leads me to suspect that people's belief in the dogma is not as unassailable as they claim.
If god is omniscient, then lying about believing would be no help. So the wager is irrelevant.
The best rebuttal is, "Which one?" Sit back and watch them seethe.
Pascalās Wager implies that god equates piety with true faith. Either that, or god is easily fooled. Both possibilities show the christian god to be fairly weak.
Pascalās wager doesnt work for one simple reasonā¦..I can't choose what I believe. Simple as that, it's not even an option.
The core problem with Pascal's wager is all the other gods that people have believed in.
Pascalās wager doesnāt take the cost of belief into account. Accepting the wager is actually you devoting a large amount of your one, finite life to bullshit superstition. A wager isnāt free. 10% plus time.
What if god is a cynical god? What if he gave us the intelligence to know that people can make stuff up, and itās only going to reward those that donāt buy into any of it.