What Pascal didn't wager

By hellboundsoul ~

I’ve never had much affinity for Pascal’s Wager. The whole thing is pretty hard to take seriously with the heap of objections that immediately come to mind after hearing it. However, I do think there is something to be said about it. First of all though, here’s a shortened and condensed version of Pascal’s Wager:

Image by andreakw via Flickr

Premise 1: Either God exists or he does not.

Premise 2: Every person must choose whether they believe that he does or does not exist.

Premise 3: If God exists, after death those who believe in him experience eternal life and happiness and those who do not believe experience eternal misery.

Premise 4: If God does not exist, those who believe in him will have wasted some time on earth doing some things they didn’t need to do and those who didn’t believe in him will have avoided this.

Premise 5: It is better to sacrifice some time on earth to do what’s required to appease God than to not believe in him and take the risk of ending up in a place of eternal torment.

CONCLUSION: It is in one’s best interest to wager that God exists.

Now I don’t know if I need to list the reasons why this argument is flawed, but I’ll mention a few:

1. Which God? The wager is assuming some idea of the Christian God, but shouldn’t gods of the other religions and the consequences of not believing in them be factored in? What if you jump through all the hoops to stay out of one hell and then find yourself in another religion’s hell?

2. Does believing in God really make your life worse? Maybe believing in God is not ultimately more of a sacrifice than not believing in him.

3. Here’s the main objection I have: a wager is not the same as belief. To “wager” that God exists is not to meet any of the criterion required for being a Christian, by anyone’s standards. And so what if you believe God exists? “Even the demons believe that–and shudder.” (James 2:19)

I could mention more objections, but my point here isn’t to show how silly Pascal’s Wager is. I believe that there is something else that can be gleaned from the argument he presented. I think Pascal’s Wager brings attention to something that is inherent to belief itself. To demonstrate what I mean, I’m going to write out my own version of Pascal’s Wager:

Premise 1: There is an afterlife (of some sort) or there is not.

Premise 2: I have beliefs about the nature of the afterlife (or lack thereof).

Premise 3: The particular belief I have about the afterlife (or lack thereof) excludes the possibility of my belief in some other possible truths about the afterlife (e.g., as long as I believe that there is NO afterlife, I cannot at the same time believe that there IS an afterlife, since these are mutually exclusive).

Premise 4: Some of the possibilities about the afterlife that have been excluded have consequences for not believing them.

Premise 5: Due to the contradictory nature of many possibilities of the afterlife, it is not logically possible to believe that all of them are true (in hopes of avoiding all possible negative outcomes).

Premise 6: Choosing to “not choose” still leaves me at risk of many afterlife possibilities.

Premise 7: No matter what I choose, or choose not to choose, I am putting myself in serious risk.

CONCLUSION: We’re all screwed.

So how is one to decide what to believe about the afterlife? My answer to that question is “faith” (or “trust,” if you like). I don’t see there being any sense in running around in circles researching every last possibility about the afterlife to ensure that one has made the correct choice. No amount of research could even do that, because all of it is just speculation. What I think is more sensible is to look around at one’s experiences, what they’ve heard, seen and learned and decide what seems most likely to them. I did that and concluded from my experiences that the possibility of there being an afterlife is highly improbable and I don’t see any good reason to believe there is one at all, so I don’t believe. But that’s just my experience. I could be wrong, in which case I’m probably completely screwed, but I’m willing to take that risk. In my mind, it’s no risk at all.

Comments

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~ S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden – Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not

On Living Virtuously

By Webmdave ~ A s a Christian, living virtuously meant living in a manner that pleased God. Pleasing god (or living virtuously) was explained as: Praying for forgiveness for sins Accepting Christ as Savior Frequently reading the Bible Memorizing Bible verses Being baptized (subject to church rules) Attending church services Partaking of the Lord’s Supper Tithing Resisting temptations to lie, steal, smoke, drink, party, have lustful thoughts, have sex (outside of marriage) masturbate, etc. Boldly sharing the Gospel of Salvation with unbelievers The list of virtuous values and expectations grew over time. Once the initial foundational values were safely under the belt, “more virtues'' were introduced. Newer introductions included (among others) harsh condemnation of “worldly” music, homosexuality and abortion Eventually the list of values grew ponderous, and these ideals were not just personal for us Christians. These virtues were used to condemn and disrespect fro

Search This Blog