This thread is an attempt at transplanting the debates that began in the Clans forum in the thread named "Freethought is now superfluous" to this more appropriate forum. Here is the address to the original thread:
http://www.redhotpawn.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=18615&page=1
DoctorScribbles posted this:
If you are going to put forth a probabilistic argument in support of weak atheism, you should also be prepared to counter the traditional expected value argument.
That is, if you don't hold that P(The Christian God exists) = 0, then you must accept the possibility that P(The Christian God exists)>0. It follows that the decision to not believe in God has an infinitely negative expected value, for if The Christian God exists, then you will encounter infinite suffering, and you can't make this vanish from the expected value equation, no matter how much conditional magic you do, without asserting that P(The Christian God exists) = 0.
The problem with this argument (Pascal's Wager) is that it assumes knowledge of the characteristics of God. There are an infinite number of possibilities, with no reason to choose one over another. For any one possibility of what the characteristics of any god(s) are, there is a corresponding possibility in which the consequences of belief are exactly equal and opposite. Therefore any action or decision or belief is as likely to cause infinite suffering as it is to cause infinite pleasure. There's no way to know. All such possibilities cancel out.
Now this actually is not an argument about how the number of gods is most likely zero; it is an argument that there is no possible way to know how to interact with however many gods exist in order to maximize the reward and minimize the penalties. You might as well ignore the possibility that there are gods as there's no way to determine how one should act even if there are gods with respect to those gods.
Originally posted by AThousandYoungI don't believe this is accurate. Pascal's wager doesn't assert that God, if he exists, has any characteristics or associated consequences of believing in him.
The problem with this argument (Pascal's Wager) is that it assumes knowledge of the characteristics of God.
Pascal's wager simply defines a particular hypothetical God with some particular hypothetical characteristics and associated consequences of belief. It is only with respect to this man-made, man-defined God that the wager has any meaning.
That inaccuary pointed out, the counter-argument you present is a good one. I would present it this way:
1. Determine the optimal solution to Pascal's wager for the man-defined Christian God.
2. Define a new God belief in whom results in eternal torment and disbelief in whom results in eternal paradise.
3. By the same solution procedure as (1), we can show that (2) must have the opposite optimal solution.
4. Define a new "wager" in the same vein, in which one must decide to believe in one or the other, or neither.
5. The game theoretical solution to (4) is that it's a push between the two hypothetical Gods no matter what you do. All decisions have an expected value of 0.
6. Conclude from all of this that if you believe that the solution to Pascal's wager holds for the Biblical God, then you must also believe that you can't expect to really gain anything by doing so in light of (3) and (5), by virtue of having chosen the wrong God to define. But this is a contradiction, so it must be the case that Pascal's wager has a fundamental flaw.
Dr. S