Pascal's Wager Simplified

Originally posted by twhitehead
Please don't. A reply to my questions does not require a listing, so I will be forced to assume that you are using your usual tactic of drowning the thread in copy/pastes to try and avoid giving honest answers to questions.

Okay.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Allah
FSM
Thor
Loki
Ra
The god that only rewards Atheist's
Ect ect ect
....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deities

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby (OP)
Pascal's Wager Simplified

Options: 1) Accept God's Grace Gift of eternal life with an uncoerced decision to believe [place your confidence] in Christ for your salvation; 2) Reject the Person and Work of Christ as flimsy fiction. Risk/Reward Question: What if you're wrong?

Options gf: 1a) Accept [believe] the claims of "Allah; FSM; Thor; Loki; Ra;" "The god that only rewards Atheist's Ect ect ect" [Atheos] regarding eternal life; 2a) Reject their claims as flimsy fiction. Risk/Reward Question: What if you're wrong?

Note: Accept Option 1) and 2a) while rejecting Option 2) and 1a) or Accept Option 1a) and 2) while rejecting 1) and 2a).

Originally posted by divegeester
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religions_and_spiritual_traditions

divegeester, we'll have to save this wiki link for another day or thread in deference
to twhitehead's request that I avoid "... drowning the thread in copy/pastes".

Originally posted by twhitehead
One problem with Pascal's Wager Simplified:
1. Explain to me why the same argument does not apply to every other religion, including past or invented ones.
2. If you can't explain 1., then explain why you are not a member of all those religions. ie do you actually believe the argument is valid and act on it, or do you only expect other people to do so with regards to your religion?

1. It does. Please see my reply to googlefudge on page three.
2. n/a

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
1. It does. Please see my reply to googlefudge on page three.
2. n/a

You have misunderstood. 2. is applicable if the answer to 1. is 'it does', so please answer 2.

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
[b]2) Reject the Person and Work of Christ as flimsy fiction.

Do you believe that the (attempted) coercion, clearly inherent in threats of eternal torture, can compel someone to somehow believe in "the Person and Work of Christ" when they simply do not believe in it?

Originally posted by twhitehead
You have misunderstood. 2. is applicable if the answer to 1. is 'it does', so please answer 2.

Originally posted by twhitehead
One problem with Pascal's Wager Simplified:
1. Explain to me why the same argument does not apply to every other religion, including past or invented ones.

[It does apply and is, therefore, represents a false premise.]

2. If you can't explain 1., then explain why you are not a member of all those religions. ie do you actually believe the argument is valid and act on it, or do you only expect other people to do so with regards to your religion?
[1 has been explained as false; therefore the "If" conditional "2." is superfluous]

If I've misunderstood either 1. or 2. please rephrase or recast the sentences. Thanks for your patience.

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
[It does apply...

And therefore you have failed to explain why it doesn't apply. Hence you must answer 2.

and is, therefore, represents a false premise.]
It is not a premise.

If I've misunderstood either 1. or 2. please rephrase or recast the sentences. Thanks for your patience.
2. Explain why you are not a member of all those religions. ie do you actually believe the argument is valid and act on it, or do you only expect other people to do so with regards to your religion?

Also explain why you are going to great lengths to avoid answering such simple questions.

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Originally posted by Grampy Bobby (OP)
[b]Pascal's Wager Simplified

Options: 1) Accept God's Grace Gift of eternal life with an uncoerced decision to believe [place your confidence] in Christ for your salvation; 2) Reject the Person and Work of Christ as flimsy fiction. Risk/Reward Question: What if you're wrong?

Options gf: 1a) Accept ...[text shortened]... nd 2a) while rejecting Option 2) and 1a) or Accept Option 1a) and 2) while rejecting 1) and 2a).[/b]

No. You don't get it.

It's not option 1a and option 2a.

You don't wrap all the gods up in one choice and make it a simple believe/not believe
choice.

You have to make a table with ALL the possible god choices [including none]
down one side, and the option of each god in turn being correct [including none]
down the other side.
Then you fill in the table with the consequences.

Like this.

Across the top, the deity believed in.
Down the side, the deity that actually exists. [note that for simplicity we are only allowing
one deity to exist at once, this gets much more complicated when you remove that artificial
restriction.]

................. None .................... God of Bible ......... Thor ............ Atheos.... ect

None: .... didn't waste time ..... wastes time ....... wastes time ...... wastes time ......
God of bible: goes to hell ....... goes to heaven .... goes to hell........ goes to hell.........
Thor:......... goes to hell ........ goes to hell ......... goes to Valhalla... goes to hell.....
Atheos:.... goes to heaven ..... goes to hell........ goes to hell.......... goes to hell.....
Ect ect



So you can see that all options include upsides and downsides, including infinite upsides and
downsides.
Which mean the infinite upsides and downsides cancel out, leaving only the question of which
choice is more probable. And atheism [none] always wins.

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Thanks for weighing in on the conversation, Suzi. I'm aware of your position. Please restate its biblical rationale.

Saying that you believe in God just to 'hedge your bets' does nothing and is a fool's errand.

Man cannot hope to fool God. The Christ must be accepted in one's heart. God knows man's heart, this is the basis for Judgement. Accepting the Christ with one's mouth, yet not accepting Him in your heart, i.e. lying to God, is yet another sure road to perdition.

Originally posted by googlefudge
No. You don't get it.

It's not option 1a and option 2a.

You don't wrap all the gods up in one choice and make it a simple believe/not believe
choice.

You have to make a table with ALL the possible god choices [including none]
down one side, and the option of each god in turn being correct [including none]
down the other side.
Then you fil ...[text shortened]... t, leaving only the question of which
choice is more probable. And atheism [none] always wins.

You would love to see a potential Christian actually do this, wouldn't you?

Bog them down with inconsequential BS so they lose sight of their true goal.

There is no other God than the God of Abraham. Period.

And because man is filled with sin, the only path to God is through His Son, Jesus Christ, who was sent to take on our sin debt, and bridge the gap to God.

It IS a simple believe/not believe choice. AND if you fail to believe, yes, this IS a rejection of God. So one could say it is a simple accept/reject proposition. One that, unfortunately, most of humanity will fail. So don't feel too bad, you're actually in the majority, for once.

Originally posted by googlefudge
No. You don't get it.

It's not option 1a and option 2a.

You don't wrap all the gods up in one choice and make it a simple believe/not believe
choice.

You have to make a table with ALL the possible god choices [including none]
down one side, and the option of each god in turn being correct [including none]
down the other side.
Then you fil ...[text shortened]... t, leaving only the question of which
choice is more probable. And atheism [none] always wins.

Sort of like this:

http://i.imgur.com/aVSVQ.png

except they have put all the possible gods (religions/philosophies actually) along the top and the list from which you pick the one you believe in down the side.

Obviously this is still a huge simplification since it only has around 35 options, but it makes the point: you have a 1/35 chance of getting the right one according to this table. The real table would go off into infinity in both directions.

--- Penguin

Originally posted by Suzianne
Saying that you believe in God just to 'hedge your bets' does nothing and is a fool's errand.

One of the weakest 'spirituality quotes' I know is Pascal's "If I believe in the Risen Christ and it's just an artful falsehood, there is nothing to lose. If true, then I have everything to gain." Weak, weak, weak. Imagine that as your motto in life! And yet Grampy Bobby has it on his profile page. So, presumably, someone saying that they believe in God just to 'hedge your bets' may well be something Grampy Bobby genuinely thinks is true.

Originally posted by Suzianne
You would love to see a potential Christian actually do this, wouldn't you?

Bog them down with inconsequential BS so they lose sight of their true goal.

There is no other God than the God of Abraham. Period.

And because man is filled with sin, the only path to God is through His Son, Jesus Christ, who was sent to take on our sin debt, and bridge t ...[text shortened]... , most of humanity will fail. So don't feel too bad, you're actually in the majority, for once.

Oh for crying out loud.

Is it not possible for you to actually analyse arguments logically?

It doesn't matter if a god [or many gods] exist or not.

Pascals wager is still a dumb argument.

It's not inconsequential BS that the argument works equally well [as in not at all well]
for any and all god concepts.

The point of the argument is to try to convince people WHO DO NOT BELIEVE that
they should.

It thus makes no sense whatsoever to analyse the argument from the perspective of
someone who already believes.


If you go to any number of sites dealing with pascals wager including several I linked
in my first response you see exactly these kind of tables being set out.
Used as visualisations of the arguments being made.



So, you hypothesise that a god exists that sends people who don't believe in it to
hell [and those that do to heaven] and thus claim that if you believe in this god
and it exists you get infinite reward [heaven] and if you don't believe you get infinite
suffering [hell]... And if it doesn't exist both stances get the same after death [non-existence]
then the safe bet is to believe in god as that option scores best over all eventualities.

That is pascals wager. And it fails for the reason you say [that god can tell the difference
between true belief and someone just hedging their bets] and it fails because you can
hypothesis an infinite number of potential gods. including "the god that only sends atheists
to heaven" which has the exact opposite table to the one above.

That is a failing of the argument, it proves that the argument doesn't work.

This doesn't prove that god/s don't exist, merely that this argument isn't a good or valid
reason for believing in them.



I cannot understand why or how you cannot grasp this, it's basic basic logic and reason.

Originally posted by Penguin
Sort of like this:

http://i.imgur.com/aVSVQ.png

except they have put all the possible gods (religions/philosophies actually) along the top and the list from which you pick the one you believe in down the side.

Obviously this is still a huge simplification since it only has around 35 options, but it makes the point: you have a 1/35 chance of getting ...[text shortened]... ding to this table. The real table would go off into infinity in both directions.

--- Penguin

Yes exactly.