Pascal's Wager Revisited

[Silver]

Ah, a fanatic. Well, aye-aye, captain, let's start the insanity. Without me, of course.

I want you to join in on my insanity, but you are too chicken shit because you understand that to tango with me means that you have absolutely no argument that makes any sense. 

[Minimalist]

I'm sure it is a handicap which he labors under constantly.

[Bad Wolf]

Can't help but notice, two more pages on and you still didn't address what I said about pascals wager. Are we even talkin about that any more or have you conceded the point yet?

[Silver]

Can't help but notice, two more pages on and you still didn't address what I said about pascals wager. Are we even talkin about that any more or have you conceded the point yet?

He's ignoring me, too.  He's a dumbass who cannot accept reality, apparently.  

[Simon Moon]

Can't help but notice, two more pages on and you still didn't address what I said about pascals wager. Are we even talkin about that any more or have you conceded the point yet?

He won't really answer your question, anyway.

His response will just be more unsupported assertions.

[Bad Wolf]

Well, I'd rather he prove you right, then just assuming you're right.

[datc]

No it really doesn't make sense. Assuming you are talking about a christian afterlife. You just fail to take into consideration every other religion, every other god and every other afterlife. What if you are wrong? What if, Norse mythology is the true religion and because you failed to worship Odin or kill any frost giants, you're going to get sent to the opposite of Vallaha, whatever that may be. What if the ancient greeks had it right, and because you failed to give offerings to zeus, you'll spend the rest of eternity having your nuts chewed off by cerberus while Hades is sitting there watching you and jerking off.

You haven't even thought about the possibility that you could be wrong. You haven't spent any time worrying about any other religions hells, and it's for the same reason we don't believe in yours.

By saying this, you are conceiving of the afterlife as an external reward for actions that are intrinsically disconnected from their consequences.

But my conception is different: as they say, "you don't go to heaven, as in receive a boon as if you won a lottery; you grow to heaven." In such an afterlife, we are neither fully preserved as pagan conceptions of the Elysium or Valhalla would have it nor completely transformed, as Lot's wife into a pillar of salt (which obviously entails killing the wife and creating the pillar; there is no way to "turn" one into another with any continuity).

It is a matter of some interest how exactly we shall be in this manner transcended. Again, I have suggested that one of the things that will be preserved is our natural human ability to ascend from a single-celled organism into the state of glory. (As a side point: the demons descend, good angels stay put, and humans ascend.) The interaction of change-amidst-permanence may change from this life to the next but not completely.

Richard Weaver argued that a healthy person "separates man out from other beings and regards his destiny as something no member of human kind should be indifferent to." But on the option of no-eternal-life, "his destiny" is the same for all and most ignominious: to be eaten by worms. There is every reason, as becomes clear upon some reflection, to be indifferent to that. Something in us, something indeed healthy and quite praiseworthy, resists this conclusion.

As Eric Hoffer writes, "Nothing so bolsters our self-confidence and reconciles us with ourselves as the continuous ability to create; to see things grow and develop under our hand, day in and day out." But we build our own souls. Surely, a project of that importance cannot just fail in a cosmic abortion for every human being who ever existed.

This may lead us to entertain the idea that the destiny of man is perpetual self- and world-improvement in nature, virtue, and happiness.

[Bad Wolf]

Not only was your post incoherent, it was completely irrelevant to the point of Pascal's wager. Nothing you said was relevant or even linked to what I said. Do you, or do you not, worry about any other religions and their versions of hell?

[Minimalist]

This may lead us to entertain the idea that the destiny of man is perpetual self- and world-improvement in nature, virtue, and happiness.

It's a delusion, dumbass.

[Mudhammam]

I want to believe that is there no gratuitous suffering in the world because the number of animals who have and will experience excruciating pain for the mere sake of another's immediate and transient gratification just seems too bleak, too dark.

I want to believe that the choices I make do not hinge on every antecedent condition that led to the moment of my present decision.

I want to believe that someone or something created the Universe with all of its beauty and ugliness, chaos and order, creation and destruction, with a purpose in mind that includes my existence.

I want to believe that when I die I will understand every mystery that evades my understanding.

I want to believe that I will not suffer a violent death, nor that a loved one will, nor that I will ever lose the faculties of my intellect or senses as my body deteriorates with age, nor a limb, nor a shelter over my head, nor...

I want to believe a lot of things. It doesn't mean I can have them, and it doesn't mean they are true. You don't like it? Tough shit. Try to make this world, the one you know exists in some fashion, better to whatever extent your abilities allow, instead of wasting your time construing ad hoc assurances in another that you can only ever imagine in your head. The correct wager is not a rejection of a unfathomably enjoyable phantom world, it's an acceptance of this terrifying yet awesome concrete one.