RE: Pascal's wager
July 23, 2012 at 5:50 pm
(This post was last modified: July 23, 2012 at 5:54 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(July 23, 2012 at 4:36 pm)Annik Wrote: [quote='MysticKnight' pid='314591' dateline='1343075457']
Some problems I have with pascal's wager:
1) No religion accepts fake belief, so you cannot fake belief in a God.
I dispute that. Many Pagan religions, including the main one in Rome before christiainity, doesn't even insist on belief, much less non-fake belief. They ask only for the form, and were explicit that form was only to humor something like Pascal's Wager - Offend not a god whom you don't really believe in because you just might be wrong. For Romans piety is nothing more than "be always mindful of Pascal's wager where any god, yours or someone else's, is concerned". That's why Roman can get along so well with so many local gods and religions.
It's only with Judiasm and Christianity that religion began to reach for the murderous moral and intellectual totalitarianism that characterises the superstitiion of the next 2000 years.
