RE: Pascal's Wager
September 3, 2008 at 10:46 pm
(This post was last modified: September 3, 2008 at 11:02 pm by WOKE UP.)
(September 1, 2008 at 8:43 am)Ace Wrote: Pascal's Wager (God is a safe bet)
"If you believe in God and turn out to be incorrect, you have lost nothing--but if you don't believe in God and turn out to be incorrect, you will go to hell. Therefore it is foolish to be an atheist."
This argument is known as Pascal's Wager. It has several flaws.
Firstly, it does not indicate which religion to follow. Indeed, there are many mutually exclusive and contradictory religions out there. This is often described as the "avoiding the wrong hell" problem. If a person is a follower of one religion, he may end up in another religion's version of hell.
Even if we assume that there's a God, that doesn't imply that there's one unique God. Which should we believe in? If we believe in all of them, how will we decide which commandments to follow?
Secondly, the statement that "If you believe in God and turn out to be incorrect, you have lost nothing" is not true. Suppose you're believing in the wrong God--the true God might punish you for your foolishness. Consider also the deaths that have resulted from people rejecting medicine in favor of prayer.
Another flaw in the argument is that it is based on the assumption that the two possibilities are equally likely--or at least, that they are of comparable likelihood. If, in fact, the possibility of there being a God is close to zero, the argument becomes much less persuasive. So sadly the argument is only likely to convince those who believe already.
Also, many feel that for intellectually honest people, belief is based on evidence, with some amount of intuition. It is not a matter of will or cost-benefit analysis.
Sounds like something the Christians ( including myself ) in my church
use to use a lot.....It goes like this;
" You can live your life believing that God exists, only to die and find out
that he didn't." Or you can live your life believing that God doesn't exists, and then to die and find out that he did.!!!.....( ouch! )
Thats one of those questions that got me in trouble when I asked the preacher......" Can I live my life as clean, responsible and sinfree as possible, and not have to believe in any God????
