And if you are wrong , eternity is a long time.

[Losty]

Here's this again

[Strongbad]

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I'm not someone prone to taking unusual risks ;but for me, deciding to believe and accept theistic teachings, which may have beneficial eternal consequences for the acceptee; or to deny these teachings ,which may only offer some vain ,arbitrary and short lived pleasures ,but could lead to an eternity of pain,and misery, is an easy decision to make.

I'm not a gambler ,but the cost benefit ratio is on the side of the believer
who risks nothing but gives up disease ,alcoholism, crime and early death
and could pssibly gain eternal life in a state of bliss.

If ,you're wrong ,all you gain is some guilty pleasures and lose an eternity.

If I'm right I give up vice and crime and perversions but gain an eternity .
its a no brainer ,except for those with no brains

I just finished reading the RULES ..and this could get me banned.. so here's your big chance to get me dumped. start complaining now ..

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[Elskidor]

Didn't read. You are not the first to wonder this silly question and thinking yourself clever.

What if you're wrong and you find that you wasted your life in fear of what comes after? If you need a book to help guide you and keep you in fear so as not to do bad things then that's fine, but I can do that all on my own without help.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

What does god say about lying?

Leviticus 19:11 You shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another.

You're going to hell. How does that make you feel?

you should know better than me.

Stop talking shit.

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Hellloooooooo???? Have you read about Pascal's Wager yet, Artur?

I'm just gonna keep replying to myself here until Artur acknowledges whether he's read up on Pascal or not.

I don't think we should be introducing such complicated ideas at this point, Becca.

[pocaracas]

Oh, look what I've been missing out... another Pascal's Wager thread!
Oh the fun to be had!!!
**skipping around**


ok, now, seriously... I haven't read the whole thread as I assume it would be an exercise in futility.... as will the next sentences that I'm going to type, but heck... It's lunch hour break.

As long as we're talking about chances of getting it wrong, we might as well take out old M$ excel (or any other spreadsheet program) and, on the first line, write out ALL the religions, cults and beliefs concerning the afterlife that mankind has ever upheld and will ever uphold, one of these per column.... let's put atheism on the second column. This line represents the belief a person has

Then, on the first column, write them all again. This column represents reality.

Now, cross reference them: If you adhere to atheism, then nothing happens if atheism is the reality. But something nasty happens if any of the others are reality, you put a minus sign.
If you adhere to catholicism, then nothing happens if atheism is the reality, but you get a plus sign if the catholic belief is real, but get a minus for every other.
And keep going for all columns.

In the end, you're left with equal number of minuses for every religion, cult, or belief.... And atheism only gets one extra minus... in relative terms, it's almost irrelevant.
So, which religion, cult or belief should I choose? What's the criteria?

Now look at it from the other angle: if atheism turns out to be the real deal, then nothing happens to anyone, regardless of belief. If any other belief system happens to be real, then the majority of the people on the planet get something nasty.
Why should I uphold the virtues of any divinity, knowing that it brings harm to other people?

[max-greece]

Every time you are praying to your God you are probably pissing the real one off.

Best case scenario - we're right and you're not pissing anyone off.

P(You're right) = 1/9002 (from Poc's spreadsheet above).

[RobbyPants]

If I'm right I give up vice and crime and perversions but gain an eternity .
its a no brainer ,except for those with no brains

Can you prove there isn't a god named Steve that punishes blind faith and rewards rational thinking? Steve will literally send you to hell if you believe in him or any other gods. This is why he's been hiding for the past few thousand years.

What if you're wrong, Artur? What if you're wrong?


See, that's the problem with Pascal's wager. It assumes there is only one god worth looking at so it can skew the math in its favor. The problem is, there are many gods, and none of them have any more evidence than the others. If we're going to accept nonfalsifiable entities in this proposition, we have to accept all infinity of them. If you can't prove Steve, and his infinite number of variations don't exist, then you have to take them seriously in this wager, making the final answer completely indeterminate.

[pocaracas]

If I'm right I give up vice and crime and perversions but gain an eternity .
its a no brainer ,except for those with no brains

Can you prove there isn't a god named Steve that punishes blind faith and rewards rational thinking? Steve will literally send you to hell if you believe in him or any other gods. This is why he's been hiding for the past few thousand years.

What if you're wrong, Artur? What if you're wrong?

He exists and speaks!

[Rampant.A.I.]

I'm not someone prone to taking unusual risks ;but for me, deciding to believe and accept theistic teachings, which may have beneficial eternal consequences for the acceptee; or to deny these teachings ,which may only offer some vain ,arbitrary and short lived pleasures ,but could lead to an eternity of pain,and misery, is an easy decision to make.

... Which is why you're a member of every religion, including an infinite number of mutually exclusive, tiny variants, plus every possible belief system that there could ever be, even ones that don't exist as things people believe, so you don't risk any eternal hell at all, right?

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I mean, that is something you do, yeah? If you don't, you've rather tipped your hand regarding the idiotic presuppositions you've made before you even begun your argument, and those invalidate the premise you started with, so...

Hey, either you're constantly vibrating under the weight of all the actions you have to perform and not perform at the same time in order to safeguard yourself against every conceivable hell, or you're just fucking wrong, and kind of an asshole for framing your Wager like this!

I'm not a gambler ,but the cost benefit ratio is on the side of the believer
who risks nothing but gives up disease ,alcoholism, crime and early death
and could pssibly gain eternal life in a state of bliss.

Okay, this is interesting: so if I go to a hospital I'll find no christians there as patients? I mean, they've given up disease, so I guess that means they never get sick, right? Or do they get sick, in which case, what the hell does it mean to "give up" disease?

Ever gotten a cold, Artur?

If ,you're wrong ,all you gain is some guilty pleasures and lose an eternity.

Except if god is one of the infinite variety of gods that could potentially reward me for any number of things that I do in life, and not the insipid god you believe in, which is something you haven't even attempted to demonstrate.

If I'm wrong and the god that exists is the god that rewards only people who sometimes wear red hoodies, I'm safe right now! Will you be saved during the red-hoodie end times, Artur? Or will you remain mired in the perversions and crime inherent to those who wear other colors?

If I'm right I give up vice and crime and perversions but gain an eternity .
its a no brainer ,except for those with no brains

I'll ignore the "if you don't agree with me, you're dumb!" because that just shows you're a fucking asshole, but I will say: hello, I'm an atheist. I've never gotten so much as a parking ticket, I don't drink or do drugs, and I'm in a committed relationship with a member of the opposite sex who also frequents this forum.

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What were you saying about atheists and crime, and other bullshit? You gonna admit you're wrong and apologize?

http://youtu.be/PqJpZOljjG8

[Mister Agenda]

I'm not someone prone to taking unusual risks ;but for me, deciding to believe and accept theistic teachings, which may have beneficial eternal consequences for the acceptee; or to deny these teachings ,which may only offer some vain ,arbitrary and short lived pleasures ,but could lead to an eternity of pain,and misery, is an easy decision to make.

I bet I can phrase it with my own front-loaded assumptions to make believers sound unreasonable for not betting on atheism.

I'm not a gambler ,but the cost benefit ratio is on the side of the believer
who risks nothing but gives up disease ,alcoholism, crime and early death
and could pssibly gain eternal life in a state of bliss.

Risks nothing? The believer risks believing in the wrong God, belonging to the wrong denomination, God getting ticked at being believed in 'to be on the safe side', and if it costs you nothing to be a Christian, you're probably not doing it right. What about time spent in prayer and at church, what about tithes, what about those short-term pleasures...these aren't 'nothing'. And eternal life? Maybe it would be okay for the first trillion trillion years, but what about after a trillion trillion times that? Do I really want to live that long?

If ,you're wrong ,all you gain is some guilty pleasures and lose an eternity.

Well, I get the intellectual integrity of not trying to believe something I don't know is so, and I'm golden if it turns out God is weeding out the gullible.

If I'm right I give up vice and crime and perversions but gain an eternity .
its a no brainer ,except for those with no brains

You know, our lives tend not to be as exciting as believers imagine. We're no more prone to vice and crime and perversions that Christians, arguably less given things like our prison statistics and divorce rates being enviable.

I just finished reading the RULES ..and this could get me banned.. so here's your big chance to get me dumped. start complaining now ..

Although presenting Pascal's hoary old wager would be a reasonable thing to put on the list, I don't think your post breaks any of our rules. That you think it does and posted it anyway after agreeing to follow our rules when you joined says a lot about you. Fortunately, I'm not prone to generalize from you to Christians in general.

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I hope Odin kicks your ass when you show up in Valhalla without your sword.

I have an invincible sword by my side at all times.but thanks for the heads up.

If you have an invincible sword, why are your posts made of fail?