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RE: Pascal's Wager Revisited
April 10, 2015 at 2:27 pm
(April 10, 2015 at 2:13 pm)datc Wrote: (April 10, 2015 at 1:56 pm)Stimbo Wrote: What's practical about wasting your life kissing up to a model of a god that someone told you is real, just to stock up brownie points for a cushier afterlife that you cannot possibly know is even going to be a thing? That way madness lies.
No kissing up to anyone is entailed; only, during this life, becoming the sort of person who will enjoy eternal life to the fullest. But that's not Pascal's Wager.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
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RE: Pascal's Wager Revisited
April 10, 2015 at 2:37 pm
(April 9, 2015 at 11:07 pm)datc Wrote: The dignity of a life enlightened by religion is higher than that of an atheist life
Nonsense. There is no dignity living on your knees; and calling religion "enlightenment" is silly. Dogma has historically stood against the enlightenment of learning, by definition.
The dignity of living the good life in a well-considered manner may not be evident to you ... but that says more about you than it does any atheist.[/quote]
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RE: Pascal's Wager Revisited
April 10, 2015 at 2:39 pm
(April 10, 2015 at 1:52 pm)datc Wrote: Recall that we are dealing with a version of the Pascal's wager. The argument is that practical living as if there was an afterlife even if you are not sure of it makes sense.
Except that if I want to live practical, I have to evaluate the evidence for claims properly, so living practical actually means disregarding Pascal's nonsensical wager.
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own - Bertrand Russell
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RE: Pascal's Wager Revisited
April 10, 2015 at 2:54 pm
(This post was last modified: April 10, 2015 at 3:27 pm by Ravenshire.
Edit Reason: spelling
)
(April 10, 2015 at 1:45 pm)datc Wrote: (April 10, 2015 at 9:52 am)SnakeOilWarrior Wrote: People are born ignorant. That is not the same as stupid. Please educate yourself so you don't look stupid.
Very well, ignorant (and innocent). The need for wising up remains. Yes, but what you call "wising up" I call dumbing down.
(April 10, 2015 at 1:45 pm)datc Wrote: (April 10, 2015 at 9:52 am)SnakeOilWarrior Wrote: Boy, have you got that backwards. The limited number of years we have make every one of them more precious, not less. Helping someone in this world is a far better thing than you would ever be able to do in an eternal existence.
Any pleasure can be experienced only in the now, the present. To that extent, there is a parity between a mortal and immortal being. However, the now cannot be enjoyed in complete isolation from the other 3 time periods (past, future, and timelessness). Those three are felt with greater poignancy by an immortal being, because he not only apprehends all time but always will and with considerably greater clarity.
The fact that under no-afterlife, all are made equal in death seems to take the zest and energy out of the now, because one knows that his experiences will disappear like tears in the rain. He will forget all of his present (and now past) pleasures in death.
You may be thinking that what gives a temporal pleasure its taste is that it was fought, struggled for and bought at a heavy price. An inhabitant of heaven is a "passive consumer." But that need not be so. We know little about the heavenly life, and if struggle is the force that gives life meaning, it may exist in some form even in heaven, as well. I trust whoever's in charge of the afterlife to have arranged matters competently. No, understanding and accepting that taking the tiniest portion of your finite time and giving it to someone else far surpasses the giving of any amount of time from an eternal pool is what you don't seem to understand.
An example you may understand better:
Joe earns $60,000/year and is the sole bread winner for a family of 4. Jill is a multibillionaire who can't spend all the money she earns just from the interest on her fortune. Joe donates $3,000/year to charity. Jill donates $60,000/year. Which one feels the pinch? Scarcity it what makes something valuable. To Jill, $60,000 is nothing. To Joe, it's a years labor.
Please don't come in here belittling the only existence we know to exist. It's far more precious than you can understand.
Thief and assassin for hire. Member in good standing of the Rogues Guild.
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RE: Pascal's Wager Revisited
April 10, 2015 at 2:54 pm
So... is it being suggested we pretend to believe in an afterlife, so that... we get a better afterlife?
This makes no sense to me.
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RE: Pascal's Wager Revisited
April 10, 2015 at 3:09 pm
I gather it's a little stranger and a little harder than that. I think the OP's idea is to behave as if you are the sort of person who deserves and would make good use of an afterlife. He's sure that just behaving morally isn't enough. The problems are, of course, the same as the problem of choosing a god in Pascal's Wager:
1. If there is an afterlife, we have no idea what it is like, or what the requirements for it might be. The afterlife's suggested by various religions are diverse, and the means of deserving them vary widely. In fact they are often contradictory. Many of them are supposed to happen whether you believe or not. Many religions suggest that entrance to an afterlife requires actual belief, not just behavior.
2. The odds of there being an afterlife, let alone the one the OP imagines, are not 50%. There is only scant and extremely weak evidence of an afterlife and tons of evidence linking conscientiousness and the mind to the body.
3. Choosing to behave as if there is a higher power is not free. It requires time and commitment.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.
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RE: Pascal's Wager Revisited
April 10, 2015 at 3:09 pm
(April 10, 2015 at 2:54 pm)robvalue Wrote: So... is it being suggested we pretend to believe in an afterlife, so that... we get a better afterlife?
This makes no sense to me.
You don't pretend to believe; you already actually believe or disbelief in the very process of living one way or another; your actions on Pascal's wager speak louder than words.
If you aim your actions on attaining eternal life, even if you are not sure there is one, then you end up becoming fit for it and are in the end pleasantly surprised that what you were doing turned out to have been useful.
If you concern yourself with temporal life only, and there is eternal life, then your failure to prepare yourself for it will result in disappointment.
It's up to you personally, of course, to evaluate the costs and benefits; I only point out that there are costs and benefits, and the evaluation (by the agnostic) must be attempted in practice if not speculatively, again within the assumptions of the argument.
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RE: Pascal's Wager Revisited
April 10, 2015 at 3:11 pm
Why did you ignore my post which specifically addresses what you just said?
'The more I learn about people the more I like my dog'- Mark Twain
'You can have all the faith you want in spirits, and the afterlife, and heaven and hell, but when it comes to this world, don't be an idiot. Cause you can tell me you put your faith in God to put you through the day, but when it comes time to cross the road, I know you look both ways.' - Dr House
“Young earth creationism is essentially the position that all of modern science, 90% of living scientists and 98% of living biologists, all major university biology departments, every major science journal, the American Academy of Sciences, and every major science organization in the world, are all wrong regarding the origins and development of life….but one particular tribe of uneducated, bronze aged, goat herders got it exactly right.” - Chuck Easttom
"If my good friend Doctor Gasparri speaks badly of my mother, he can expect to get punched.....You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others. There is a limit." - Pope Francis on freedom of speech
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RE: Pascal's Wager Revisited
April 10, 2015 at 3:12 pm
(April 10, 2015 at 2:39 pm)Faith No More Wrote: Except that if I want to live practical, I have to evaluate the evidence for claims properly, so living practical actually means disregarding Pascal's nonsensical wager.
But it's one of the very assumptions of the wager that you have evaluated the claims properly yet found no position ultimately convincing.
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RE: Pascal's Wager Revisited
April 10, 2015 at 3:12 pm
(This post was last modified: April 10, 2015 at 3:14 pm by robvalue.)
How can I believe in it if I see no evidence? I can't choose to believe stuff just because. I can't "pursue" eternal life because it's just an abstract concept that we have no reason to believe has any basis in reality. Pretending stuff is real doesn't make it real.
And I don't want eternal life anyway. I'd like to rest in peace after this one.
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