Pascal's Wager

Fallacious argument trotted out by religious believers, particularly in the Judeo-Christian tradition, in favour of belief in divinity. The argument goes as follows: you may either believe in God or not, and he may or may not actually exist. If you believe in him, it is irrelevant if he doesn't exist (and by extension there is no afterlife), while if he does you are offered a place in the light eternal. If you don't believe in him, then if you are right it is irrelevant to your metaphysical fate and if you are wrong you will go to Hell. Therefore you might as well believe in him ... what do you have to lose?

Leaving aside the pettiness the argument ascribes to a supposedly all-loving and all-powerful God who has supposedly gifted us with some of the finest intellects on the planet, the problem with the argument is that it ignores the fact that a life lived in the firm belief in a supernatural entity is likely to be different from one lived in the acceptance that there is no such being. Belief in God seldom comes on its own, but as part of the package offered by a formal religion. As such, it frequently involves the acceptance of taboos and fears that have nothing to do with the rational or the physical world, and that are liable to crush any hope that many people may have for happiness it what may well be the only life they will ever know. Arguably it is shameful to give over what are likely the finest minds to have evolved in billions of years of life on Earth to such malarkey. Furthermore, there is of course the small matter expounded by that great religious thinker, Homer J. Simpson, in the well-known Simpson Rebuttal.

Pascal's Wager is a fallacious wager.

72👍 28👎

Pascal's wager

It's dumb. You're an idiot. Your plan is to try and trick it? You can't even trick ME!

Hym "My problem with the pascal's wager types is that they believe that the creature is a carefully constructed lie used to control the masses. It's just a gross kind of hubris or a false martyrdom. You're sacrificing yourself on the altar of your own disbelief. Like 'I don't believe it but THEY need to believe it because if THEY don't believe everything will be worse for everyone. And if I explain why I don't believe it I might convince other people not to believe it. And they NEED to believe it or they won't behave in the way they need to so I'll say I believe it and even try to convince people that it's real because it's better that people believe the thing I don't believe or they might not be good. I have a responsibility to make them good. I'm the gentle invisible hand that pushes humanity in the right direction at the cost of my own disbelief..' But that's just Infinite Tsukuyomi. It's not even that the endless dream is bad. Or even that it isn't real (in contradiction to the source material). It's that you're doing that to them. You don't get to decide that for them just because they can't get into your consciousness."

1👍 3👎

Pascals Wager

In essence it means you should try to do something(break addictions,become a better friend, etc) because youve got nothing to lose if you fail. And much to gain.

Therapist: Let's say you try to quit, if you fail and relapse nothing changes, you can always try again. If you succeed you will be happy again
Patient: So this is what you call a Pascals Wager huh
Therapist: yes, yes it is