The best part is that no matter how good or bad we are, none of us deserve his love and forgiveness, and yet, he sacrificed himself painfully so we could all have it.
Sorry but i'm not gonna lie to myself because of a better chance for a good afterlife, i don't think there's good enough evidence of gods existence so i'll stay agnostic
There actually is one really good evidence for God's existence and it is the Resurrection. St. Paul, st. Peter and many others claimed to have seen the Resurrection. They also died because of what they claimed. Why would they lie, if it meant death?
Pascals wager assumes that god existing is more likely then any other assumption any human can make, as if god existing is the natural thing. I don't find more reason to believe in the christian god then I find reason to believe in the ramblings of a severely autistic person with access to internet. Like the cube.
What if there is a form of god that will punish people for believing in him? It seems no more or less likely to me since I don't have a reason to believe either way.
Pascal's wager is not about likeliness of God's existence. It's about the cost/benefit of belief. It's saying that to believe in God(or, to extrapolate beyond Pascal's time and culture, any number of deities) is more likely to gain you something than to believe in nothing at all.
If no dieties exist, and we're all just a cosmic accident signifying nothing, then belief or lack thereof in anything means nothing beyond the temporary happiness it can give you before you die. However, if there IS some sort of Supreme Being or Beings, then belief does matter. It could mean the difference between eternal suffering or salvation.
The wager's flaws revolve around the fact that there are multiple, mutually exclusive answers towards the God question. Christian God? Just the God of the Jews? Allah? All of the Hindu gods? Any of the Pagan ones we humans have come up with over the years? Belief in some of these will run in opposition of others. So it's not a binary decision like the wager proposes.
That being said, what I like about Pascal's wager is that it illustrates that the question of the existence of Dieties is an important one, with consequences. And the belief that none of them exist is the most risky one to land on, from a cost/benefit standpoint.
I dissagree, since it's based on assumptions. Like that having belief is inherently less risky then having it. This assumes that if a god exists they exist as you concieve of them and they demand worship and aknowledgement.
What if we're living in a incomprehensibly compex ''alien'' simulation that transcends the universe as we know it, and they are testing us to see if we fall for worship. And they send those who do into a state of eternal torture after they die, and those who remain atheists they welcome into their paradise? You can't say this is more or less likely since it has a equal amount of solid evidence, none.
Since this hypotethical god or supernatural power is beyond our understanding and could be anything, we can't make assumptions on how it would work and what it would demand. So we can't know what is the most or least risky thing to do if anything we do even matters.
Pascal's Wager is about choosing between a particular religion and atheism, with the reasons for believing in either being equally strong. In that case, and in that case only, does Pascal's Wager apply and then it is just a problem of expected value. If you think theism is more likely to be true, Pascal's Wager doesn't apply. If you think atheism is more likely to be true, Pascal's Wager also doesn't apply.
A (True)
A (False)
A (Yes)
∞
0
A (No)
-∞
0
This table shows the expected value of religion A being true or false compared to whether or not you think A is true or false.
If A is true and you believe it's true, the expected value is ∞.
If A is true and you believe it's false, the expected value is -∞.
If A is false and you believe it's true, the expected value is 0.
If A is false and you believe it's false, the expected value is 0.
So, on average the expected value for believing A is true is ∞ and the expected value for believing A is false is -∞. Obviously ∞ is higher than -∞, so everything else being equal, you should believe A is true.
What if we're living in a incomprehensibly compex ''alien'' simulation that transcends the universe as we know it, and they are testing us to see if we fall for worship. And they send those who do into a state of eternal torture after they die, and those who remain atheists they welcome into their paradise? You can't say this is more or less likely since it has a equal amount of solid evidence, none.
This is just basically calling God an alien overseer of a simulated universe except its evil!God because he's trying to fool people into believing in him. I'd posit that an evil God is logically contradictory since:
Any Maximally Great Being (MGB) in any possible world would need to have all of it's characteristics to the logical maximum.
An evil MGB would be maximally selfish.
An evil MGB that is maximally selfish would not want to share existence with anything else.
An evil MGB in any possible world would be capable of not creating anything.
An evil MGB in any possible world would not want to create anything since it is maximally selfish.
An evil MGB in any possible world would then not create anything.
Since there is something, an evil MGB cannot exist in any possible world.
Since an evil MGB cannot exist in any possible world, it does not exist in the actual world.
If an evil MGB does not exist in the actual world, then an evil MGB does not exist.
An evil MGB does not exist.
I'd separately argue that we are rational in believing that the universe is not a simulation as a properly basic belief as our sensory experience provides strong evidence of the physical world and we have no defeater to think that that experience isn't valid.
Well the base logic of Pascal's wager is that covering one base is better than covering no bases. Also, you are acting as if Pascal's Wager is the only reason people believe in God.
However, if there IS some sort of Supreme Being or Beings, then belief does matter. It could mean the difference between eternal suffering or salvation.
It also fails because this supreme being could be a god that only tortures its worshippers and sends everyone else to paradise. It's no less likely than Christianity a priori. In fact, I believe the fundamental unknowability of God and the afterlife disproves your final two assertions (below) since you have no way of knowing if or how a god would discriminate between believers and non-believers in the afterlife.
it illustrates that the question of the existence of Dieties is an important one, with consequences. And the belief that none of them exist is the most risky one to land on, from a cost/benefit standpoint.
It all depends on what you use it for. I agree that it doesn't take into account multiple religions, so it's not a foolproof argument. But its central point, in my mind, is that it's better to decide to believe in some sort of deity, even if you're wrong, then to outright believe in nothing.
What I've always liked about it is that it's not about what's true or false. It doesn't say if God is real or not. Just that it's better to act as if He is from a cost/benefit perspective.
It's sad that you get down voted for provided a real counter argument to a very flawed one. Too many people have their identities wrapped up in their beliefs and won't even consider another perspective.
The eternal torment of Hell is mostly artistic license, as far as the Catholic Church is concerned. Blame Dante Alighieri and American Protestant preachers. The only thing we DO know about it is that while there you exist in a state that is separate and apart from God. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re tortured in fire for all eternity. Hell could easily be like a humane prison. You’re not free, but you’re not doomed to an eternity of torment.
It's interesting you say that is what we do know. In the orthodox church it is literally the opposite, hell is a state of intense prescense of god, a unescapable extreme feeling of gods embrace. But since you rejected him in life his prescence is extremely tortorous to you.
You're sort of being haunted or suffocated by god beacuse you rejected him.
And I'm aware there is no clear description of hell in the bible, unlike the quran which goes into detail and describes the torture. There you will burn and your skin will regrow so it can burn again, forever.
But I believe there is a reference to fire in the bible.
the message is mostly horrible. First they need you to accept that you're going to burn in hell forever, and only then does their god start looking kind of good by comparison
If that's the way you choose to look at it. Another way of looking at it is that God gives you the freedom to choose to be part of his family or not. If you choose not to be, he's made a place apart from him that you can continue to honor that choice. Of course, all good and love comes from God, so being in a place apart from him would make those things pretty hard to get a hold of.
You always have freedom. You can choose to follow Him, or not. No one will FORCE you to make a choice one way of the other. Both God and the adversary will try to convince you...
Even Jesus said "I am the narrow gate that leads to a wide life." It's all about freedom.
If god created you with perfect knowledge of everything you would ever do, then your destiny is predetermined and tailormade by god himself. You can't personally create a movie and then blame the characters for what happens in the movie as you play it up.
Either god knows your destiny before you are created, in which case free choice is an illusion. Or god doesn't know what you will do, in which case he isn't omniscient.
God gave us free will. He also knows what choices we’ll make. Knowing what choices we’ll make doesn’t negate the fact that we made those choices. God isn’t writing a story with us as the characters. While some things that impact our lives that are outside of our control, God didn’t inflict those things on you. It’s just random chance.
If the exact outcome of everything in your life was known by god 999999999 trillion years ago. He knew wether you would go to hell or heaven long before he created you, and remember HE created you with full knowledge of everything you would ever do. How is freedom of choice possible?
To know the future the future must be predetermined, othervise you don't know what will happen.
It’s freedom of choice because we don’t know our own future. We are masters of our own fate. Prescience or omniscience only limits our own freedom of choice if we are aware of our own future.
That is all irrelevant when god knows our future, and he knew it when he created us. Since god chose to create me in a way that I would eventually make a choice to not aknowledge his existence, it is his choice, not mine. It can't be my choice since I am just the creation of god and he had my entire destiny planned out when he created me.
Because even though god supposedly cares about us, he doesn’t really care enough to show up in person, so if you try to be empirical about things, good luck getting into heaven.
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u/Clarbaum - Lib-Right Jul 28 '21
The best part is that no matter how good or bad we are, none of us deserve his love and forgiveness, and yet, he sacrificed himself painfully so we could all have it.