Pascal's wager is something I come across from timt to time in this section. I know it's flawed, and I know why it's flawed, but I want to hear your reasons why you think it's flawed, or not.
2006-11-05 13:50:44 · 14 answers · asked by jedi1josh 5 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
Pascal's Wager can be presented in many different forms, usually something like this:
"If you believe, and God exists, you gain everything. If you disbelieve, and God exists, you lose everything."
Alternatively :
"It makes more sense to believe in God than to not believe. If you believe, and God exists, you will be rewarded in the afterlife. If you do not believe, and He exists, you will be punished for your disbelief. If He does not exist, you have lost nothing either way. "
2006-11-05 13:55:32 · update #1
It is quite insulting. It amounts to a thinly veiled threat, little better than saying "Believe in my God or He'll send you to Hell" (in fact, this is often the form it is presented in). Also, the theist making this threat assumes that the atheist believes there is a Hell or a God to send her there in the first place. If you don't believe in Hell anyway, it's not a scary thing to be threatened with - a bit like saying "If you don't start believing in unicorns, one will trample you to death while you're sleeping." Who would be worried by that?
2006-11-05 14:03:14 · update #2
Pascal's Wager begs the question. It assumes that the believer is right about the notion that his/her belief is what earns a person the desireable outcome (heaven).
What if believing in god is what gets one sent to hell, and not believing is what gets one sent to heaven? Or, to quote Homer Simpson, what if you're worshipping the wrong god, and every week the real one just gets madder and madder?
2006-11-05 14:02:40 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 4⤊ 0⤋
There are several reasons why it is flawed but the one that gets me the most, and probably a lot of others here in this forum is that there is always that threat implied by it. That one that a lot of very religious people hang onto..."Believe in my God or He'll send you to Hell". What makes any "believer" think that an Atheist believes in their Hell to begin with? Kind of makes the whole wager pointless to begin with.
2006-11-05 22:03:11 · answer #2 · answered by buttercup 5 · 2⤊ 0⤋
What you have to lose on Pascal's Wager is huge. You have one short life to live on earth. What you lose is that you spent all your time on earth believing a lie. You based your only existance on an untruth.
In addition, you're believing based on fear. Your motivation for belief is FEAR - and thats a very sad reason for existance.
If you really believe in Pascals Wager, you need to find the god with the worst hell (Islam) and believe in HIM to better your odds.
What would life be like if I applied Pascal's Wager to other aspects of it? "I have everything to gain and nothing to lose by thinking that Brad Pitt has a killer crush on me." We would pity a person who applied that reasoning to other aspects of life. Why wouldn't we pity them when it came to The Big Picture?
2006-11-05 22:04:50 · answer #3 · answered by Black Parade Billie 5 · 3⤊ 0⤋
Objections to Pascal's wager: "a person cannot simply will himself to believe something that is evidently false to him; that the wager would apply as much to belief in the wrong God as it would to disbelief in all gods, leaving the the believer in any particular god in the same situation as the atheist or agnostic; that God would not reward belief in him based solely on hedging one's bets; and so on."
-- Keith Augustine
2006-11-05 21:58:22 · answer #4 · answered by DontPanic 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Well, it sounds easy, "believe God exists and you gain everything". However, once you get deeper into it you find that it will take your whole life and can involve a lot of suffering. So whatever you gain is in the next life. The wager isn't as simple as it sounds.
2006-11-05 21:58:20 · answer #5 · answered by Annmaree 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I think the biggest problem with it is there is a big difference between going along with something just in case it's true to avoid punishment and actually believing it. Also, it's a coward's argument. Only a coward would even try to believe something simply to avoid punishment.
P. S. Paul S. should get the ten points. He quoted Homer Simpson to answer your question! I love it.
2006-11-06 03:51:43 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
One flaw is that it presupposes everyone already believes God is real or at least that you don't need to think something is real to believe in it. Anyone that asks it can't conceive of thinking God isn't real so they can't see that enormous, gaping hole in Pascal's wager
2006-11-05 21:58:43 · answer #7 · answered by catalamity 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
The God of Christianity does not reward people for believing that He exists. That much is assumed. Rather, he grants salvation to those who accept the substitutionary atonement of his Son's death on the cross for the forgiveness of sins.
2006-11-05 21:57:42 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
I would be more interested in HOW you know, and WHY it is flawed :)
AND DONT SAY ANYTHING ABOUT FAITH :-)
Pascals wager seems quite logical to me, If you have a choice between a cookie or an indian burn........ why wouldnt the "cookies" be the better choice?? Now lets say you dont know IF there are cookies OR indian burns..... Isnt it STILL a better choice to believe in cookies and possibly recieve a cookie, That it is to not believe in them and get no cookies????
You must be diabetic, I love cookies :P
Obviously you can apply this to all religions.... It isnt about a specific religion, it is about the belief in after life and God. Any God.... Thor included. Pick one and go with it..... We find out when we die :-)
To the poster below me..... Thats dumb.
"he is not real" and exactly how could you know this??? It cannot be proven or disproven, that is WHY pascals wager makes sense.....
2006-11-05 21:55:46 · answer #9 · answered by Drag0n 2 · 1⤊ 4⤋
What do you have to lose?
If you worship Thor and Thor is not real. You lose nothing.
If you don’t worship Thor and he is real. You get smacked with a big stinkin hammer.
If you do worship Thor and he is real... Those valkyries are babes!!!!
You can apply this to all religions so it becomes worthless.
2006-11-05 21:54:43 · answer #10 · answered by The Chaos Within 3 · 2⤊ 0⤋