what is this pascal's wager thing???

Answer 1

Pascal was a mathematician, who was also a devout christian. He gave up his study of mathematics to concentrate on theology.

Pascal decided that one could believe in God or not believe. If one believed and was right, the outcome would be good. If one believed and was wrong, the outcome was a toss. If one did not believe and was right, the outcome was again a toss. But if one did not believe and was wrong, the penalty could be severe. His conclusion was that it was better to believe, right or wrong.

This is sort of an early game theory matrix. One problem is that there are hundreds of religions. What if you choose wrong? And why would a God of any of them punish non believers for choosing wrong when the choice seems anything but obvious--many possible choices seem to conflict with natural reality?

*drink*

Answer 2

So if Pascal's wager is just a drinking game around here, does that mean that most of the R&S regulars are sloshed 24/7? ...Then that makes a lot more since than the Q and A's I see here a lot of the time.

Answer 3

Google < "Pascal's Wager" > ... Wiki Extract: "Pascal argued that it is a better "bet" to believe that God exists, because the expected value of believing that God exists is always greater than the expected value resulting from non-belief."

Answer 4

Pascal's wager is a faulty argument in favor of religion. It is used several times a day, and rather than rerefute it (the asker should have seen it has been asked and answered before), it has become a drinking game.

Answer 5

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager

Pascal's Wager is Blaise Pascal's famous philosophical argument that belief in God is justified as a "good bet", regardless of any metaphysical uncertainty, because disbelief has great cost if wrong, while belief if wrong costs nothing.

It states that if you were to analyse your options of religion carefully, you would come out with the following possibilities:


You may believe in God, and God exists, in which case you go to heaven.
You may believe in God, and God doesn't exist, in which case you gain nothing.
You may not believe in God, and God doesn't exist, in which you gain nothing again.
You may not believe in God, and God may exist, in which case you will be punished.
Pascal deduced statistically, that it would be better to believe in God unconditionally. In which case, if He doesn't exist you will lose very little. If He does exist, you will get rewarded greatly.

Pascal's wager suffers from the logical fallacy of False dilemma, relying on the assumption that the only possibilities are that the Christian God exists or that no God exists. The wager cannot rule out the possibility that there is a God who instead rewards skepticism and punishes blind faith, for example. It also says nothing about the actual existence or nonexistence of God. Finally, it ignores that there are indeed possible costs to belief in the form of opportunity costs: those who choose to believe in, say, scientific theories that may contradict scripture may be able to discover things and accomplish things the believer could not. However, if the universe has no meaning anyway (which most people see as God), then this (lost opportunity) is not a real threat.


http://www.ebroadcast.com.au/lookup/encyclopedia/pa/Pascal's_wager.html

Answer 6

me and pascal were at the bar sat. and we saw your wife. i wagered him $10 that i could hit that cause everyone in town knows she's a hoe. yeah, thats the wager...i won.

Answer 7

It's a fantastically intelligent question that gets asked a minimum of 512 times a day on here.

And it's brilliant every single time!

Answer 8

Ahh

In plain English it means we should go through the motions of religion, even if we do not really believe, just in case.

Apparently an omniscient God can be fooled by false piety.

Answer 9

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager

Answer 10

It means that if someone tells you a bunch of metaphysical malarkey, it ain't true.