3 ms·

This is one of the simplest, and most useful, explanations for religious belief I've seen. Thank you! There's a tendency to write off creationists and theists

• humanrebar 10y ago
  It's interesting that they haven't been well-presented here, so we shouldn't get too self-congratulatory.
• GFischer 10y ago
  It sounds like a variant of Pascal's Wager - and Pascal himself is widely regarded as extremely intelligent, as the article states :) http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/ http://www.iep.utm.edu/pasc-wag/ http://www.iep.utm.edu/pasc-wag/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager edit: I missed jahnu's post inmediately below, with a similar theme "That's the essence of Pascal's Wager" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12486377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12486377 edit2: and mcguire https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12488731 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12488731 So I guess I should say "me too"
  • vintermann 10y ago
    I assume you speak about the third step, that if you suspect existence may meaningless, you might as well assume it has a meaning, because if you were correct it doesn't matter that you are wrong anyway (by definition). I don't think it's like Pascal's wager, because there's no need for probability here, and you're not trying to avoid any bad outcome. I think it's more like how Pascal rejected the concern that he might be insane (if you ask yourself "how do I know I'm not crazy?" you're basically already assuming you're not crazy). But, I haven't actually read all of Pascal's Pensees. What extracts I have read of it suggests to me that he's heavily straw-manned both by later philosophers and people writing about it today, so for all I know the "wager" was more like this, too.