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as far as everyday life goes, would it make a difference? Being part of the religions usually means various changes to your routines
by Tycho 16y ago
as far as everyday life goes, would it make a difference? Being part of the religions usually means various changes to your routines
- sliverstorm 16y agoAlthough, an agnostic who is aware of the implications of Pascal's Wager would probably still implement those changes.
- reader5000 16y agoNot if you're an agnostic in regards to e.g. Buddhism rather than brimstone Christianity.
- revolvingcur 16y agoPascal's Wager is ridiculous. It is rooted in a false dichotomy and attempts to salve the conscience by the acceptance of a contradiction.
- jswinghammer 16y agoI'm not sure there is a false dichotomy present there. You're either going to burn in hell or you're not. The downside of trying something to get out of that sentence is small and upside is big. It's terrible theology but it's decent logic.
- Tycho 16y agoI think it's a false dichotomy because there is more than two possible outcomes. At one end you have 'there is no god' in which case it doesn't matter, fine, but then at the other end there's more than just 'worship God' - there's also 'worship multiple Gods', or 'worship the devil', or endless other possibilities of worship, with no strong reason to pick any one of them. Unless I have misunderstood the Wager.
- jswinghammer 16y agoI think the assumption is that you are considering believing in a Christian God and on those terms the wager is valid. As far as I know other religions offer little promises in terms of what happens if you stick with it. I think category A would be believing in Jesus and category B would be not believing in Jesus whatever that means to you.
- djacobs 16y agoIf the wager deals with only the Christian god, it's arbitrarily limited and has little value.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- mgkimsal 16y agoIt's false in the sense that it only provides two options and seems to indicate those are the only two options. Believe in the Christian God or don't. It doesn't take in to account Jupiter or Zeus or any other potential deities in determining the 'logic' of choosing to believe or not.
- sliverstorm 16y agoOk, if you feel it is not a dichotomy, you are right. I only ever interpreted the dichotomoy as 'there are zero deities' or 'there are one or more deities'. Perhaps I like Pascal's Wager more than it deserves because it reminds me of: http://xkcd.com/525/ http://xkcd.com/525/
- Gormo 16y agoThe zero vs. one-or-more dichotomy hits the nail on the head. The problem with Pascal's wager is that its rationale can apply to every proposition. If you're committed to err on the side of safety, you need to accept every possible non-falsifiable idea, because, hey, what if it's true? Taken to its logical conclusion, accepting Pascal's wager would at best generate immense amounts of cognitive dissonance as you attempted to integrate potentially infinite contradictory ideas into your worldview.
- socksy 16y agoHah, I never thought of Pascal's wager in terms of contestability before.
- zemaj 16y agoI think the split is a fairly good indication of how rational someone is. People who consider themselves atheist tend to act more rationally in the bayesian sense. I'd like to see a split between atheists and agnostics, particularly because the numbers are so high in that category in this community. I would guess that there would be many more agnostics than atheists. I don't think that being an entrepreneur is particularly bayesianly rational :)
- philwelch 16y agoNot necessarily--rational Bayesians are more often atheists, but lots of atheists are completely irrational people who have been raised with atheist beliefs by secular liberal society, just like lots of religious people are completely irrational people who have been raised by religious society. (There are also a small number of highly rational people who have, in my opinion, a very small, God-shaped blind spot in their thinking.)