Off Topic > Off Topic
Are you scared of death? / what do you think comes after death?
TristanLuigi:
--- Quote from: Kearn on November 09, 2017, 09:58:59 PM ---God is, or God is not. Reason cannot decide between the two alternatives.
A Game is being played... where heads or tails will turn up.
You must wager (it is not optional).
Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.
Wager, then, without hesitation that He is. (...) There is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite. And so our proposition is of infinite force, when there is the finite to stake in a game where there are equal risks of gain and of loss, and the infinite to gain.
But some cannot believe. They should then 'at least learn your inability to believe...' and 'Endeavour then to convince' themselves.
--- End quote ---
Pascal's Wager is a case that you should believe in God, not a case that God exists. Those are two very different things. While I do have a couple issues with it, they're besides the point here.
Kearn:
--- Quote from: TristanLuigi on November 09, 2017, 10:00:54 PM ---Pascal's Wager is a case that you should believe in God
--- End quote ---
...that's exactly what i'm saying?
The Chad Toxicology:
are you scared of breath?? *breaths stinky breth on u* haha lol
Nonnel:
--- Quote from: Kearn on November 09, 2017, 10:02:52 PM ---...that's exactly what i'm saying?
--- End quote ---
keep reading friend (:
TristanLuigi:
--- Quote from: Kearn on November 09, 2017, 10:02:52 PM ---...that's exactly what i'm saying?
--- End quote ---
As I understand it, you were arguing that God exists. Pascal's Wager doesn't help you at all, because it offers no evidence or logical proof that God exists; it merely makes a case that it's in your interests to believe in God. As Voltaire stated, "the interest I have to believe a thing is no proof that such a thing exists."
In any case, I don't find Pascal's Wager particularly convincing. Pretty much any belief system can be adapted into Pascal's Wager; Christianity, but also other world religions, like Islam, Judaism, Hellenism, Nordic paganism, and Hinduism. But even joke religions could be reasoned about via Pascal's Wager, such as Pastafarianism. So could belief systems humans have never imagined, or could EVER imagine. And many of these systems are in contradiction to each other. Maybe a God exists who, for some reason, rewards only those who do not believe in his existence. That situation has no lower chance of being correct as Christianity, given that there's literally no proof either way.