For the hundredth time, somebody has responded to one of the atheist writers at Irregular Times with an implicit reference to Pascal’s Wager.
Here’s Pascal’s argument for why you should worship “God”:
1. “God” either exists or doesn’t.
2. You either believe in “God” or you don’t.
3. The combination of these possibilities leads to four possible outcomes:
A. “God” exists, you believe in “God”. Outcome: “God” rewards you when you reach the eternal afterlife.
B. “God” doesn’t exist, you believe in “God”. Outcome: You were wrong. Whoopsie! You’re dead. Oh well.
C. “God” doesn’t exist, you don’t believe in “God”. Outcome: You were right. Yay for you! You’re still dead, though.
D. “God” exists, you don’t believe in “God”. Outcome: Eternal Hellfire! Sizzle, sizzle!
4. With outcomes B and C, you’re dead, and it doesn’t matter what you believed, so the real difference is between outcomes A and D…
5. So it’s smarter to choose to believe in “God” if you care about your eternal status! Sizzle, sizzle or melodious harps: it’s up to you…
There are so many problems with this argument that I find it hard to pick a point on which to get started. Today, I’ll just focus on three problems that render this “Wager” a really, really stupid one.
Problem 1. Pascal arrogantly assumes he knows that this “God” thingy is a cranky, vindictive motherfucker. How the heck does Pascal know that this “God” thingy isn’t a bemused stoner who, receiving the souls of the dead, takes Her mouth off the bhong for a moment to exclaim, “Welcome, most awesome soul thing! Didn’t believe in me? S’ok — grab a seat and take a hit…” Or maybe “God” is a comedian who likes to laugh at people who run in circles for decades trying to impress Him. If “God” IS a cranky, vindictive motherfucker, then COME ON, PEOPLE — haven’t you learned from Sally Jessy Raphael that there’s nothing you can do to appease such abusive personalities? How do you know “God” won’t hit you anyway, just because She’s especially cranky? Go on, ask Job.
Problem 2. “God?” The singular? Wait a minute. There’s more than one possibility here, unless you’re going to be so arrogant as to imagine that the orthodox fundamentalist Christian conception of “God” is the only one that people have come up with. What if Satan is running the show? Then, boy oh boy, will you be in trouble when you die! Doesn’t this argument suggest that you should worship Satan just in case he ends up existing and running the universe? Why stop there? How about Baal? What if Baal exists and you haven’t been worshipping him? Boy, that’d be an embarassment! What about Isis, Zeus, Zoroaster, Mithra and Odin? It starts to look like a pretty busy schedule to keep up with the wager when you apply it thoroughly…
Problem 3. Should you make your choices about how to live your life based on whether others will, theologically speaking or not, smack you upside the head? Funny, but it seems to me that all my heroes in high school history were people who, despite the likelihood that they would get smacked upside the head or worse, persevered and followed their own internal conscience when deciding on the right course of action.
There are lots of other problems with Pascal’s wager. But these three reasons alone seem enough for me to say, “No, thanks.”
I was perusing pictures on an astronomy site earlier this morning and had a ‘deep’ moment that just gave me pause.
The universe must more complicated and much more vast than the human mind can contemplate. The age of the universe is unfathomable. The incredible number of galaxies, stars, and planets is mind boggling. The compositional make up of all matter is amazing. But where did it all come from? If there was a ‘creator’ where did he/she/it come from? If there was no ‘creator’ where did EVERYTHING come from? Why does the universe even exist? How does the universe exist? What does 5 billion years feel like?
Just pondering the unponderable…
“Just pondering the unponderable…”
I think that pondering of this sort makes most people tired and/or scared, at which point they turn to religion. When “life, the universe, and everything” gets to be too much, they find the idea of a higher power too tempting to pass up. Sure beats dealing with the enormity of the universe on your own, right? =P
Rob, it’s a shame that you think so little of the human mind that you believe that we can’t possibly comprehend the size, nature, and composition of the universe. The age of the universe is about 14 billion years, a number much smaller than the national debt. We can comprehend much larger numbers with ease. Avagadro’s number, 6.023 x 10^23, is used daily by chemists worldwide.
Some current theoretical physics models envelope 11 dimensions, yet we can comprehend them. I say “we” in the sense of humanity, not me personally. Other models have universes spontaneously being created as bubbles from existing universes. Most of these collapse because the physical properties are incompatible with their existence, but occasionally…
Throuout history humans have declared things to be known by God only, and then we meer humans learn what they are. Don’t be so quick to place limits on human comprehension and understanding.
Yah – they might as well argue that there’s a Republican’s Wager, where Republicans agree to become Republicans, because they wager that if a Republican gets elected to office in their area, they’ll be rewarded for their support, but if a Republican doesn’t get elected, they don’t have to worried about being punished… or something.
Or more like Bush’s Wager on WMD … but that didn’t work out, did it? It got over 1500 Americans killed – makes you wonder about what the true cost of gullible belief.
Mark, there’s a difference between representating facts and figures with big numbers versus true comprehension and understanding of those numbers. Simply because we can display or represent large numbers, like a $6 trillion dollar federal debt, 14 billion years of time, or the billions of cells in a human body, doesn’t mean we can fully grasp the true enormity of such quantities. I’m not saying it’s impossible, it’s just way over the head of the average person.
The example of scientists using theoretical models to create universes doesn’t answer where the matter the makes up the universe came from to begin with or what the catalyst was for its formation.
Well, I liked the article, but I agree with Rob, too, assuming that by “comprehend” he means “properly imagine”.
I can imagine a metre easily. About a mile… Yeah… Two miles… Probably…
Size of a reasonable island? Uhh… Not really…
The planet? No way. This one little planet by itself is amazing big. I believe in it and don’t need paranoid theories about why it might not exist, but to really picture the whole thing properly? Not an option…
I mean, if you got a beachball and put a wet piece of tissue paper on it, that gives you a rough idea of the Earth’s crust compared to the rest of the planet. That I can picture on a small scale, but in all its actual wonder? Sadly, no… Every time I try it gets sized down.
Personally, though, one of the main things I dislike about the Christian explanation of the creation of the universe is that it just seems to try to avoid any real explanation.
“Where did it come from?”
“Oh, somewhere else that was always there; problem solved! No more questions, thank you.”
Uh… Huh…
Contemplating the universe and it’s unknowability (sort of like what’s the correct word to use, I don’t know)is pretty neat. I can look up and identify stars, systems, nebulae, all sorts of constellations. I personally know a physicist who thinks that his car starts because he peforms a certain ritual with keys, levers and pedals. If you try to explain about spark, fuel, etc. he knows it intellectually, but really doesn’t beleive a word of it. It’s this ritual. Me and an alleged diety and the secrets of the universe? I am here and it is the present. I’ll remeber the past and and try to learn from it, look to the future and try to meet it head on, and I’ll fill every minute of now as full as I can with life and happiness.
A couple of random comments on the topic –
1) Since the Judaic/Christian tradition seems to be at most 4,000 years old — and is likely only about 3,000 years old — where was this God during all of the other years of human development?
2) Human beings from several thousand years ago knew rather little about the universe or the world around them other than was observed through the naked eye. The microbial world didn’t even exist in the framework of human knowledge until a hundred and fifty years ago — To accept that the world and creation is accurately represented by a bunch of desert dwellers a few thousand years ago is appalling.
3) The universe(s) is/are complex into dimensions just recently “discovered” at least in theory. Can anyone accept that the various Gods and Goddesses who have been created by humans come close to being as intricate or as complex as their supposed creation?
Every God/Goddess is a human creation, based on human imagination of possibilities before modern scientific discoveries — and we know that there are plenty of discoveries yet to be made. None of these God creatures qualifies as being the inventor of such complexity — they are petty authoritarian despots – larger than life mirror images of humans beings.
4) Why is knowledge the one thing forbidden to Adam and Eve? How bizaare is this? A god creates a world, a universe, and wants his thinking creatures to not use their minds?
5) Some have stated that religion’s original purpose was to control the weather — the most unpredictable natural influence on our lives. Sort of like “lucky” baseball caps. If one jumps up and down, then kneels, prays earnestly, sacrifices a handful of groats (or goats) — maybe the rains will come or go away. Sometimes, coincidence will seem to be a truth.
6) If I am to believe in a Creator, he/she is going to have to perform a whole lot better than the ones currently reigning throughout the world. These are a flatout bust at the god business.
While this past few weeks has given me a fresh respect for the integrity of Pope John Paul II (PJP2), watching the funeral was a stunning example of “men in control.”
First — every single person intimately involved in the funeral were men — celibate men — men who has deliberately eschewed the counsel or wisdom of any woman. While PJP2 may have venerated Mary, it made little impression on him in terms of believing that women are equal or as valid as men. Nuns do not give counsel, do not perform masses, and are obedient to the male hierarchy.
Even the choir was all male.
The heads of state — all male, some with wives carefully veiled. Since they were not inside the church itself, the ritual or tradition to be covered did not apply — it certainly didn’t apply to all of the ordinary pilgrims who also attended.
While I appreciated the ecunemical aspect of the service, there were no women present amongst the ranks of the other churches, either. Not a single political or theological dignitary was female.
Only Hindus have a delightful pantheon of female deities.
Women want to know why they are 2nd class citizens all over the world? Take a look at the religions that are currently dominating the authoritarian structure.
Women should turn their back on religions as currently constructed.
Well, there were quite a few Greeks who were fond of Athena. Not that Ancient Greece wasn’t a patriarchy, but their goddess come out pretty damn well in the myths; and even though Hera couldn’t stop Zeus cheating on her with just about anyone he pleased, anyone who upset a goddess, god or otherwise, was sure to feel her wrath.
That’s why some of the Christianity-spreaders had to start making a big deal about the Virgin Mary; to start of the Athena worshippers with something more Christian, much like they adapted the older celebrations to have more Christian meanings.
Lilith may have been damned to become a succubus thing, but she CHOSE that fate, and I consider her to be the strongest female character ever to have appeared in the Bible (being unsatisfied with Adam, she LEFT the garden of Eden); pity she got editted out.
A lot of religions stamp women as being little more than temptations; often not giving much hint that they’re anything more than property.
I expect a lot of religions became male-dominated because early tribes started to value physical strength, and thus the naturally strongest gender was held in higher regard. As intelligence has become more important to society, though, it’s a shame that many religions seem to have latched onto the old patriarchal values and if anything encouraged them to appeal to the still-remaining shreds of expectation for women to be little more than slaves to men.
Though, with so many women dying during labour, and them being much more prone to various diseases, like bladder infections (and trust me, the pain of that fucking KILLS), along with less natural strength, I guess it would be hard to imagine that they’re the favoured gender.
Puberty strikes; guys get a deep voice and more muscles, and girls… Start to bleed monthly. If there is some omnipitant being out there; I don’t think it’s favouring the females.
[Edit] …Upset a goddess, be they god or otherwise, was…