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On February 19 2013 14:17 sam!zdat wrote:
^what the hell is "an hour"?
An hour is 1/24th of a day. A day is the amount of time it takes for the earth to rotate once.*
*There's a new definition but I imaging the Bible is using the old definition of a day.
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so how can you have a day which is 24 hours, without a planet, when an hour is just 1/24 of a day, which is defined by the planet?
and I believe your definition is what we call "a year" 
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On February 19 2013 14:24 sam!zdat wrote:so how can you have a day which is 24 hours, without a planet, when an hour is just 1/24 of a day, which is defined by the planet? and I believe your definition is what we call "a year"
Oh whoops fail about the year/day xD you know what I mean
God knew how long a day would be before he made the planet, of course  I mean, if you're pro enough to make an entire universe, including a planet which has the exact circumference and distance from the sun to be able to support life without burning the planet up or freezing it, then I think you're going to know how long a day on that planet will be.
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but no matter what planet He made, it would have had a day that was exactly 24 hours long. In fact, I believe that, according to your reasoning, it would have been utterly impossible for God to create a planet which did NOT have a 24-hour day.
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Okay so here's what I got from the OP:
-OP takes one of the most simple tautologies in the english language: "God is, or He is not".
And calls it a false dichotomy. "Wow! I just dismantled this whole pascal's wager thing at the first premise! Awesome!" And then we get on this whole digression into: if that's a false dichotomy what's the middle? Holy shit :O. "What if there are a million other gods. What if the Christian God existed a billion times over?" OP uses the remaining paragraph space to flaunt his creativity.
-Then we get to OP's insightful take on this: "You must wager. (It's not optional.)"
"What if I don't wanna? Huh? Ever think of that??? I can just suspend judgement and you can't do anything! HA!"
Okay since apparently, these simple ideas need explaining, let's take a look at what Pascal is really trying to convey here. The idea is that there is a game and you are part of it, no matter what you do, no matter what you believe. If you aren't a believer, and you're suspending judgement you have already made your wager, but you have until you die to change that wager. Make sense?
-Now it's not my style to beat the proverbial dead horse. But there's one more thing that needs saying. At the end, the OP states that the infinitude of possibilities indicates an infinitely small likelihood for Pascal's selected solution. Basically Pascal says there's one god, when there could be 2, 3, or 4, or however many. Even though there are other possibilities, they are not necessarily equally probable. Suppose I'm working as a copilot on a commercial airliner. The pilot (call him Roger) is sitting in the cockpit with me, and we both hear a strange sound coming from the wing. Roger inquires with me what the cause could have been, suggesting that the cold weather may have caused the engine to slow down. I solemnly remind Roger that this is just one of many possibilities. It could have also been a swarm of high altitude bees getting sucked into the engine, or worse: gremlins making terrible mischief. Roger determines instead to wager that the plane is actually 180 pounds too heavy, and who needs copilots anyway?
I guess this is what happens when people get the short version of something (which wikipedia so elegantly provided). People read it verbatim, make no attempt at charity, and proudly teabag a straw man. But enough of me being obnoxious and ad hominem. One thing the OP said at the very end really struck me: 1/∞, the worst odds in the universe. What if the odds of God existing were 1/∞ and the rewards for believing it when its true are ∞. Unless my maths fail me, ∞/∞ is indeterminate, so how would we treat that? It's food for thought so I won't go into it. I wanted to say a little more about the "God is, or He is not" premise. The brevity of that statement should indicate to you that much is being left unsaid. So let's take a look at the argument as a whole, and see how it should fit. Hint: this is called charity.
The crux of the wager is this: There is some dogma D (crudely formed on Wiki as "God is") and the wager is between D and ~D(not D). If D is true, those who accepted it will enjoy infinite happiness and those who do not will endure infinite suffering. If D is false, those who accepted it will suffer minor finite inconveniences--burnt at the stake, castration, disembowelment, to name a few. Those who don't will enjoy finite benefits. So in this argument, D is the belief or set of beliefs a person must assent to in order to have a chance at heaven. That's not what the wikipedia explicitly says, but we can correctly assume that this is what is meant. In Christianity, it is not sufficient to simply believe in God to go to heaven. Pascal obviously knows this! So give him some credit.
The real problem with Pascal's wager is not his choice of dogmas. It is simply the fact that I can concoct another dogma D', incompatible with D, where D' has the same consequences for believing and disbelieving, and the same probability of being true. Since D' is part of ~D, our choice is now between D, D', and ~D & ~D' (neither). The wager no longer has a solution with this new option. And I could expound this even more. There could be a D'' incompatible with both, a D''', and so forth.
That was a little abstract, so lets discuss how this would play out in the real world. D is Christianity. It is the set of beliefs according to the bible one must have in order to get to heaven. We won't worry about what those are. D' is an alternate belief. I'm not a religion major, so I'm just gonna make one up. In D' you must believe everything in D except that God is actually another god named Baal. So you can already see how they might be probabilistically identical or at least indistinguishably close, and of course the consequences for believing and not believing are the same. So which do we pick? There is no clear solution to the wager. On second thought, I think there is something wrong with this rebuttal, but I'm not gonna say what it is. 
Now, since this dipshit named Matt Dillahunty from the Atheist Experience got his wonderful opinion posted, I have to dismantle that too. I really don't enjoy this. Really, I don't.
-He says it's a false dichotomy.
We've beaten this to death already. The wager is a fucking tautology. It is as tautological as they come.
-It ignores all other possible religions.
Absolutely false, and I'm not gonna go into this because it extends naturally from his view that it's a false dichotomy.
-It ignores other heavens and hells.
The one scrap of truth. The idea of heaven and hell in christianity is infinite happiness and infinite torture. Again, I'm not a religion major, but religions rarely possess these extremes.
- It claims that worshiping and believing costs you nothing.
This little slip up perfectly captures Matt's inability to conceive this simple argument. He says worshiping and believing cost you something, as if that actually counts as ammo. Is that the best you can do? I bet for you, the cost of worship is getting up on Sunday morning. That sounds hard bro. It must be tough being you. First world fucking problems. Try harder. Lifetime of extreme torture? Doesn't make a difference. It's still finite. The solution to the wager does not change.
- Belief is not subject to the will
lmfao WTF How is this possible? How do you guys buy this fucking garbage? Do you listen to the words that are coming out of his mouth? Yes beliefs are often determined without consulting the will. But has anyone ever heard of believing something because they want it to be true? It happens all the time.
So please stop taking that hack seriously.
phew, finally got that off my chest.
And that's all the time I've got. Sorry OP if I came off as a jerk. Not sorry to you Matt.
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On February 19 2013 14:33 sam!zdat wrote:
but no matter what planet He made, it would have had a day that was exactly 24 hours long. In fact, I believe that, according to your reasoning, it would have been utterly impossible for God to create a planet which did NOT have a 24-hour day.
No, if he created a larger planet which was further away from the sun then it would rotate differently and have a different length day. So a 7 day creation would then be a different amount of time and everything would be different.
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On February 19 2013 14:39 Birdie wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2013 14:33 sam!zdat wrote:
but no matter what planet He made, it would have had a day that was exactly 24 hours long. In fact, I believe that, according to your reasoning, it would have been utterly impossible for God to create a planet which did NOT have a 24-hour day. No, if he created a larger planet which was further away from the sun then it would rotate differently and have a different length day.
but you said an hour was 1/24 of the time it took the planet to turn on its axis. So now I'm confused. remind me what an hour is again?
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On February 19 2013 14:12 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2013 12:45 PassionFruit wrote:On February 19 2013 12:27 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On February 19 2013 12:17 PassionFruit wrote:On February 19 2013 12:10 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On February 19 2013 11:58 PassionFruit wrote:On February 19 2013 11:54 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On February 19 2013 11:47 PassionFruit wrote:
Pascal's Wager is actually legit on a mathematical level. If you take hell to be negative infinity, then it is in your benefit to believe in something so long as the possibility of that belief has a finite probability of being true. All the counters to alternative gods or a false dichotomy or etc... doesn't do anything because the possibility that the belief is true is still finite. It's a basic EV analysis where the gains are infinite and the losses are finite. Unless you're a pure atheist where belief in god is exactly 0%, you take the wager.
I haven't seen a good counter to this argument as of date even with all the crap on wiki and youtube or what not. But...fuck logic and belief. I'll live my life and if I end up burning in hell eternally, then I"ll burn in hell eternally. It is what it is. You're misconstruing belief in something with probability that it actually exists. The video I just posted covers that... if a deity existed, surely he wouldn't fall for your "Well I'll just cover my ass with a belief" argument, not to mention the fact that belief isn't even subject to the will. In other words, if I'm skeptical of a belief because it lacks evidence, I can't just *choose* to truly believe in it. I can pretend to believe in it, but I won't actually be a believer, because I know it's full of crap. The video also refutes how PW fails on several other levels. It's really not sound, even if you consider the probability of a deity existing to be any non-zero chance. Right. But how do you know whether your interpretation of belief is right or mine is right? Unless you can commune with god, no one does. So you see, unless you are 100% sure you are right and 100% sure I am wrong, Pascal's Wager holds. As long as there is still the slightest possibility that my interpretation of belief is true, then the probability is finite. It doesn't matter if it is .0000001, because compared with infinity any finite probability is essentially moot. You still take the wager. Edit: The problem is all with the concept of hell being negative infinity and heaven being positive infinity. You are just fucked on a mathematical level if you put that on one side of the equation while it is absent from the other. It's a problem rigged to taking the wager from the very start. Pascal was a tricky dude. If it wasn't the case that there were countless gods and religions and threats of hells and heavens that all contradict one another and must be mutually exclusive by definition, then Pascal's Wager would probably be okay. But it's not dichotomous between Christian God and No God. There are tons of other choices, which means that whatever arbitrary probability you choose for the existence of your specific deity is useless because you'll have to give the same number to every other god and religion, but they cancel each other out, etc. You don't need to interpret belief; you just need to recognize that multiple beliefs exist. Plus all the other reasons why PW doesn't work that are mentioned in the video. Nothing cancels out. The overriding assumption is that only one belief is true. Thus there is only one heaven and one hell and one right god. You either pick right or you pick wrong. So long as there are a finite number of choices, you must pick. It's simple mathematics. The only thing to focus upon is the finite nature of the probability that your choice is right or wrong. I'm not saying you should use PW to dictate your belief in god, but every single attempt I have seen to dismantle the argument fails. Because, once again, you are doomed to take the wager given the beginning parameters of the problem. I don't know how to counter the argument other than change the parameters. I don't know how that can be done, but at least I'm honest about it instead of appealing to some failing argument like a false dichotomy or multiple gods or something. I just say fuck Pascal's wager, and I'll live how I want to regardless of the very small likelihood that I'm going to burn in hell for all eternity. I'm honest about my irrationality. You're completely ignoring the consequences of not wasting time with the wager, because that might not be how a deity wants you to act. Or the fact that there could surely be infinite possibilities. Maybe there exists a deity who doesn't want prayer or acknowledgement, or one that favors atheists or people who actually care about healthy skepticism rather than blind belief or guessing on a whim? Even if you guessed the right deity in an effort to cover your own ass, there's no guarantee you'd be saved by him simply because you guessed right. After all, he'd know your selfish reasons for blindly selecting him, and it had nothing to do with true belief (or whatever other nonsensical things he'd ask from you, according to his commandments or holy book). It's not as simple as picking and choosing and therefore being more right than someone who didn't pick and choose, because maybe the latter could be what a deity is looking for. There are other variables you need to consider which makes PW wrong. You seem to ignore the key thing about this argument. Here's an analogy: Imagine you're in a room where there are thousands of playing cards face down. Only one is the ace of spades. You get to choose only one card. If you get the ace of spades, you get unlimited happiness. If you get any other card, you get unlimited suffering.
There are two ways to lose, you don't play the game or you play the game and pick the wrong card.
There is only one way to win, you play the game and pick the right card.
So in the face of these odds what do you do to win? You must pick a card. Regardless of the insurmountable odds against you, you must choose because that is the only way to win (or not lose). It's that simple really. If you begin with pascal's wager, there is no escape from the room. You can add more face down cards if you like (this is what you are essentially doing every time you attempt to refute the argument with a finite number of alternative possibilities), but in the end you have to choose. The only way to dismantle the argument is to find an exit to the room. But given the nature of the game (i.e., parameters of Pascal's Wager), there is no real means to do so. That is why every argument I have seen fail. They continue to argue about the number of cards on the table when the only real way out is to find a way to leave the room. No argument has really done this convincingly. The only way to do it really is to essentially say that there are an infinite number of cards to choose from. Then the game becomes absurd an a contradiction mathematically. But this is not true given the limited (and finite) nature of our ability to conceive the alternatives. We cannot say there are an infinite number of alternatives because our conception will naturally limit it to a finite number. It will be a very large amount, but finite nonetheless. Edit: Damn, the guy went to bed. Oh well, food for thought for anyone else. The locked room analogy fails because it assumes that every choice is mutually exclusive. It also arbitrarily defines leaving the room as a win, and staying in the room is a loss. It also creates an arbitrary rule in which a choice must be made (which is completely contrary to Agnosticism). Edit: To be a little more clear, Pascal's Wager is not in any way a description of how religious belief must be, it's a crude and heavy-handed approach to define the world into an extremely narrow set of choices in order to push a personal agenda.
sigh...I submit on the record. My prior posts are sufficient to outline my view on this subject. I would most gladly accept being convinced otherwise, but all you see are the same defective arguments over and over and over...
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On February 19 2013 14:37 FunkyLich wrote:Okay so here's what I got from the OP: -OP takes one of the most simple tautologies in the english language: "God is, or He is not". And calls it a false dichotomy. "Wow! I just dismantled this whole pascal's wager thing at the first premise! Awesome!" And then we get on this whole digression into: if that's a false dichotomy what's the middle? Holy shit :O. "What if there are a million other gods. What if the Christian God existed a billion times over?" OP uses the remaining paragraph space to flaunt his creativity.
I'm pretty tired, so I'm not going to tell you why you're wrong on every count(right now), but I am thinking you skipped over the entire middle part of the thread.
Basically, I'm not too sure it actually is a tautology(yet it is convenient for your argument, so you will claim it is), and it seems there is still some debate regarding this: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager#Argument_from_inconsistent_revelations).
If you can provide convincing evidence as to why I should assume Pascal meant it as a tautology, I'd love to read it. Right now I'm operating under the assumption that he has chosen the Christian "God" (the dude who you read about in the bible) as his one god. I'm not going to rehash everything else that was said, you can go back and read it if you want.
Your D and D' example are meaningless. There are infinite possibilities. There could be a (one) god that is really fucking picky about his name, and if you didn't get it exactly right, you are burning in hell forever (if you think this is in anyway far fetched, see the Chalcedonian controversy, it isn't that far off).
The airplane thing just doesn't make much sense. There is no probable cause or reason here, as there is no true evidence to go off of.
I think that is the short of everything for the moment. I'll be back tomorrow.
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shouldn't it be obvious why Pascal would mean it as a tautology?
the dude had trouble taking his own religion seriously, let alone some other motherfucker's religion. c'mon. this whole notion that one would even for a minute give equal weight to the possibility of some other culture's religion being true is a total anachronism
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On February 19 2013 14:49 sam!zdat wrote:
shouldn't it be obvious why Pascal would mean it as a tautology?
the dude had trouble taking his own religion seriously, let alone some other motherfucker's religion. c'mon. this whole notion that one would even for a minute give equal weight to the possibility of some other culture's religion being true is a total anachronism
I'm not sure which part of this is being sarcastic.
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none of it....
edit: either God exists, or He doesn't. Who cares what a bunch of savages think about it?
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On February 19 2013 14:43 PassionFruit wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2013 14:12 WolfintheSheep wrote:On February 19 2013 12:45 PassionFruit wrote:On February 19 2013 12:27 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On February 19 2013 12:17 PassionFruit wrote:On February 19 2013 12:10 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On February 19 2013 11:58 PassionFruit wrote:On February 19 2013 11:54 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On February 19 2013 11:47 PassionFruit wrote:
Pascal's Wager is actually legit on a mathematical level. If you take hell to be negative infinity, then it is in your benefit to believe in something so long as the possibility of that belief has a finite probability of being true. All the counters to alternative gods or a false dichotomy or etc... doesn't do anything because the possibility that the belief is true is still finite. It's a basic EV analysis where the gains are infinite and the losses are finite. Unless you're a pure atheist where belief in god is exactly 0%, you take the wager.
I haven't seen a good counter to this argument as of date even with all the crap on wiki and youtube or what not. But...fuck logic and belief. I'll live my life and if I end up burning in hell eternally, then I"ll burn in hell eternally. It is what it is. You're misconstruing belief in something with probability that it actually exists. The video I just posted covers that... if a deity existed, surely he wouldn't fall for your "Well I'll just cover my ass with a belief" argument, not to mention the fact that belief isn't even subject to the will. In other words, if I'm skeptical of a belief because it lacks evidence, I can't just *choose* to truly believe in it. I can pretend to believe in it, but I won't actually be a believer, because I know it's full of crap. The video also refutes how PW fails on several other levels. It's really not sound, even if you consider the probability of a deity existing to be any non-zero chance. Right. But how do you know whether your interpretation of belief is right or mine is right? Unless you can commune with god, no one does. So you see, unless you are 100% sure you are right and 100% sure I am wrong, Pascal's Wager holds. As long as there is still the slightest possibility that my interpretation of belief is true, then the probability is finite. It doesn't matter if it is .0000001, because compared with infinity any finite probability is essentially moot. You still take the wager. Edit: The problem is all with the concept of hell being negative infinity and heaven being positive infinity. You are just fucked on a mathematical level if you put that on one side of the equation while it is absent from the other. It's a problem rigged to taking the wager from the very start. Pascal was a tricky dude. If it wasn't the case that there were countless gods and religions and threats of hells and heavens that all contradict one another and must be mutually exclusive by definition, then Pascal's Wager would probably be okay. But it's not dichotomous between Christian God and No God. There are tons of other choices, which means that whatever arbitrary probability you choose for the existence of your specific deity is useless because you'll have to give the same number to every other god and religion, but they cancel each other out, etc. You don't need to interpret belief; you just need to recognize that multiple beliefs exist. Plus all the other reasons why PW doesn't work that are mentioned in the video. Nothing cancels out. The overriding assumption is that only one belief is true. Thus there is only one heaven and one hell and one right god. You either pick right or you pick wrong. So long as there are a finite number of choices, you must pick. It's simple mathematics. The only thing to focus upon is the finite nature of the probability that your choice is right or wrong. I'm not saying you should use PW to dictate your belief in god, but every single attempt I have seen to dismantle the argument fails. Because, once again, you are doomed to take the wager given the beginning parameters of the problem. I don't know how to counter the argument other than change the parameters. I don't know how that can be done, but at least I'm honest about it instead of appealing to some failing argument like a false dichotomy or multiple gods or something. I just say fuck Pascal's wager, and I'll live how I want to regardless of the very small likelihood that I'm going to burn in hell for all eternity. I'm honest about my irrationality. You're completely ignoring the consequences of not wasting time with the wager, because that might not be how a deity wants you to act. Or the fact that there could surely be infinite possibilities. Maybe there exists a deity who doesn't want prayer or acknowledgement, or one that favors atheists or people who actually care about healthy skepticism rather than blind belief or guessing on a whim? Even if you guessed the right deity in an effort to cover your own ass, there's no guarantee you'd be saved by him simply because you guessed right. After all, he'd know your selfish reasons for blindly selecting him, and it had nothing to do with true belief (or whatever other nonsensical things he'd ask from you, according to his commandments or holy book). It's not as simple as picking and choosing and therefore being more right than someone who didn't pick and choose, because maybe the latter could be what a deity is looking for. There are other variables you need to consider which makes PW wrong. You seem to ignore the key thing about this argument. Here's an analogy: Imagine you're in a room where there are thousands of playing cards face down. Only one is the ace of spades. You get to choose only one card. If you get the ace of spades, you get unlimited happiness. If you get any other card, you get unlimited suffering.
There are two ways to lose, you don't play the game or you play the game and pick the wrong card.
There is only one way to win, you play the game and pick the right card.
So in the face of these odds what do you do to win? You must pick a card. Regardless of the insurmountable odds against you, you must choose because that is the only way to win (or not lose). It's that simple really. If you begin with pascal's wager, there is no escape from the room. You can add more face down cards if you like (this is what you are essentially doing every time you attempt to refute the argument with a finite number of alternative possibilities), but in the end you have to choose. The only way to dismantle the argument is to find an exit to the room. But given the nature of the game (i.e., parameters of Pascal's Wager), there is no real means to do so. That is why every argument I have seen fail. They continue to argue about the number of cards on the table when the only real way out is to find a way to leave the room. No argument has really done this convincingly. The only way to do it really is to essentially say that there are an infinite number of cards to choose from. Then the game becomes absurd an a contradiction mathematically. But this is not true given the limited (and finite) nature of our ability to conceive the alternatives. We cannot say there are an infinite number of alternatives because our conception will naturally limit it to a finite number. It will be a very large amount, but finite nonetheless. Edit: Damn, the guy went to bed. Oh well, food for thought for anyone else. The locked room analogy fails because it assumes that every choice is mutually exclusive. It also arbitrarily defines leaving the room as a win, and staying in the room is a loss. It also creates an arbitrary rule in which a choice must be made (which is completely contrary to Agnosticism). Edit: To be a little more clear, Pascal's Wager is not in any way a description of how religious belief must be, it's a crude and heavy-handed approach to define the world into an extremely narrow set of choices in order to push a personal agenda. sigh...I submit on the record. My prior posts are sufficient to outline my view on this subject. I would most gladly accept being convinced otherwise, but all you see are the same defective arguments over and over and over...
Alright, I'll take a shot,
You say:
The only way to do it really is to essentially say that there are an infinite number of cards to choose from. Then the game becomes absurd an a contradiction mathematically. But this is not true given the limited (and finite) nature of our ability to conceive the alternatives. We cannot say there are an infinite number of alternatives because our conception will naturally limit it to a finite number. It will be a very large amount, but finite nonetheless.
If I'm reading your analogy correctly, a card = a deity.
Now I can conceive of a deity which would let you into heaven if you worship the number 1. Similarly I can conceive of a deity that would let you in if you worship 2. Repeat for all integers means you get an infinite number of cards, and therefore your mathematical contradiction. There is no limit to our ability to conceive of alternatives.
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On February 19 2013 15:06 BoxingKangaroo wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2013 14:43 PassionFruit wrote:On February 19 2013 14:12 WolfintheSheep wrote:On February 19 2013 12:45 PassionFruit wrote:On February 19 2013 12:27 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On February 19 2013 12:17 PassionFruit wrote:On February 19 2013 12:10 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On February 19 2013 11:58 PassionFruit wrote:On February 19 2013 11:54 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On February 19 2013 11:47 PassionFruit wrote:
Pascal's Wager is actually legit on a mathematical level. If you take hell to be negative infinity, then it is in your benefit to believe in something so long as the possibility of that belief has a finite probability of being true. All the counters to alternative gods or a false dichotomy or etc... doesn't do anything because the possibility that the belief is true is still finite. It's a basic EV analysis where the gains are infinite and the losses are finite. Unless you're a pure atheist where belief in god is exactly 0%, you take the wager.
I haven't seen a good counter to this argument as of date even with all the crap on wiki and youtube or what not. But...fuck logic and belief. I'll live my life and if I end up burning in hell eternally, then I"ll burn in hell eternally. It is what it is. You're misconstruing belief in something with probability that it actually exists. The video I just posted covers that... if a deity existed, surely he wouldn't fall for your "Well I'll just cover my ass with a belief" argument, not to mention the fact that belief isn't even subject to the will. In other words, if I'm skeptical of a belief because it lacks evidence, I can't just *choose* to truly believe in it. I can pretend to believe in it, but I won't actually be a believer, because I know it's full of crap. The video also refutes how PW fails on several other levels. It's really not sound, even if you consider the probability of a deity existing to be any non-zero chance. Right. But how do you know whether your interpretation of belief is right or mine is right? Unless you can commune with god, no one does. So you see, unless you are 100% sure you are right and 100% sure I am wrong, Pascal's Wager holds. As long as there is still the slightest possibility that my interpretation of belief is true, then the probability is finite. It doesn't matter if it is .0000001, because compared with infinity any finite probability is essentially moot. You still take the wager. Edit: The problem is all with the concept of hell being negative infinity and heaven being positive infinity. You are just fucked on a mathematical level if you put that on one side of the equation while it is absent from the other. It's a problem rigged to taking the wager from the very start. Pascal was a tricky dude. If it wasn't the case that there were countless gods and religions and threats of hells and heavens that all contradict one another and must be mutually exclusive by definition, then Pascal's Wager would probably be okay. But it's not dichotomous between Christian God and No God. There are tons of other choices, which means that whatever arbitrary probability you choose for the existence of your specific deity is useless because you'll have to give the same number to every other god and religion, but they cancel each other out, etc. You don't need to interpret belief; you just need to recognize that multiple beliefs exist. Plus all the other reasons why PW doesn't work that are mentioned in the video. Nothing cancels out. The overriding assumption is that only one belief is true. Thus there is only one heaven and one hell and one right god. You either pick right or you pick wrong. So long as there are a finite number of choices, you must pick. It's simple mathematics. The only thing to focus upon is the finite nature of the probability that your choice is right or wrong. I'm not saying you should use PW to dictate your belief in god, but every single attempt I have seen to dismantle the argument fails. Because, once again, you are doomed to take the wager given the beginning parameters of the problem. I don't know how to counter the argument other than change the parameters. I don't know how that can be done, but at least I'm honest about it instead of appealing to some failing argument like a false dichotomy or multiple gods or something. I just say fuck Pascal's wager, and I'll live how I want to regardless of the very small likelihood that I'm going to burn in hell for all eternity. I'm honest about my irrationality. You're completely ignoring the consequences of not wasting time with the wager, because that might not be how a deity wants you to act. Or the fact that there could surely be infinite possibilities. Maybe there exists a deity who doesn't want prayer or acknowledgement, or one that favors atheists or people who actually care about healthy skepticism rather than blind belief or guessing on a whim? Even if you guessed the right deity in an effort to cover your own ass, there's no guarantee you'd be saved by him simply because you guessed right. After all, he'd know your selfish reasons for blindly selecting him, and it had nothing to do with true belief (or whatever other nonsensical things he'd ask from you, according to his commandments or holy book). It's not as simple as picking and choosing and therefore being more right than someone who didn't pick and choose, because maybe the latter could be what a deity is looking for. There are other variables you need to consider which makes PW wrong. You seem to ignore the key thing about this argument. Here's an analogy: Imagine you're in a room where there are thousands of playing cards face down. Only one is the ace of spades. You get to choose only one card. If you get the ace of spades, you get unlimited happiness. If you get any other card, you get unlimited suffering.
There are two ways to lose, you don't play the game or you play the game and pick the wrong card.
There is only one way to win, you play the game and pick the right card.
So in the face of these odds what do you do to win? You must pick a card. Regardless of the insurmountable odds against you, you must choose because that is the only way to win (or not lose). It's that simple really. If you begin with pascal's wager, there is no escape from the room. You can add more face down cards if you like (this is what you are essentially doing every time you attempt to refute the argument with a finite number of alternative possibilities), but in the end you have to choose. The only way to dismantle the argument is to find an exit to the room. But given the nature of the game (i.e., parameters of Pascal's Wager), there is no real means to do so. That is why every argument I have seen fail. They continue to argue about the number of cards on the table when the only real way out is to find a way to leave the room. No argument has really done this convincingly. The only way to do it really is to essentially say that there are an infinite number of cards to choose from. Then the game becomes absurd an a contradiction mathematically. But this is not true given the limited (and finite) nature of our ability to conceive the alternatives. We cannot say there are an infinite number of alternatives because our conception will naturally limit it to a finite number. It will be a very large amount, but finite nonetheless. Edit: Damn, the guy went to bed. Oh well, food for thought for anyone else. The locked room analogy fails because it assumes that every choice is mutually exclusive. It also arbitrarily defines leaving the room as a win, and staying in the room is a loss. It also creates an arbitrary rule in which a choice must be made (which is completely contrary to Agnosticism). Edit: To be a little more clear, Pascal's Wager is not in any way a description of how religious belief must be, it's a crude and heavy-handed approach to define the world into an extremely narrow set of choices in order to push a personal agenda. sigh...I submit on the record. My prior posts are sufficient to outline my view on this subject. I would most gladly accept being convinced otherwise, but all you see are the same defective arguments over and over and over... Alright, I'll take a shot, You say: Show nested quote +The only way to do it really is to essentially say that there are an infinite number of cards to choose from. Then the game becomes absurd an a contradiction mathematically. But this is not true given the limited (and finite) nature of our ability to conceive the alternatives. We cannot say there are an infinite number of alternatives because our conception will naturally limit it to a finite number. It will be a very large amount, but finite nonetheless. If I'm reading your analogy correctly, a card = a deity. Now I can conceive of a deity which would let you into heaven if you worship the number 1. Similarly I can conceive of a deity that would let you in if you worship 2. Repeat for all integers means you get an infinite number of cards, and therefore your mathematical contradiction. There is no limit to our ability to conceive of alternatives.
To put it in a crude way, cardinality is the problem. And I would assume the infinity of heaven and hell would be the greatest of them all.
Edit: But I guess my analogy isn't entirely accurate, but it still properly illustrates the defect in most people's reasoning in getting away from Pascal's wager. And that's really all I intended anyway.
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heaven and hell have infinite cardinality
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On February 19 2013 14:47 HardlyNever wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2013 14:37 FunkyLich wrote:Okay so here's what I got from the OP: -OP takes one of the most simple tautologies in the english language: "God is, or He is not". And calls it a false dichotomy. "Wow! I just dismantled this whole pascal's wager thing at the first premise! Awesome!" And then we get on this whole digression into: if that's a false dichotomy what's the middle? Holy shit :O. "What if there are a million other gods. What if the Christian God existed a billion times over?" OP uses the remaining paragraph space to flaunt his creativity. I'm pretty tired, so I'm not going to tell you why you're wrong on every count(right now), but I am thinking you skipped over the entire middle part of the thread. Basically, I'm not too sure it actually is a tautology(yet it is convenient for your argument, so you will claim it is), and it seems there is still some debate regarding this: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager#Argument_from_inconsistent_revelations). If you can provide convincing evidence as to why I should assume Pascal meant it as a tautology, I'd love to read it. Right now I'm operating under the assumption that he has chosen the Christian "God" (the dude who you read about in the bible) as his one god. I'm not going to rehash everything else that was said, you can go back and read it if you want. Your D and D' example are meaningless. There are infinite possibilities. There could be a (one) god that is really fucking picky about his name, and if you didn't get it exactly right, you are burning in hell forever (if you think this is in anyway far fetched, see the Chalcedonian controversy, it isn't that far off). The airplane thing just doesn't make much sense. There is no probable cause or reason here, as there is no true evidence to go off of. I think that is the short of everything for the moment. I'll be back tomorrow.
Premise 1 says:
"God is, or He is not"
As I explained, this should be interpreted roughly as:
"Christianity or not Christianity"
X or ~X
This is a basic observation of english. Law of the Excluded Middle.
The argument from inconsistent revelations is not saying this is a false dichotomy. The debate in that section boils down to whether or not other religions, which are part of ~X should be brought out as additional options in the wager. So maybe the wager should say "Christianity or Hinduism or neither" instead of bundling Hinduism with "not Christianity".
Once you reach the your personal revelation that "X or not X" is a tautology, we can continue this conversation.
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On February 19 2013 15:32 FunkyLich wrote:
Once you reach the your personal revelation that "X or not X" is a tautology, we can continue this conversation.
Hmm...
"christianity or not christianity" is not a tautology, I don't think.
edit: "X or not X" is only a tautology when you have the axiom of the excluded middle. Is it evident that this holds here?
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On February 19 2013 14:40 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2013 14:39 Birdie wrote:On February 19 2013 14:33 sam!zdat wrote:
but no matter what planet He made, it would have had a day that was exactly 24 hours long. In fact, I believe that, according to your reasoning, it would have been utterly impossible for God to create a planet which did NOT have a 24-hour day. No, if he created a larger planet which was further away from the sun then it would rotate differently and have a different length day. but you said an hour was 1/24 of the time it took the planet to turn on its axis. So now I'm confused. remind me what an hour is again?
Well, the length of an hour would change depending on the amount of time it takes the planet to turn on its axis. The amount of time we call an hour on planet Earth is a different ratio of rotation on, say, planet Mars.
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On February 19 2013 15:21 sam!zdat wrote:
heaven and hell have infinite cardinality
I'd like to recant.
If Pascal ever asks you where you'd like to place your wager, just punch him in the face. That's my new solution.
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On February 19 2013 15:39 PassionFruit wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2013 15:21 sam!zdat wrote:
heaven and hell have infinite cardinality If Pascal ever asks you where you'd like to place your wager, just punch him in the face. That's my new solution.
Welcome to Zen!
On February 19 2013 15:39 Birdie wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2013 14:40 sam!zdat wrote:On February 19 2013 14:39 Birdie wrote:On February 19 2013 14:33 sam!zdat wrote:
but no matter what planet He made, it would have had a day that was exactly 24 hours long. In fact, I believe that, according to your reasoning, it would have been utterly impossible for God to create a planet which did NOT have a 24-hour day. No, if he created a larger planet which was further away from the sun then it would rotate differently and have a different length day. but you said an hour was 1/24 of the time it took the planet to turn on its axis. So now I'm confused. remind me what an hour is again? Well, the length of an hour would change depending on the amount of time it takes the planet to turn on its axis. The amount of time we call an hour on planet Earth is a different ratio of rotation on, say, planet Mars.
how would you measure the difference, though?
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EPT
