Pascal's Wager is imperfect, but we shouldn't make it the ultimate FOCUS OF EVIL in the Universe.
Didn't Pascal say something like: "We don't know if there's a Heaven or Hell, so just go to Mass anyway just to play it safe -- Who knows, it might end up saving your soul -- it can't hurt, can it?"
Sort of. That's how it's taken, anyway.
The problem is, it assumes there's only one religion.
Maybe so in the case of Pascal's particular argument. But a Pascal's Wager argument can take a form that doesn't assume that.
E.g., that there may or may not be a life after death, a Heaven or Hell, does not assume there is only one religion. We just don't know if there is or not. To say that there might be, and it might even matter what we think about it or what we do, etc., does not necessarily assume there's only one religion.
This P.W. kind of argument is really much like agnosticism. One can be an agnostic and still consider the possibility of there being some form of Heaven or Hell or Something More. And it can leave open the possibility of different beliefs about it.
A legitimate question would be: If there is something beyond this life, how do we know anything about it, or which of the many beliefs about it is more likely correct? The inquiry cannot be dismissed simply because it resembles Pascal's Wager. One could come up with a reasonable response to the question, taking it seriously, finding an answer, perhaps tentative or doubtful, and conclude that it might be true. Just because there are many different religions or beliefs about it does not preclude the possibility that this or that belief might be true. One or more of those beliefs could be true while others are false.
It is not scientific or rational to say: Well, there are many beliefs about this, and we don't know the truth about it for sure, and so therefore there is no truth to it and all the beliefs have to be rejected as false.
Many religions that humans practice DO hurt if you join the wrong one.
No, not really. Most of them that are dogmatic or exclusivist do not teach that if you join the wrong one it makes you worse off. Rather, they say you are worse off if you don't join their religion, but not that you are even more worse off if you join the wrong one. Rather, you're just as bad off either way whether you join the "wrong" one or you just join none.
The war between conflicting religions derives from the rivalry among them as they compete for the same turf. It's not because each one thinks the other makes the people who join it worse off than they would be if they joined none.
Just because Pascal's Wager is partly flawed does not mean that any argument that resembles that thinking has to be flawed. The outburst "Pascal's Wager! Pascal's Wager!" is not a good argument against a "we don't know" or "it might be" reasoning. Being a rational agnostic does not preclude one from considering the possibility that "it might really be so" after all.
Heresy sends you directly to Hell at the front of the line, according to more than a few theologies.
Not really. You probably can't find one theologian who says: "You're better off to believe or practice nothing at all than to believe or practice something different than our religion." What theology teaches that today? I doubt you can find it even in past history. What the anti-heresy dogmatists were doing was trying to eliminate rival groups who were muscling in on their turf. They are like the drug cartels that fight over market share.
What they teach is: "Believe ours and you're better off." But if you don't believe theirs, it doesn't matter if you believe a "heresy" or just believe nothing at all -- you're just as bad off either way.
Pascal's Wager is only good as a rationalization after the fact. To make a believer feel good about their belief.
No more so than rejecting Pascal's Wager is also a rationalization after the fact -- to make a non-believer feel good about their nonbelief.
Absolute rejection of anything that resembles a P.W. argument is simply based on the premise that the belief(s) in question must be wrong. If instead one takes an agnostic view that we don't know what the truth is, then a P.W. kind of reasoning might be correct. There can never be anything wrong with saying, "I don't know, but what if it's true?" and then considering that possibility. And one does have to consider the existence of other beliefs besides the one being entertained. If the reasoning is a kind which totally ignores alternative conflicting beliefs about it that are just as likely, then it's incorrect. But not every P.W. argument commits this error.
It's worthless to help one choose which religion to adopt.
You can say that only because probably there is no one "true religion" superior to the others. But if there is, then P.W. is not worthless to help one choose.
It's never worthless to seek what is more likely true, even if you can't know for sure, unless there is no benefit from finding truth. If there is a benefit to knowing the truth, or believing it, then it's beneficial if P.W. comes into play to help one find that truth. This is so even though there may be several conflicting beliefs competing for attention. This competition going on does not then lead to the conclusion, "Oh they're all hogwash! To Hell with them all!" No, that does not necessarily follow. In fact, one of them might be the "One True Religion" and all the rest of them false -- though this is improbable. But there could be some true belief(s) among the conflicting choices.
P.W. is worthless only if there's no truth worth finding. If the truth, or believing it, is also worthless, then the P.W. argument that would "convert" you to that truth is also worthless. I.e., PW-bashing is just a way of saying you know there's no truth there worth finding.
Pascal's Wager per se should not be used as an argument for or against believing one way or the other. It makes no sense to say: "AH! Gotcha! That's a Pascal's Wager argument, so you must be wrong! I win the debate because you used a P.W. argument!"
That kind of reasoning is always wrong. It's OK to say things like, "We don't know -- it could be one way or the other" and so on, and it's not
ipso facto fallacious because it smells like a P.W. argument.
Bad analogy. It's more like an ejection seat.
A plane had a difficulty on an aircraft carrier and slid into another aircraft. One of the pilots saw the accident coming and ejected. The nose of the aircraft they hit slid through his canopy and would have killed him if he hadn't ejected.
The other pilot did not eject. But the initial difficulty the first plane had caused his canopy to buckle. They could not open it right away and later determined that if he'd ejected, the rocket in his seat would have smashed his brains against the glass.
So, Pascal's wager is more like two pilots both insisting that using AND not using their ejector seat was the right thing to do. You can't use either anecdote to predict the outcome of a casualty in your plane.
In that example, yes. But it's not the Pascal's Wager reasoning that was wrong, but rather the false information about the likely benefits/harms of using the ejector seat.
In a decision, you have to act on the best information about the likely results. It has nothing to do with the P.W. argument, but about what are the likely harmful or beneficial outcomes. In some cases, where you have a strong indication one way or the other, you can make a choice based on "I don't know for sure, but this choice looks preferable to that one" reasoning, which is like P.W. And then in a fluke situation, you may end up killing yourself because you chose the safest course, but it was an unlucky case and it backfired.
How about a vaccination that usually works, but in a rare case it kills the patient. You don't know for sure that it will help you. Maybe less than 50% chance, but you take the vaccine anyway as being the better gamble. That's a P.W. choice, which usually makes no difference, but in many cases does give a good result, but one in a million ends up killing you.
So, the Pascal's Wager argument is not totally flawed.
It provides no information to justify choosing one of the thousands of religions that mankind offers. That's a flaw. it's a fatal flaw if used by a non-believer to approach belief.
It's a comforting rationalization but not much else.
But you are basing this on the premise that it doesn't matter what one believes. Your reasoning is correct, provided that your premise is correct that it does not matter what one believes. But if that premise is false, then a Pascal's Wager argument could justify choosing the right belief.
So again, it is silly to just blurt out "Pascal's Wager! Pascal's Wager!" and think you have disproved a particular belief or religion or theory. Even when that kind of reasoning comes into play it is not that PW reasoning that is the issue. Rather, it may be reasonable to argue that "We don't know for sure -- it might be this or it might be that."
It's not always wrong to say "It may or may not be true, but it's safer to assume it's true."
It is wrong exactly because the Catholics say the Mormons are going to suffer for their religion, the Mormons say the Catholics are going to suffer for their religion.
No, you're getting all worked up over nothing. Neither the Catholics or the Mormons say this. I challenge you to find either a Catholic or Mormon who says: "If you join that other religion you'll be worse off than if you joined no religion."
You cannot find any who say that. You're going to extremes here to try to bash Pascal. He's not the Devil Incarnate as you're trying to make him out to be. There's nothing wrong, and it might be reasonable, if you say "We don't know for sure, but this seems more likely than that." Even if it's about which religious belief is better.
We cannot say it's safer to assume that any single belief is safer than non-belief. Maybe God loves atheists more than Baptists.
Christ asked for belief. Belief in him or in his power was stated as a condition or as a means to gain healing and salvation. Whether God loves atheists or Baptists more is not what matters. Rather, what matters is which one is more likely to believe in Christ. Believing in Christ is "safer" than non-belief as regard to the possibility of gaining salvation. When he healed someone, their belief in him or in his power was "safer" as a way to gain that healing than non-belief. So in that sense belief is "safer" than non-belief.
And it seems a Baptist is more likely to meet that condition than an atheist. The Baptist is no more meritorious or morally deserving, but the qualifying condition is one's believing in Christ, not being meritorious.
It's not true that a "Pascal's Wager" kind of reasoning must ipso facto always be wrong.
But it is. As noted, it starts with the assumption of only one religion being available to the Seeker. That's false.
Not always. Again, in the case of someone who came to Christ to be healed, if they believed in his power they could be healed. Had they not believed, they would not have gained the healing. Only one choice was "available" or under consideration, which was to believe. This choice had the possibility of leading to the desired outcome, whereas it posed no risk of making the person worse off. Whereas not believing posed the risk of leaving that person without the desired healing. So because of the fact of his demonstrated power, there was one choice, or "religion" if you want to call it that, and choosing this could lead to the desired result.
The following scenario could easily be a "Pascal's Wager" example:
There was a woman afflicted with hemorrhages for twelve years. She had suffered greatly at the hands of many doctors and had spent all that she had. Yet she was not helped but only grew worse. She had heard about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak. She said, "If I but touch his clothes, I shall be cured." Immediately her flow of blood dried up. She felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction.
--Mark 5:25-29
This woman might have thought, "I don't know for sure, but it might work. Just in case he really does have power, I'll touch his cloak." That would be a "Pascal's Wager" case, where there is a choice that might work, and at the same time there's no way it could make her worse off. So there's only one choice, or one "religion" to try out, not many, and it can only lead to a good result, not a bad one. The worst would be that it just doesn't work. Surely this woman thought of all the previous healers who tried their treatment on her, and how could she now be sure that this time it would be different? But it was worth a try. Why wasn't that a reasonable way for her to think of it and to choose on that basis?
Especially since just "believing" is so easy.
Anyway, we have statistics on car and plane accidents. We can actually come up with risk tables for the benefits/costs of wearing seat belts, using the eject, changing your mind after Monty Hall reveals one of the goats.
You mean there's evidence to use as a guide, so there's a probability factor that helps.
The woman in my example also had evidence. "She had heard about Jesus," meaning she knew of reports of his earlier healings. This increased the probability that she might be healed this way. Why isn't this similar to using statistics on the effectiveness of seat belts? The better the stats, or the evidence, or the previous success stories, the better is the chance that this will work. So Pascal's Wager is valid where there is evidence in support of the choice being considered.
That the woman in this example was not a scientist or learned intellectual who read Plato and others does not preclude her from exercising this kind of logic. Her simple knowledge of some earlier reports gave her some evidence to go on and she acted, or believed, based on that.
Pascal did not invent this kind of logic several centuries later. In all likelihood, there is some argument from Aristotle or other earlier thinker who put forth a similar argument to Pascal's Wager. There are scholars of that period who say that everything that ever needed to be said in philosophy was all said by the Greeks, and everything since then is just window-dressing.
So we should not fall all over ourselves obsessing on Pascal's Wager.
Such an effort is useless . . . unless we have a means of determining the disposition of souls in any actual afterlife, should such a thing exist.
OK, we don't have "data" on souls in an afterlife such as we have on previous healing events, which could be verified. So it's more difficult to believe in the total "healing" of eternal life than in limited individual healing events like the Jesus miracle healing acts. But if there is a basis for believing in the limited individual healings, doesn't this logically suggest the possibility of the greater total "healing" of conquering death entirely? Why shouldn't a power to heal, if it is extended far enough, also lead to a power to grant eternal life? Isn't this just an expansion or gradation from a lower-scale healing to a much higher level of the same power?
(In this regard, the N.T. word for "healing" is the same as that used for "salvation" of the soul, so that they are not two separate concepts. Rather they blend into one another, so that "salvation" becomes a higher completed process of healing, or the total ultimate healing. I.e., what really is the difference between dying "of old age" and dying of cancer at 50? If the latter form of death can or should be overcome, why not all death?)
So the "faith" for salvation is a higher-level faith, or more difficult, perhaps more hypothetical or more fine-tuned than that of a victim being healed of leprosy or blindness, etc. But isn't the logic fundamentally the same, with the final conclusion (eternal life) just a further/longer step, and yet still grounded in the same reasoning of the possibilities of an illness being cured?
But we have no "means of determining the disposition of souls in any actual afterlife" as we have for some particular healings, because there are no reports from the afterlife to give us information or evidence. So does that mean that the probability of something after death has to be extremely low? less than 1%? less than .1%?
And if it's so low, then it makes no sense to adopt any belief about it, or to waste any time thinking about it? The harm from this distraction (longing for an afterlife) is too great and the probability of an afterlife too low to justify spending any resources such as brain power or research etc. to seeking an answer. This is a net waste, if there's no afterlife to ever be found, and it's highly probable that there is none.
One weakness to this argument is that
we do not know what the probability is of some kind of afterlife. The lack of "data" on this, i.e., no evidence on the disposition of souls that have passed, does not mean that the probability of an afterlife is low. We can only say that we don't know, not that it is improbable. It's still a possibility that there is Something Else, and we don't know what the probability of it is.
If all the known facts could be put into a computer that can analyze every possible problem and deliver a probability figure for this or that puzzle, then perhaps the probability of some afterlife could be computed and the figure provided. But that computer technology does not yet exist. Maybe the technology is coming, but we're nowhere near it yet.
So you can't just start out with the dogma that an afterlife has to be highly improbable. Below a certain level, such as 1% or .1%, one must grant the pointlessness of expending great effort to determine how one gains eternal life if it should exist. But we don't know if the probability is that low. What if it's 20% or 30%? Might it not then be worth the effort? And maybe it's really higher.
What's wrong with reasoning that, if eternal life, or an afterlife, is possible, our best hope for finding it, based on every historical consideration, is through whatever power this historical Christ figure was in contact with. He had power that suggests the possibility of the Something More beyond death, or beyond the world we know of. Where else in history do we have comparable indication of such power being possible?
As to the time/energy wasted pursuing the afterlife, what if the only condition to gain the eternal life is to believe in Christ. Since this is so easy, and doesn't really require expending much energy or resources, why couldn't one just believe it and go on with all the other matters of life that we have more certainty about? And so then what is the great waste or harm done if it turns out that there is no eternal life after all? What was the waste in having held that belief? Don't we hope for some things, even wish, as a possibility, but go on with life and not let this wish interfere with life?
Now if instead it requires going to Mass and Confession and other religious rituals, as Pascal suggested, or praying toward Mecca every day as the Muslims require, then maybe you could argue that the time and effort wasted is not worth it, given the very low probability that there really is any Heaven or afterlife to be gained.
So if anything, the wasted effort/time argument is only one that is against performing difficult religious observances, but not against the simple requirement that one must believe in Christ. Which anyone, even a bad person, can do with little effort.
But then, if we have actual numbers on where souls go after death, we have no need of Pascal's Wager . . .
What if your "actual numbers" are flawed or inconclusive? as most numbers tend to be?
Why are you so obsessed with proving that anything resembling Pascal's Wager has to be logically flawed?
What you're doing is arguing that Pascal is wrong if there are numbers, and also wrong if there are no numbers. If there is evidence, he's wrong, and if there's NO evidence, he's wrong. He has to be wrong no matter what, and therefore anything that smells like Pascal's Wager has to be wrong. You are virtually saying that if we don't know with absolute certainty, we must NEVER choose or make a judgment on something, because any choice is equally likely to damage us as to do us any good unless we have absolute certainty which choice is right.
Having "actual numbers" does not usually resolve a question. It helps, maybe, but there can still be doubt, and there are still possibilities one way or the other. There can be a reason to choose this way or that, even though we don't know for sure what the truth is. There are times when we can say, "choosing this might work, even though we don't know for sure."
Why must it be so etched in stone that no decision can ever be made that way?
There are times when one choice is a clear possibility for a better result, and yet it's not certain, and at the same time that one choice is very
unlikely to do any damage if it is chosen and yet turns out to be mistaken. Why does there ALWAYS have to be a possible negative result from making such a choice, which then leads to the conclusion that one can never make a judgment or choice about anything unless one has ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY about the likely result?
Doesn't much beneficial scientific discovery stem from trying out something that might work, but they don't really know? How many labs got blown up as result? half a dozen?
Where does this extreme fear of anything resembling Pascal's Wager come from? How does PW-bashing become such a religion?
Aren't there times when a person might rightly think, "I don't know for sure, but this choice might work and can't do any harm." No? smells too much like Pascal's Wager -- can't allow that.
Should you cringe anytime you hear someone say, "No harm in trying"? Should you start pulling your hair out and plead with them not to do it, because it might do more harm than good?
That woman who reached out to touch Jesus' cloak -- should someone have grabbed her and screamed, "No, lady, don't! It might actually kill you! No! I beg you, don't do it!!!"