Problems with Pascal's Wager

[Prevaricator]

In my opinion

This is one of the most bullshit arguments for believing in God (judeo-christian god, because the argument forces it to be specific). The argument goes something like this, for those who don't know

1. If you believe in god and you are right, then you go to heaven at the end of your life. (Infinite gain)
2. If you believe in god and you are wrong then maybe you have a little less fun in life, but nothing really happens. (minor loss)
3. If you don't believe in god and are wrong, then you go to hell. (infinite loss)
4. If you don't believe in god and are right then maybe you have more fun in life, but relatively not a lot (minor gain).

Therefore, you should believe in god because you want to avoid 3. at all costs and hope to have a shot at 1.

Besides not giving probabilities of gods existence, or the fact that you cannot just "decide" to believe in something, the structure of this argument is faulty because it could be used for anything. There is no link between believing in god and getting into heaven. You could just as easily argue that a person can only get into paradise by eating ten bananas a day, and use the same logical structure of Pascal's wager to mandate that you do so because of the infinite gain. Of course this banana example is quite absurd, but consider the conflicting world religions. You could use the logic of Pascal's Wager for any one of them, and since they conflict, something must be up.

[gumpzilla]

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There is no link between believing in god and getting into heaven.

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Unless, of course, the religious tradition you choose to participate in says there is, which is the point.

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You could use the logic of Pascal's Wager for any one of them, and since they conflict, something must be up.

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The bananas argument is stupid, but you acknowledged that.

This last point is kind of interesting, and also kind of standard in trying to rebuff religions. However, that said, Pascal's wager could almost certainly still be used to argue that you should pick one of them to believe in, and probably the one that seems to have the most dire consequences if you don't believe. It's certainly not the case that all of the world's religions are structured as "believe = heaven, doubt = hell."

All in all, I'd say Pascal's wager is a pretty solid argument, but I think anybody who rationalizes their religious belief using Pascal's wager probably isn't as much of a believer as they might think.

[Prevaricator]

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Unless, of course, the religious tradition you choose to participate in says there is, which is the point

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There is no logic behind tradition. Pascal's wager evades the issue. The real issue should be the validity of the scriptures. Unless you can prove that believing equals heaven, the argument falls apart, and if you could prove that then, well, you wouldn't have any use for Pascal's wager anyway because you would already believe. And just because a lot of people believe in it doesn't make a difference froma logical standpoint. Citing popularity is one of many logical fallacies.

[gumpzilla]

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Unless you can prove that believing equals heaven, the argument falls apart

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The whole point of the argument is that it is a wager. You're gambling. Pascal essentially says, "These guys claim that I'll go to heaven if I believe in Jesus. It costs me barely anything to believe in him, so why not?" The hugeness of the reward means that even a tiny probability of it happening can lead to a very high expected value. Even if there isn't a direct link between believing in God and going to heaven, either, you can just fold this into the probability. This is what's so cool about the argument.

And no, you can't apply this to anything, because many things that you could choose to do in real life have actual costs that muck up the EV calculation. For example, if you say that not only do you have to believe in Jesus, but you have to donate 10% of your income to the church, now you have a real choice to make that depends on evaluating the probability.

[Zygote]

To the OP:

Lets say you are faced with a time bomb. You are not a bomb expert and do not have sufficient time to become one. You must make an guess based on little to no evidence and must impliment your guess, regardless of whether or not you can prove that the move you chose was best. If you consider your life like that time bomb, then, you can defend many types of life decisions by using arguments like pascal's wager.

However, this arguement doesn't work with religions that require you to fear god and, therefore, require you to undoubtably believe in god.

[Cerril]

The whole thing is ironed out when you realize that Pascal was talking from a point of view that Catholicism was the only alternative to no religion at all, so to him it's a dichotomy.

On top of that, it clearly begs the question since you have to consider some religion a rational alternative in order for the Wager not to be nonsense (and fall victim to your banana comparison).

Today, it's pretty obvious that Pascal's wager is pretty flimsy, and I'm constantly surprised when otherwise intelligent people continue to think it's worth much discussion other than a historical footnote.

[BluffTHIS!]

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The hugeness of the reward means that even a tiny probability of it happening can lead to a very high expected value.

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This is the crux of the wager: the possibility of infinite gain for very little cost. Although Pascal did intend it to do with Catholicism, it could logically be applied to any religious/philosophical belief system that posits an afterlife based upon your beliefs and actions now. Just pick one. The consequence, if any, of picking the "wrong" one can't be any worse than picking none given the conditions of the wager.

[KaneKungFu123]

In Asia there are alot of christians. Its great. Really, really great.

[Prevaricator]

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In Asia there are alot of christians. Its great. Really, really great.

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explain?

[gumpzilla]

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On top of that, it clearly begs the question since you have to consider some religion a rational alternative in order for the Wager not to be nonsense (and fall victim to your banana comparison).

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The banana comparison is silly. Notice how it assumes that the reward - heaven - is still present even though he's tried to move it away from a religious standpoint. As for the rest, I don't think you're making much sense. The argument works just fine provided that one assumes that the cost of believing in religion X is extremely low. It doesn't matter if the religion is a "rational alternative," since the size of the potential gain makes the improbability of attaining that gain largely irrelevant, provided the probability is non-zero.

[Prevaricator]

YOu are missing the point. Its not about "heaven." Its about infinite gain.

[bronzepiglet]

I don't know if the whole thing is worth getting that excited about... perhaps Pascal wanted to justify his beliefs, but other than that, I don't know if it's more than an observation.

I do think it would be hard to make an equally compelling argument against believing in God... in terms of personal gain/loss.

[CallMeIshmael]

Gump, I agree with pretty much everything you've said, with the exception of:

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The argument works just fine provided that one assumes that the cost of believing in religion X is extremely low.

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Even if the cost in believing in religion X is VERY HIGH, the wager still works. Because there is nothing that we could pay in this life that wouldnt be worth it, if the reward were Heaven (infinite).

[drudman]

BLARG!

We could be talking about Pascal's contributions to mathematics. Instead we're talking about the wager.

[Cerril]

The only reason I require rational alternatives is that otherwise you have to assume equal probability that doing X is necessary to get you into heaven and NOT doing X is necessary to get you into heaven.

That's why DS's comment about how being good to others is not forbidden by any religion is meaningful. So Pascal's Wager only works as phrased if there is only one reasonable choice once you make the decision to believe in God, or that none of the rational choices contradict each other. If there are contradictory choices, then you can still rephrase it that the infinite value comes in choosing any one religion, but it loses a lot of the force since now just believing in God doesn't save you from damnation.