The best odds for/against god
 

this is just to elaborate on the following arguments

"If you believe in God and are right you get heaven. If you are wrong you get dirt.
If you don't believe in God and are right you get dirt.
If you don't believe in God and are wrong you get hell.

Clearly +EV to believe in God."

-Kathleenstand-

-this is what I mean and i just didn't want to retype it..sorry kathleenstand if you'd rather me not quote you

I used to believe the whole everything to gain and nothing to lose be believing in god, but one night I was talking to a christian friend an tried to give him the criteria I would use in deciding whether or not it was good odds to believe in god...

problems occurred when realizing that in order to believe in a specific god (the christian god in this example) you cannot get around haveing to place a better chance of that god existing and rewarding you if you believe in him than the chance that you would be punished for believing in a false deity.. well not really because you would also have to consider chances that there is a god that would reward you if you did not worship but punish you if you believed in a false god... well anyway It gets very confusing and made my brain hurt so i just went to sleep.

since this is a philosophy forum in poker forums, what better a place to discuss this. I'm sure most of you non-believers have thought about this before so..

what things you do need to consider in this evaluation?? I'm sure there are extraordinary amounts of them, but any that you have though of as important??

--if this has had been adressed before, sorry but nothing wrong with a fresh discussion

--i know that there's not much a reason to believe in god if you'ree doing it because of odds.. but let's try to ignor that

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

[ QUOTE ]
this is just to elaborate on the following arguments

"If you believe in God and are right you get heaven. If you are wrong you get dirt.
If you don't believe in God and are right you get dirt.
If you don't believe in God and are wrong you get hell.

Clearly +EV to believe in God."

-Kathleenstand-

-this is what I mean and i just didn't want to retype it..sorry kathleenstand if you'd rather me not quote you

I used to believe the whole everything to gain and nothing to lose be believing in god, but one night I was talking to a christian friend an tried to give him the criteria I would use in deciding whether or not it was good odds to believe in god...

problems occurred when realizing that in order to believe in a specific god (the christian god in this example) you cannot get around haveing to place a better chance of that god existing and rewarding you if you believe in him than the chance that you would be punished for believing in a false deity.. well not really because you would also have to consider chances that there is a god that would reward you if you did not worship but punish you if you believed in a false god... well anyway It gets very confusing and made my brain hurt so i just went to sleep.

since this is a philosophy forum in poker forums, what better a place to discuss this. I'm sure most of you non-believers have thought about this before so..

what things you do need to consider in this evaluation?? I'm sure there are extraordinary amounts of them, but any that you have though of as important??

--if this has had been adressed before, sorry but nothing wrong with a fresh discussion

--i know that there's not much a reason to believe in god if you'ree doing it because of odds.. but let's try to ignor that

[/ QUOTE ]
rest your weary head, the odds dont matter [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

finite chance * infinite upside = finite chance * infinite downside whatever the relative magnitudes of the finite chances.

chez

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

oh yeah and exactly how does Pascal's Wager work it's way into this.. i don't think it changes the fact that you would have to put greater odds on one thing than another??

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

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oh yeah and exactly how does Pascal's Wager work it's way into this.. i don't think it changes the fact that you would have to put greater odds on one thing than another??

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The whole strength of Pascals wager is the infiniteness of the upside. Counter it with the infinite downside and its all over.

chez

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

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rest your weary head, the odds dont matter

finite chance * infinite upside = finite chance * infinite downside whatever the relative magnitudes of the finite chances.

chez

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that's good advice, but i'll probably be up until 5am becuase i woke up and 3 pm today, so how about humoring me.

you just need to post a little inclusion, not an elaborate evaluation... [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

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[ QUOTE ]
rest your weary head, the odds dont matter

finite chance * infinite upside = finite chance * infinite downside whatever the relative magnitudes of the finite chances.

chez

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that's good advice, but i'll probably be up until 5am becuase i woke up and 3 pm today, so how about humoring me.

you just need to post a little inclusion, not an elaborate evaluation... [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

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I dont quite understand your critisism but I'm sure its justified [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I plead tiredness of the sorry saga of Pascals wager, so my bad.

In the other live thread there on the old athiest/agnostic debacle again - no-one can hear my screams. There is a god and what's worse I'm in hell and he has my sense of humour.

chez

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
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rest your weary head, the odds dont matter

finite chance * infinite upside = finite chance * infinite downside whatever the relative magnitudes of the finite chances.

chez

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that's good advice, but i'll probably be up until 5am becuase i woke up and 3 pm today, so how about humoring me.

you just need to post a little inclusion, not an elaborate evaluation... [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

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I dont quite understand your critisism but I'm sure its justified [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I plead tiredness of the sorry saga of Pascals wager, so my bad.

In the other live thread there on the old athiest/agnostic debacle again - no-one can hear my screams. There is a god and what's worse I'm in hell and he has my sense of humour.

chez

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rest your weary head

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ditto (in my best Patrick Swazie voice)

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

Well if the christian god is the true god u can be a non believer and ask for forgiveness at the gates of heaven and be accepted. Remember the two convicts hanging with jesus one asked for forgiveness and was accpeted into the kingdom of god.

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

You'd get an even better payoff if you assume that you can live a life of hedonism and pure selfishness and that there is a divine being who will reward such behavior with eternal bliss.

The reality is that you don't have an EV problem because you have offered no reasonable way to estimate the probability of either of your possible scenarios of being actually true.

I think that thinking about God in EV terms is a pretty bad way to go about it, and I have to question how seriously Pascal took his wager (and how much it was just a tongue-in-cheek reply to critics). Of course, it would be more forgivable of an error on his part, as the theory of probability was just being formulated in a devleloped manner around that time.

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

First of all there is a god or supreame "thing" that we call god. If you dont belive in a something bigger than ourselfs you are backwards, everything did not come from nothing. Its your view of this god that is important and should be discovered by you alone. Religon is the aid to this type of thinking that most people dont do. Believeing in a religon is a headstart to realizing that we and everything else are significant in a very small way. Heaven was created by christianity and is ment to be a reward to living an honest life, which most people dont live. You should think for yourself what will happen in the afterlife and belive in that instead of heaven/hell. It would be shallow to decide to live falsely beliveing in a heaven created by god only because you want to be a part of heaven. Or trying to convince yourslef throughout your lifetime that there is a heaven, and living accordingly to what is said to get you in. Live the way you want believing in what you want and you will not have to live your life trying to believe in something someone else told you was true. I bet if since the beginning of christianity you were told to walk backwards every full moon to get into heaven everyone would be doing that instead of beliveing in their "god" or taking part in their religon. Find your own truths.... nothing in our world is certain anyways.

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

your born
your procreate
you become fertlizer

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

I think it is Tom Robbins in "Even Cowgirls Get The Blues" that has a character quoted as saying that humans were an invention of water to move itself around.

Better, I guess, that my unforgeteable teacher at my first year junior High school who was used to say that we were just ambulant tubes full of s**t.

[img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

Great quotes, and I agree with your teacher. In almost every sense, we're just big worms. Our body is built around a digestive tract that evolved a few appendages for land based movement and reproduction. Remove a few lobes of the brain and that's precisely what we are.

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

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Great quotes, and I agree with your teacher. In almost every sense, we're just big worms. Our body is built around a digestive tract that evolved a few appendages for land based movement and reproduction. Remove a few lobes of the brain and that's precisely what we are.

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Is it just you australians?

chez

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

chez,

Tom Robbins is a US writer. My teacher was belgian and, by the way, a very committed christian. Altough I believe he got fired from the school later beacuse his christianity was too left leaning for the taste of the authorities. But he was one of the few unforgetable teachers I was fortunate in having.

Regarding australians, well yes... but we are not racist here (altough it doesn't appear so from the current news), we think we are all the same regardless of our origins [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Cheers

MidGe

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

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chez,

Tom Robbins is a US writer. My teacher was belgian and, by the way, a very committed christian. Altough I believe he got fired from the school later beacuse his christianity was too left leaning for the taste of the authorities. But he was one of the few unforgetable teachers I was fortunate in having.

Regarding australians, well yes... but we are not racist here (altough it doesn't appear so from the current news), we think we are all the same regardless of our origins [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Cheers

MidGe

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and I was going to bet your teacher was a Pom. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

chez

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

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Is it just you australians? chez

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Anatomy 101 chez.

And midge...speak for yourself. I definitely believe some races and cultures are superior to others, and trying to include these apes and cavemen in civilized caucasian society is the worst idea we've ever had. But that's another thread (and forum).

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

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First of all there is a god or supreame "thing" that we call god. If you dont belive in a something bigger than ourselfs you are backwards, everything did not come from nothing.

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Stranger, you sound very intelligent - NOT.

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

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You'd get an even better payoff if you assume that you can live a life of hedonism and pure selfishness and that there is a divine being who will reward such behavior with eternal bliss.

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Good info here.

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

I think you need to do yourself some serious thinking, then you wont even begin to know what intellegent means.

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

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"If you believe in God and are right you get heaven. If you are wrong you get dirt.
If you don't believe in God and are right you get dirt.
If you don't believe in God and are wrong you get hell.

Clearly +EV to believe in God."

-Kathleenstand-

[/ QUOTE ]

If you believe in the Christian God and Islam happens to be the true word of the faith, I have one thing to say to you:

"Hello and Good Luck!"

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

Basing your belief in the (non)existance of God on EV will surely land you in the fiery pits of hell.

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

Sklansky says the odds against G-d are really bad. Sklansky knows his math and odds pretty damn well. Case closed.

Belief in God is -EV
 

[ QUOTE ]
this is just to elaborate on the following arguments

"If you believe in God and are right you get heaven. If you are wrong you get dirt.
If you don't believe in God and are right you get dirt.
If you don't believe in God and are wrong you get hell.

Clearly +EV to believe in God."


[/ QUOTE ]

I have thought about this for a long time, it's pascal's wager, right? If so, the Pascal is skewing the logic, IMHO. The question needs to address the value of life on earth with and without a god. Also, consider that just believing in God is usually not enough. The religions I am familiar with are very rigorous. Church one or more times a week and numerous examples of self-deprivation are necessary.

So...

If there is no God, then life on earth is all that you have, or it is of infinite value, in other words we would say without a god then life on earth has a value of +infinity. If there is a god, then your life on earth will be worth less, but still has value, although finite. We can refer to this value as "x". If there is no God, then your life after death is worth zero. If there is a god, then your life after death will be worth either +infinity (b/c you go to heaven) or -infinity (b/c) you go to hell.

No god.

Sacrafice portions of life and get no return. As we say our life is all we have we assign it a value of infinity. Now lets say we devote 1/15'th of our waking hours believing in god, and depriving ourselves of things. We lose -1/15infinity and get 0. Our net loss is -1/15infinity. Anyone know what 1/15 of +infinity is? I would say that:

1/15 of +infinity = +infinity. For instance if you walk forever, when will you get there? Never. When will you get half way there? Again, never. You will never get there so 1/2 of forever has to equal forever. What this means is that if we believe in god wrongly, the value we lose is infinite!

Now we accept that there is a god, a hell and a heaven.

To get to heaven, we spend (or lose) 1/15 of our waking hours believing and depriving (or lose -1/15x), and expect to receive heaven (+infinity). If we do not, then we gain 1/15x of waking time and receive hell (-infinity). Comparing the two means, that

-1/15x for +infinity; and

+1/15x for -infinity.

This means the choices we have are:

There is actually no god, but we choose to beleive just in case: we spend -infinity for a return of 0.

There is a god:

We either spend 1/15x for a return of +infinity, or we gain 1/15x for a return of -infinity.


With what I believe are the correct assumptions, belief in god has -EV if there is even the remotest of possibilities that god does not exist. This is because without a god, the value of life on earth is much greater than Pascal gave it credit for.

Re: Belief in God is -EV
 

I was more interested in other aspects of what would need to be considered that I had discussed in the original post, but this is indeed one small part of it i agree.

Even so, i think that there are flaws in your agrument.

(this is only applicable when considering a specific religion so Christianity will be considered for instance)

most people i think would not agree that value of time alive is +infinity especially when comparing that with the +infinity or -infinity of an eternity in heaven or hell.

also i would think that time spent at worship is probably more applicable when odds of a specific god existing are given then you're 1/15x is applied which i believe would only harm the odds for believing and practicing a specific religion. This is only true though if you consider value of life on earth as zero or x and not +infinite. otherwise it would be possible for it to negatively affect the odds against believing.

I would put the value at 0 or x (rather than +infinity), not quite sure which one, but is essentially inconsequential as you showed

this does have an impact on the odds but i think much less because of these reasons and certainly cannot purely give you a certain decision as i believe you meant by..

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With what I believe are the correct assumptions, belief in god has -EV if there is even the remotest of possibilities that god does not exist.

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I'm still curious as to the reason why i can't get around (or if u can get around) (or if you have to get around) what i said i had trouble with in the original post, but thank you for all of your input

Re: Belief in God is -EV
 

The Flaw in Pascal's Wager:
The possibility of a god that hates Christianity, and will punish you for eternity for believing in Christianity, making the cons of believing in God -infinity EV to counteract the +infinity EV you get from heaven.

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

It's not the a case of taking a gamble. If the claims of a religion in question ring true time and time again then it could be more favoured, right?

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

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It's not the a case of taking a gamble. If the claims of a religion in question ring true time and time again then it could be more favoured, right?

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I believe that the chances of a religion being true go far beyond the legitimacy of its claims and into the mathmatical and scientific probabilities that its foundations are possible.

all possible truths must be considered which does not seem good for any specific religion regardless of how many details that might hint at but not prove its foundation are verified as true or its position and acceptability in our world.

A religion could be more favored over another becuase of the quantity of its claims being proven true, but i don't believe that this would be a significant difference.

after considering all possibilities i think it's clear that no specific existing earthly religion can be placed at nearly high enough odds to give it serious consideration, but that's because i don't put high odds on christianity being true for example, as opposed to a more general belief.

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

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finite chance * infinite upside = finite chance * infinite downside whatever the relative magnitudes of the finite chances.


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Why do you view outcomes post-mortem as infinite ranges of numbers? Are they not singular outcomes, either a good or a bad?

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

which mathmatical and scientific probabilities are you refering to?

Don't look at an earthly religion then, don't look at the claims of Christianity if you've allready barred it as an option. What do you have to say about God, God to me is an obvious option and one thats foundations are not only possible but a neccessity for life to exist.

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

I don't know of all or even close to all of the scientific reasons that certain aspects of any religion are probably not true, but there are things that they claim that I know science would argue against being true.

I only mean that there are things about christianity all other earthly religions that are not proven to be possible. Any religion that includes an afterlife such as heaven where you thought process on earth is somehow duplicated or recreated and once again has a chance to develop, has no scientific proof that I know of that would make this possible. I'm not saying that it isn't possible, but from what i know, I don't place a high probablility on it being true. (of course I don't believe in the "soul" which i believe would be refuted by science). I don't know very much about specific scientific evidence agains a god's existence, at least to the extent that I would like to, and I don't claim to.

I do not dismiss christianity any more that any other specific religion, I would actaully place it at more likely to be true than most other known religions, but I don't give any specific religion significant odds

I would agree that a god existing is possible, but doubt that it is a necessity for life to exist. I don't think it can be viewed as a necessity for life to exist at our present knowledge of how the universe works, but it is certainly a possiblity.

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

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finite chance * infinite upside = finite chance * infinite downside whatever the relative magnitudes of the finite chances.


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Why do you view outcomes post-mortem as infinite ranges of numbers? Are they not singular outcomes, either a good or a bad?

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Pascals wager is based on the idea that the reward is infinite (eternal bliss) so to any finite objection such as god is very unlikely, Pascal can say that however unlikely god is its still a good bet to believe because of the infinite upside. Thats why no finite objection can overcome Pascals wager but the infinite downside destroys it.

chez

Re: The best odds for/against god
 

Hiya chez.. how's the holidays? [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: Belief in God is -EV
 

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The Flaw in Pascal's Wager:
The possibility of a god that hates Christianity, and will punish you for eternity for believing in Christianity, making the cons of believing in God -infinity EV to counteract the +infinity EV you get from heaven.

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Minor nitpick. Its the possibility of a god that hates christianity but wont condemn non-believers that is the flaw in Pascals wager.

chez