Pascal's Wager and Free Bets

[PrayingMantis]

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So even if you think there is no way that the God of Christianity or another major religion exists, you still don't have to mock Him.

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I'm not sure if you refer to me too, but in any case, I certainly understand why a religious person can get offended by someone mocking god in his presence. However, this is not a "religious board". I would never dream of posting something that mocks god on a "religious board". Elsewhere, here included, I find it very natural for me (or others) to state their honest opinion about god and the idea of god or gods or religion in general. As far as I'm concerned (I know it is different with others) I don't find it particularly interesting or fruitful to "criticize" religion. But mocking religion or god is a different thing, and in a way, I feel that there's even some sort of obligation to mock god in particular and gods in gerenal.

Honestly, I can't see how you can be seriously offended or bothered by atheists mocking or despising god, in 2005. God was killed so long ago, by so many, mocking him now is in a way getting him back to life. You should be glad.

Regarding the "free bets":

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Good gamblers don't pass up free bets no matter how long the odds, especially when the potential payoff is huge.

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I think this whole perspective is completely illusory. This is my opinion. I have no problem with you or any other keeping to this illusion, if it makes you feel good. FWIW, I have many private illusions myself, but I am not trying to convince you that my illusions should apply to you as well.

This has nothing to do with being a good gambler. From my perspective, a good gambler doesn't waste big parts of his life on illusionary "long shots". Your talk about "being given a free lottery ticket" is gibberish to me. I have nothing to say for it or against it. For all I know, it's a "free ticket" to a lottery that exists only in your (and others') mind. Mocking this imagined lottery is a very natural thing to do.

[IronUnkind]

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God was killed so long ago, by so many, mocking him now is in a way getting him back to life. You should be glad.

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This logic can also be applied to corpse-raping.

[J. Stew]

I don't think you can hedge your bets in order to see heaven. Either you know what's up or you don't. Intellectual inquiry can point the way towards no intellectual inquiry or it can lead to more thinking. Either way, seeing is seeing and thinking is thinking. You can't see heaven if you think you see it, you'll be thinking.

[David Sklansky]

"So even if you think there is no way that the God of Christianity or another major religion exists, you still don't have to mock Him. And if you say something along the lines of, "I'd rather burn in hell than believe in a god who would punish people in hell", then you just might get your druthers."

These are two very different things. I agree with the first sentence. But the quote in the second sentence, while an obvious exaggeration, is a legitmate philosophical stance that could conceivably even please God.

[bearly]

this is just 1 of several posts on this subject, still, noone has given any cogent reason why this should be considered a 'wager'. we can do this kind of wagering about anything-----i should be nice to my neighbor because he may have 100,000 in his will for me. that is, i shall wager that he has 100,000 designated for me and follow thru on my part and be nice. the wager argument viz a viz god is trivially circular: to make the wager on the existence of god a true wager you already have to believe in his existence. if you don't then the process is something like the "as-ifing" in scientology, the 'believing makes it so' of our grandmas, and most anything said by peter pan or michael jackson. after all, we can play silly word-games about most anything...............b

Recently I've been wasting a lot of time reading long posts that only really have one or two lines of content. So I bit the bullet and finally purchased VelcroSoft PostSummarizer(TM) software. I ran your post through it, and it gave me the following:

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-------------Summary of Post No. 3988935-------------------
<font color="white">.</font>
Warning: Don't mock God, you'll end up in hell

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It's paying for itself already.

[David Sklansky]

"Now this does not mean I think that respect and consideration should be accorded to every religious system, because I don't. If one of the super super longshots like one of the wacko personality cults or scientology comes in, then I am screwed for sure because I have in the past and will continue to mock such systems based upon the most preposterous of premises."

Let me weigh in here as well. I have already stated that it is impolite to mock beliefs people hold dear. However you yourself don't agree. Mocking Scientology etc. is OK in your book because it is "preposterous".

By that statement you imply that even atheists realize that the major religions are not preposterous. And that, for the most part is just wrong. Some might feel this way. And many atheists and agnostics would agree that cults are even more preposterous than specific religions. They also might admit that some sort of being created the universe. But after all is said and done, most agnostics, including me, think that any specific religion is RIDICULOUSLY UNLIKELY. Certainly unlikely enough to deserve mocking if Scientology deserves it.

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But after all is said and done, most agnostics, including me, think that any specific religion is RIDICULOUSLY UNLIKELY. Certainly unlikely enough to deserve mocking if Scientology deserves it.

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This is even more true when Christianity is the religion being discussed. People forget that its core beliefs are as absurd as Scientology. I'll list a few Catholic beliefs:

1. There is an invisible man who created and has power over the entire universe. He gave humans one life on Earth, after which time will be sent to a place of wonder and happiness for eternity. However, he has a list of things he doesn't want you to do. If you do these things without asking forgiveness, you will end up in a place of torture and suffering for the rest of eternity. If you make fun of him, you will also end up in this place.

2. Two thousand years ago, God impregnated a human virgin so that he could have a son. This man grew up to be a prophet. In his life he walked on water, turned water in wine, instantly healed diseases. He was nailed to a cross, allowed himself to die, and three days later rose from the dead. Because of this, people can now go to that place of wonder and happiness.

3. You can perform a ritual whereby rice crackers and fermented grape juice turn into the ACTUAL - THE ACTUAL - meat and blood of that guy who lived 2000 years ago. You can then eat this and be brought closer to the invisible man.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transubstantiation

Looking at this objectively, people who believe these things sound like nutcases, or at least slightly mentally challenged. Can anybody reasonably say otherwise? How are these beliefs fundamentally different from Scientology's (not their practices, the actual beliefs themselves).

[IronUnkind]

Does your apartment smell of rich mahogany?

[BluffTHIS!]

David, I realize how unlikely you find christianity or the other major religions, a probability compared to 100% that isn't that much bigger than that for scientology in absolute terms. But copared to each other, christianity to scientology, christianity is at least several orders of magnitude a larger probability. We at least have some, if not to non-believers' minds, sufficient, evidence. Where is the least evidence for the the souls of those killed by Xenu the evil galactic ruler millions of years ago inhabiting us?

Also, I shouldn't have included not mocking as being considerate of the views of others, because that is not the point of my post, which relates such mocking to the consequences from God if such a wager would otherwise win for a person but for that mocking. I am not in the least thin skinned and am never upset when someone derides my views. Nor even when they deride God, though that does make me sad for them.