The Atheist's Book of Bible Stories - Ch. 21 - Pascal Got It Wrong

by RunningMan 12 Replies latest watchtower bible

  • civil protection
    civil protection

    Running man,

    Maybe it doesn't matter ultimately if you believe in God or not. The fallacy of Pascal is to assume that it does. You have brought this to light. Check this out though, there are other potential wagers.

    IF Pascal is right this opens the door to new wagers. If you decide to decline Pascal's wager and recieve nothing because you had no faith those that did have faith recieve reward. Lets assume that the faithful can get what they want, like maybe even mercy on the unfaithful. So the new wager consists of the probability and the opportunity cost of either befrending the faithful who could potentially help you later on or just making fun of them.

    Don't worship Spiderman. He is a dork that got bitten by a mutant spider, nothing special.

  • Pole
    Pole

    Actually I see Pascal's Wager as an extension of the gambling problem which he spent some energy trying to solve. In his letters to Fermat they tried to come up with a fair way of dividing stakes between gamblers where one gambler had just one more chance (dice throw, etc.) than the other.

    After a few months of exchanging these interesting epistles Pascal got very religious, joined an order and gave up maths altogether. IMO he then erroneously applied his mathematical genius to "solving" theological problems. How can the Absolute be probailistic? It denies its definition.

    Pole

  • RunningMan
    RunningMan

    It appears that I may need to do hands-on research on this virgin problem.

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