You must wager..

[pinkputter]

Suppose you hear reports that your house is on fire and your children are inside. You do not know whether the reports are true or false. What is the reasonable thing to do—to ignore them or to take the time to run home or at least phone home just in case the reports are true?
Suppose a winning sweepstakes ticket is worth a million dollars, and there are only two tickets left. You know that one of them is the winning ticket, while the other is worth nothing, and you are allowed to buy only one of the two tickets, at random. Would it be a good investment to spend a dollar on the good chance of winning a million?
No reasonable person can be or ever is in doubt in such cases. But deciding whether to believe in God is a case like these, argues Pascal. It is therefore the height of folly not to "bet" on God, even if you have no certainty, no proof, no guarantee that your bet will win.
-excerpt from Peter Kreeft

Atheists often wonder, well, why do Christians believe what they do? What "proof" do you have? Why should I trust something as elusive as God?

Well, my question for you is, why not?

Many of you have disclosed that you see relevance in Jesus as a moral teacher. Many of you say you follow his teachings, but don't acknowledge his Divinity. Well, why not? If you see his teachings as valuable, and you must wager, with such odds as the ones described above...why would you choose the doubt side...risking something as valuable as eternal life...than a life of pursuing Christ and his presence?

 

[leftrightleftrightleft]

To me a wager involves a finite set of options in which you can actually calculate, to some degree of accuracy, the numerical probability of any one of the items in the set being the desired outcome.

If you told me to pick a number without giving me the set of numbers from which I could choose and then asked me how much I would wager that I had picked the correct number, I would have no way of knowing the probability of being correct and therefore be inclined not to make the wager at all.

There is no "fifty-fifty" chance of being correct about the Christian doctrine. Its completely non-numerical. So there's no rational basis for wagering anything.

Also, the two examples given in the OP are quite totally different than belief in a religious doctrine. A phone call to make sure your house is not burning down takes about 8 seconds to do; changing your religious beliefs may take years of removing biases due to culture, upbringing and state of mind. Similarly, buying a ticket for a dollar when you have a clear 50-50 chance seems quite a simple task in which you know your chance of being correct is 50%. There is no such numerical basis when choosing a religion or worldview. Even if you set it up so it appears Boolean (God or no God, 1 or 0), that still doesn't mean that your chances are 50% of being right. There just isn't any numerical basis to the whole argument.

Pascal's wager has never made any sense to me because its a blatant use of the logical fallacy known as false dilemma

 

[pinkputter]

hold on

 

[razeontherock]

I agree. If a person is struggling with weak Faith, Paschal's wager might be the only shred they can hang onto. As a noble effort, G-d seems to honor our best efforts. There are certainly times we all need to 'tie a knot in the end of our rope and hang on,' but I certainly wouldn't support a preacher who was preaching this wager.

This seems to be a much more sure word:

Mattew 6:22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

 

[mulimulix]

Suppose you hear reports that your house is on fire and your children are inside. You do not know whether the reports are true or false. What is the reasonable thing to do—to ignore them or to take the time to run home or at least phone home just in case the reports are true?
Suppose a winning sweepstakes ticket is worth a million dollars, and there are only two tickets left. You know that one of them is the winning ticket, while the other is worth nothing, and you are allowed to buy only one of the two tickets, at random. Would it be a good investment to spend a dollar on the good chance of winning a million?
No reasonable person can be or ever is in doubt in such cases. But deciding whether to believe in God is a case like these, argues Pascal. It is therefore the height of folly not to "bet" on God, even if you have no certainty, no proof, no guarantee that your bet will win.
-excerpt from Peter Kreeft

Atheists often wonder, well, why do Christians believe what they do? What "proof" do you have? Why should I trust something as elusive as God?

Well, my question for you is, why not?

Many of you have disclosed that you see relevance in Jesus as a moral teacher. Many of you say you follow his teachings, but don't acknowledge his Divinity. Well, why not? If you see his teachings as valuable, and you must wager, with such odds as the ones described above...why would you choose the doubt side...risking something as valuable as eternal life...than a life of pursuing Christ and his presence?

Oh, no. Not Pascal's Wager. Pascal's Wager does not work in religion for many reasons. I'll name some briefly:

1. Which god am I supposed to 'Take a chance' with? Why the Christian god? There have been millions of god, so am I supposed to do it with all of them?

2. If there is a 0.001% chance that I am wrong and Christianity is correct (which I think is likely), then you're saying I should risk it and just believe. Let's take that to everyday life. Why would I go out and drive somewhere? I'll probably get to my destination okay, but there's a much greater chance I will die by leaving the house than not.

3. If I was to believe in god ONLY because of fear I might be wrong, then god would obviously know this and send me to hell anyway. I would be in denial because I wouldn't really believe in him, but I am pretending to, to give me false hope that I am alright in the next life...WHICH I WOULDN'T BE!

4. I think Pascal's Wager works in the opposite way, in this case. You say that if I am wrong, I have wasted my afterlife. But I say, if you are wrong, and I am right, you have wasted a considerable amount of time worshiping something which does not exist and believing that your next life will be better than this one and, as a result, you haven't lived your ONLY life to the fullest. So, if I am wrong, at least half of my lived were lived to the fullest. Whereas if you are wrong, your ONLY life was wasted.

Read this: Pascal's wager - RationalWiki

 

[pinkputter]

I agree. If a person is struggling with weak Faith, Paschal's wager might be the only shred they can hang onto. As a noble effort, G-d seems to honor our best efforts. There are certainly times we all need to 'tie a knot in the end of our rope and hang on,' but I certainly wouldn't support a preacher who was preaching this wager.

This seems to be a much more sure word:

Mattew 6:22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

I will respond to other posts later. But wanted to respond to this because you have to know I brought up Pascal's wager for unbelievers, not "people of weak Faith" as you mentioned.? just checking.

 

[sabercroft]

Because if such a wager is the best argument Christians can come up with to convince the atheists, you know the Christians are really scraping the bottom of the excuse barrel there.

 

[mulimulix]

Because if such a wager is the best argument Christians can come up with to convince the atheists, you know the Christians are really scraping the bottom of the excuse barrel there.

 

[humblehumility]

"What if I'm wrong" is probably the most undignified reason to hold religious belief.

Also for a couple reasons listed above, mainly that the comparisons are not even close to being on the same level. You can't just "believe in God" and instantly put all of your reason into a completely different worldview. In theory it's easy enough, but in theory all you have to do is say "I accept Jesus as my savior" and you're granted eternal paradise. Bullocks.

 

[pinkputter]

Because if such a wager is the best argument Christians can come up with to convince the atheists, you know the Christians are really scraping the bottom of the excuse barrel there.

give thought to my posts or don't post at all.

 

[pinkputter]

Maybe you should respond to MY post

I will tomorrow. sleepy time. Good night doubters! I shall address the doubts manana!

 

[humblehumility]

I will tomorrow. sleepy time. Good night doubters! I shall address the doubts manana!

Do you not understand that doubt is what leads us to discovery, growth, and progress?

 

[pinkputter]

Do you not understand that doubt is what leads us to discovery, growth, and progress?

Yes, I do. But doubt in and of itself is not good. It's good if you are actually seeking. Peace~

 

[pinkputter]

Then why aren't you putting forward the other arguments? Why not come up with the strongest argument you have? Or do you believe that this wager is your strongest argument?

It's the strongest and weakest. Look, either accept the argument or not. Don't waste peoples time on this thread

 

[humblehumility]

Yes, I do. But doubt in and of itself is not good.

Helloooooo contradiction.

 

[sabercroft]

Yes, I do. But doubt in and of itself is not good. It's good if you are actually seeking. Peace~

Really? And how would you define "seeking"?

I'm just being a mean, judgmental atheist for inferring that you think doubt is only good if it leads people to seek the pre-determined conclusion that is your religion, otherwise it's bad, right?

 

[pinkputter]

What if you found the love of your life. Let's just say you believe in pre-destination and it was possible to know that it was indeed the love of your life (in the same way that we can hypothetically prove God). But what if when you met her you were not open to loving her? That wouldn't go over so well, would it?

 

[humblehumility]

What if you found the love of your life. Let's just say you believe in pre-destination and it was possible to know that it was indeed the love of your life (in the same way that we can hypothetically prove God). But what if when you met her you were not open to loving her? That wouldn't go over so well, would it?

Meh, being honest you aren't going to garner much respect from any atheist by ignoring the topic of discussion entirely. You're resorting back to the same thing you did with your original post...asking unrelated questions.

"Let's just say you believe in pre-destination"...you just lost literally every atheist with that sentence. No atheist believes in pre-destination.

Moreso, your argument doesn't even make sense. Why would you not be open to loving someone you know is destined to be the love of your life? Yet another contradiction.

 

[pinkputter]

Well, some of us have church in the morning. Be on after that!

 

[humblehumility]

Oh, kind of like the way other atheists have ignored the entire point of this thread? I don't need you to tell me how to "gain respect." I so need lessons from you on how to do that...tell me that part about not humoring me with the whole pre-desination thing? You know I have a point. Maybe you should actually think about the point I've made.

Well, some of us have church in the morning. Be on after that!

The point you've made was a contradiction, I addressed that in the last part of my previous post.

You cannot know something and doubt it at the same time. Knowing implies certainty. Doubt is uncertainty.

What you did was attempt to dodge your first contradiction: that doubt is what leads to growth and progress but is also bad.

Either way, whenever you have the time it'd be nice if you'd address either contradiction and not start up a new topic.