Pascal's wager as a decision problem

After clearing (or avoiding) a few hurdles, I use statistical reasoning and decision problems to study Pascal's wager. When doing so, I discover that there is no reason for updating one's belief after encountering said wager, and that it can not function as a rational argument for believing in God.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• pascal's
• wager
• decision
• bayesian
• statistics
• risk
• minimizing
• loss
• christianity
• christian
• islam

[CogitoErgoCogitoSum]

@trondreitan I didnt say that you did try to debunk Christianity. Is that all you got out of my words? I said "IF" you want to. It was a conditional. Logician my butt. You are self-admitted atheist who is trying to debunk one argument? Right. I have never met such an unbiased atheist. In fact, I have never met an atheist that refrained from preaching. But okay, if your intent is not ultimately to debunk religion, then fine. I guess I misinterpreted you. But I think my *assumption* is right.

[trondreitan]

@CogitoErgoCogitoSum I did not set out to debunk Christianity in this video. I set out to debunk Pascal's wager. Read the title!

[trondreitan]

@CogitoErgoCogitoSum So did I. If rationality would have led me to think that Pascal's wager is correct, then that's what I would have said. I explicitely stated in my video that I assumed the possibility that Christinaity was correct, but showed, using rationality that Pascal's wager did nothing to improve the odds and thus could not result in rational belief.

[trondreitan]

@CogitoErgoCogitoSum I'm not using atheism to debunk Pascal's wager, I'm using rational reasoning. Now, I did not say that Christianity contradicts rationality, but it seems to be what you are saying here.

[trondreitan]

@CogitoErgoCogitoSum I'm not holding one ideology against another, unless you call rationality an ideology. But it's not, it's a method for reaching a conclusion. The oppposide is to jump to conclusions without evidence.

[trondreitan]

@CogitoErgoCogitoSum I didn't say you made circular arguments. I said Pascal's wager makes circular arguments. As for your assumption that I'm being circular, I do not see your support for that claim. Circularity is to start with an assumption and end up with the same assumption. I didn't say "christianity is false because christianity is false". What I've done is to start out as a Christian, looked at the evidence and ended up as an atheist.

[trondreitan]

@trondreitan Mentioning morality in the context of Pascal's wager seems self-defeating. The core of Pascal's wager is the "infinite rewards for believers, infinite punishment for unbelievers" setup. As far as I know, this is the most immoral, arbitrary, cruel and implausible piece of theology found in *any* religion. (Only matched by Islam's similar claim, which may very well have been copied from Christianity.)

[trondreitan]

@CogitoErgoCogitoSum My argument was that Pascals wager isn't rational (as it pretends to be) and it seems you are now ready to concede that. If you want to argue from something else than rationality, fine. But do not call it reasoning unless it's rational and do not expect anyone else to be convinced.

[CogitoErgoCogitoSum]

@CogitoErgoCogitoSum

Any logical system can be self-consistent (including science) without necessarily being right. Are you aware of this? One system contradicts another - it only proves that one of them is wrong.

The fallacy you are guilty of is you jump to a particular conclusion about the options: defaulting to atheism.

[CogitoErgoCogitoSum]

@CogitoErgoCogitoSum You cannot, in good reason, hold one ideology to the standards of another... not without holding up one as the standard, presupposed it to be being (a greater) right by default.

If you want to debunk a religion, you must do it from within the ideologies standards by finding an inconsistency within it.