Pascal's Wage Reloaded.

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Given the possibility of hell and heaven, we should strive to find the truth and be sure and live a life trying to find God and his religion. The reason being hell is too much to risk and missing heaven too much to risk for temporary pleasures we would give up in this world. Say there is no true religion and we sought our whole lives to find it and strived to find the truth, the loss, is just some time in this world devoted to this quest. Yet, if we decided to ignore this and bet on hell and heaven not to exist and there not being consequences for our disbelief, and turns out there is, the consequences are too much.

Now he's not saying to trick yourself to believing as he has chapters just saying this is not what he means and explains what to do.

There is a complication in that, all sorts of religions can be true. I will modify it in that, everyone has to adapt their best to their ability to find truth. My tool kit will be different then Pascal's presentation of it (ie. hang around philosophers, etc)

Mine is as follows.

(1) Seek to to perfect your reading comprehension skills, take logic classes, learn to understand text, and learn how the mechanisms of how expressions work, etc, very important to contextualize, hyperbola, learn some statements as absolutes can be just majority, things like that.

(2) Read ALOT.

(3) Reflect over things yourself, try to come up with your own arguments, not just rely on others.

(4) Gives holy books many chances, try to solve their so called problems, and if some of them are unsolvable, keep searching a holy book out there without problems.

(5) Charitable reading, assume the best and never the worse.

(6) Tell yourself not to be stubborn and research really to find truth

(7) Don't follow what you don't know (if you mix falsehood with truth, knowledge of truth becomes hard since you believe in falsehood just as strong).

(8) Accept proofs when shown and search it, talk to people.

(9) Try to gain mystic experiences from all sorts of religions out there, heck even use the damn misguided Jinn if you need to get started to see truth!

(10) Devote your life to it and make it a priority, If you seek God, and don't find, you lose hardly anything if anything at all compared to losing out if he exists.

Lastly living a life like this, even no truth, no God, it's honorable to have searched and meaningful in itself. You may even have fun and meaning doing it. (I added this part to his argument)

 

[Altfish]

This is where Pascals argument fails

(4) Gives holy books many chances, try to solve their so called problems, and if some of them are unsolvable, keep searching a holy book out there without problems.

No matter how hard you search you might still find the wrong holy book.

(10) Devote your life to it and make it a priority, If you seek God, and don't find, you lose hardly anything if anything at all compared to losing out if he exists.

You do lose a very precious commodity - Time.
Time that you wasted seeking something that was not there.


Now I accept that people may enjoy the searching and exploring of religions, that's fine but many others, like me, can find more useful things to do

 

[ratiocinator]

There are so, so many problems and irrational assumptions in this, it's difficult to know where to start. Just a few points:-

1. Why do you pick out heaven, hell, and 'god' (singular) from all the world's superstitions to take seriously enough to devote time and effort to?
2. If there is a heaven and hell and a god that judges, and if it condemns people to hell just for not managing to find the true religion, that it has skilfully disguised as just another silly, human superstition, then it is obviously not just and fair, so why would I trust it or want its heaven even if it did exist?
   
3. Your balance of risks and benefits basically assumes that eternal life exists. I don't regard wasting my life trying to find a true religion amongst all the other human superstitions to be a small loss.

4. ...take logic classes...

   Given some of the 'proofs' you've come up with here, I suggest taking your own advice on this.

5. Lastly living a life like this, even no truth, no God, it's honorable to have searched and meaningful in itself.

   Not if all religions are, as they seem, just superstitions.
   
   

 

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But given the gamble, whatever time lost, is not worth forever time of pain and forever time of heaven. So you lose time, but it's worth the gamble and the right way to gamble.

 

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1. Why do you pick out heaven, hell, and 'god' (singular) from all the world's superstitions to take seriously enough to devote time and effort to

You don't believe it, you just take it as gamble tool because it's the realm of possibly being true for all you know, and it's not worth the risk not to strive to find the truth.

 

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1. Your balance of risks and benefits basically assumes that eternal life exists. I don't regard wasting my life trying to find a true religion amongst all the other human superstitions to be a small loss.

It is infinitely smaller loss compared to the other way, so that's the gamble. No matter what pains or loss we go through pleasure wise in this world (can be a lot), it's still better to exchange time of this world for the next, in case (forever is a long time).

 

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1. Not if all religions are, as they seem, just superstitions.

Even if they were, treating them as if one could be true, and taking the study seriously, is honorable in my eyes, even if turned out none of them were true.

 

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No matter how hard you search you might still find the wrong holy book.

Per this argument, you got to try hardest to build a toolkit to get the right book and truth, and try your best not to settle for a false religion you don't know is true. Biases make this complicated, but we should fight our biases no matter how painful.

 

[ratiocinator]

You don't believe it, you just take it as gamble tool because it's the realm of possibly being true...

So is the idea that there is a god who punishes those who believe in heaven and hell and try to find the truth in religions. This is equally as (un)likely as a god that requires it, so, even as a gamble, it fails. The cost of the search is real and the possible pay-off is just as likely to be bad as good.

 

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So is the idea that there is a god who punishes those who believe in heaven and hell and try to find the truth in religions. This is equally as (un)likely as a god that requires it, so, even as a gamble, it fails. The cost of the search is real and the possible pay-off is just as likely to be bad as good.

50/50 you would have to gamble God but even let's say, I say 99% chance no God and hell don't exist, 1% chance God and heaven and hell all exist, because of the time, the time being forever, the gamble still works in the favor of betting on God and seeking a life of searching for truth.

 

[ratiocinator]

Even if they were, treating them as if one could be true, and taking the study seriously, is honorable in my eyes...

Not in mine. You could be doing some real good instead.

 

[Altfish]

Per this argument, you got to try hardest to build a toolkit to get the right book and truth, and try your best not to settle for a false religion you don't know is true. Biases make this complicated, but we should fight our biases no matter how painful.

But there are thousands of religions, all claiming to be true, what is the chance of you choosing the right one?

 

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But there are thousands of religions, all claiming to be true, what is the chance of you choosing the right one?

Even if 0.1% from your viewpoint, you don't know, so it's not worth the risk not to try. Even travelling the earth in search in old times would be worth it.

 

[Altfish]

Even if 0.1% from your viewpoint, you don't know, so it's not worth the risk not to try. Even travelling the earth in search in old times would be worth it.

It is worth the risk.
Every week I could win the lottery, if I invest small sums in it. But I know the odds of me winning are miniscule, so I don't waste my money on it.

 

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It is worth the risk.
Every week I could win the lottery, if I invest small sums in it. But I know the odds of me winning are miniscule, so I don't waste my money on it.

Forever is a long time, it's not worth mathematically.

 

[ratiocinator]

50/50 you would have to gamble God but even let's say, I say 99% chance no God and hell don't exist, 1% chance God and heaven and hell all exist, because of the time, the time being forever, the gamble still works in the favor of betting on God and seeking a life of searching for truth.

You seem to have missed the point. It's just as (un)likely that any god that exists will punish you for spending your time searching for truth in religions, as reward you.

To exaggerate the possibility of god greatly, let's say it 99.99% chance of no god, then 0.005% that you'll get rewarded for this search for truth in religion and punished for not doing it, and another 0.005% that you'll get rewarded for doing something better with your life and punished for wasting it on superstition.

 

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You seem to have missed the point. It's just as (un)likely that any god that exists will punish you for spending your time searching for truth in religions, as reward you.

To exaggerate the possibility of god greatly, let's say it 99.99% chance of no god, then 0.005% that you'll get rewarded for this search for truth in religion and punished for not doing it, and another 0.005% that you'll get rewarded for doing something better with your life and punished for wasting it on superstition.

I didn't miss it. If you become 100% sure there is no hell and heaven, and God won't punish, it doesn't work. But 0.0000000000000000000001% let's say in your head, there might be a hell and heaven, then the argument because forever is a long time, mathematically shows, you should gamble on hell and heaven, and try to become sure of the truth.

 

[ratiocinator]

I didn't miss it. If you become 100% sure there is no hell and heaven, and God won't punish, it doesn't work. But 0.0000000000000000000001% let's say in your head, there might be a hell and heaven, then the argument because forever is a long time, mathematically shows, you should gamble on hell and heaven, and try to become sure of the truth.

You've still missed the point. There is exactly the same chance (no matter how small) that you'll go to hell for wasting your time searching for truth in superstition, as going to hell for ignoring the possibility.

 

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To exaggerate the possibility of god greatly, let's say it 99.99% chance of no god, then 0.005% that you'll get rewarded for this search for truth in religion and punished for not doing it, and another 0.005% that you'll get rewarded for doing something better with your life and punished for wasting it on superstition.

We have to find which of two scenarios are true in this case, but there is no reward either way, the Pascal's wager is that if you the truth and follow it, you might have gained heaven and negated hell if it turns out that is truth, while if you bet otherwise, you risked too much.

 

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You've still missed the point. There is exactly the same chance (no matter how small) that you'll go to hell for wasting your time searching for truth in superstition, as going to hell for ignoring the possibility.

So in this case, we have too use our toolkit and wager:

(1)Is it reasonable God will torture us forever for trying to find potentially what his guidance is on earth and he put none and get's wrathful at wasting time.
(2) Or more reasonable if God gave us guidance on earth and we ignored and didn't seek to find it, there is potential of God's wrath (at least this is plausible)

You have to take a leap of faith in this case, but I'm 100% sure myself one can't be true.