The Failings of Pascal's Wager: Nothing to Lose

We're continuing to enumerate the holes in the infamous Pascal's Wager argument for the belief in a god or gods. We've already looked at how Pascal's Wager assumes you can just make yourself believe in order to be right, and we've talked about how it overlooks the fact that it can count as an argument for any religion or claim that one could make. Remember, the Wager basically is: If God does not exist, then you neither gain nor lose anything from belief or disbelief (in the end you just die and that's that). However, if you choose to believe in my God/religion and you are right, then the reward is eternal Heaven. But if you choose not to believe and are wrong, your payoff is eternal suffering in Hell.

The bottom line essentially is that you've got nothing to lose! You're better off taking the bet that my God is real. But are you, really?

Won't Cost You A Thing!
In the case where God does not exist, there really is a clear advantage to not believing. In other words, the payoff is not zero as Pascal would have you think. After you say, "okay now I believe," what would it really cost you to believe or join a religion?

• a lifetime spent obeying the rituals and practices
• money and time given to furthering the dogmatic doctrines thereof
• having to deal with the trials, persecutions, and lifestyles associated with being a member (this means separation or altering connections with family members present and future)
  
• the corruption or otherwise altering of your mind, and hindering your education to "fit in line" with the practices and beliefs of your religion
  

...the list goes on and on. In any case, it most certainly does not "cost nothing" to "just believe".

I base all my beliefs on evidence and reason. I tend to believe in as little as possible, only accepting things based on sound evidence. If there's no reason to believe then I'm not going to just "accept" it, and I'm not going to let other people decided what I believe.

Still more Wager fallacies to come.


-STA

The Failings of Pascal's Wager: Which Belief?

There are many counter-arguments that show the fallacies of Pascal's Wager, and we continue on with one of the most glaring holes in the argument: which religion should I pick?

So Many Choices
If you accept the Wager for the existence of God, the question is then becomes what "God" should you accept? Remember, Blaise Pascal used the argument to justify his Catholic religion (and argue that others should be Catholics too). Does that mean that only the Catholic religion is the "right" one? If the premise is "why not believe", then why not believe in Zeus, or the religion of Islam? If its better to believe so that you won't suffer the ill effects of not believing, consider this:

What if right now there's a squadron of fire-breathing dragons flying at warp-speed straight toward us, bent on destroying the earth. They'll spare the earth only if enough people believe that they can recite the alphabet backwards while humming "Clementine". Is it not better then, to believe in the dragons (and their talents) in order to be spared the destruction of the earth? We have everything to lose if we don't believe!

If You Choose Not To Decide...
This argument is often phrased as: "What if you're wrong?" Since many Fundamentalists Christians believe that Catholics are going to go to Hell, Pascal's not much better off than an unbeliever. We don't know which religion -- if any -- is "correct", so it seems that the best wager would be to choose the religion with the worst punishment for non-belief and the best reward for belief.

I choose "none".

More problems with the Wager coming soon!


-STA

The Failings of Pascal's Wager: Just Believe

I recently watched the debate between Dinesh D'Souza and Dan Dennett. Dinesh played just about every theist card in the deck. He even used Pascal's Wager, a tactic that has so many flaws, I've decided to write a series about it.

Blaise Pascal, a 17th-century philosopher and mathematician, made contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, helped create the studies of projective geometry and probability theory, and strongly influenced the development of modern economics and social science. His namesake is also shared by a programming language.

Then he had a "mystical experience" and he abandoned his scientific work and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. It was during this time that he formulated "the Wager". Based on a probabilistic argument, it goes something like this:

God might or might not exist. It is a gamble whether you believe in him or not. If God does not exist, then you neither gain nor lose anything from belief or disbelief. In either case, you just die and that's the end. However, if you choose to believe in God, and you are right, then the reward is infinite — eternal bliss in heaven. On the other hand, if you choose not to believe in God, and you're right, you gain nothing. But if you are wrong, your payoff is negative infinity — eternal suffering in hell.

A lot of Pascal's contemporaries were happy with this wager -- which Pascal himself used to defend his Catholicism. However, there are numerous flaws with the argument, the first of which I will address here and now.

Read the wager again and pay attention to this predication: "if you choose to believe..."

Can you choose to believe something? I don't think so. The way I see it, we believe something whenever we are convinced of it. I for one can't "just start believing" in Santa Claus. Can you? Can you honestly believe in such a thing, truly and completely? Of course not! You can't make yourself believe anything that you haven't been convinced of - belief isn't subject to the will. Therefore simply "choosing to believe in God" is an impossibility, and the wager can't work.

I know this seems a simple counter-argument, but you'll see in this series that a lot of the flaws in Pascal's Wager are simple to point out.


-STA

A Hypocritical Atheist?

I was recently asked the absurd question: isn't it hypocritical to enjoy supernatural things if you're an atheist? Of course not! People can like anything, regardless of their position on religious ideas. It's even possible to enjoy religious ideas! Believing in them and liking them aren't the same thing.

Walk Like an Egyptian
Here's a list of things I enjoy, despite my attitudes toward theism:

• I cover the song "Last Kiss"
• I love Collective Soul
• the Sistine Chapel is breathtaking, even in photographs
• Christian radio programs make me laugh
  
• I dabble in close-up magic
  
• I play Magic: The Gathering
• I say "oh my god", "oh god", "god damn it", and sometimes even "bless you"
• Signs scared the shit out of me
  
• some of my favorite people are theists
  
• I read fantasy stories (including the Bible)
  
• I regularly watch TV series like The X-Files, Reaper, and Supernatural
• Amazing Grace, if done well, can move me to tears

I do all kinds of things that might seem hypocritical -- I practice science...WTF am I doing playing "Magic"?! It's only hypocritical if I believe that "magic" is real. Religious art, music, and customs can be appreciated at face value without the need for their belief. I don't have to think the Devil is real to enjoy a bad-ass rendering of him. We can sing "Santa Claus is coming to town" without actually believing it!

Fallacy Friday: Argument From Authority

It's been a while since we had a Fallacy Friday, so let's start this Friday off with the argument from authority, or as they say in the Latin: argumentum ad verecundiam.


Respec Mah Authoritah!
Often times when arguing about something that can't be answered by observation or calculation, one might feel the need to appeal to an authority. This authority may or may not even be an expert in the field of that of the argument. A good example of this is when people quote Einstein's opinions about politics as though he were a political philosopher rather than a physicist.

At least in some forms of debate, quoting various sources to support one's position is not just acceptable but often mandatory. But one should only rely on authorities whose expertise relates to the question at hand, especially with regard to questions of fact. Saying, "Albert Einstein believed in God....are you saying that Einstein was wrong?" is committing a fallacy. It doesn't matter what Einstein said about God, politics, or anything else. He's a expert in the realm of physics.


Lemme Do It...I'm The Expert
It's necessary to distinguish between an authority and an expert. If a famous astronomer says that the universe is expanding, then it is very likely that the universe really is expanding. If a qualified doctor says that a patient is suffering from Parkinson's disease, that's most likely the case. In these examples, the astronomer and the doctor are experts in a field, and are addressing topics within their area of expertise. As experts, they have studied their respective fields, are familiar with the state of the art, have studied how to recognize certain events, features or conditions, know how to recognize many problems that might lead a layman astray and how to work around them, and so forth. When we take an expert's word for something, we are saying in effect that if we had the time to learn as much about the field as the expert has, we would be able to examine the evidence and reach the same conclusion.

On the other hand, if the Pope says, ex cathedra, that contraception is a sin, then that's true as well. In this case, the Pope is an authority in matters of sin: it is his job to determine what is and isn't a sin in the Catholic church. In a very real sense, contraception is a sin not because it is intrinsically bad, or even because it contradicts the Bible in some way, or even that "sin" is a real concept, but merely because the Pope has declared it to be so.


Well, You Know What They Say...
In science, there are experts but no authorities. Again, saying that a qualified physicist thinks the universe is expanding is fine, but saying that the President thinks that stem-cell research is of the devil is not. It's only a fallacy if it relies on an unqualified source for information about facts without other qualified sources of verification, or if it implies that some policy must be right simply because so-and-so thought so.



-STA