Pascal's Wager - Any Way to Live a Life

It sounds like you are expecting me to say "Wow, you took the words right out of my mouth."I allow you every curtesy to say how you would spend your one life or your hypothetical 100. As for me, I said, after experiencing belief in Christ I would not waste one on a life devoid of Jesus.Where is the lack of curtesy?I don't know if your particular exposure to Pascal's Wager like arguments involves hell fire. I don't remember that that was a particular part of the versions I have heard. Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

I don't think that the people you use this on need to be reassured of your lack of regret.Which then begs the question...just who are you trying to convince? That's all well and good until you encounter someone who can poke several holes in the "logic" of the wager.The wager is full of fallacies. Only someone unable to recognize the fallacies and agree with you based on fear of the Christian hell will fall for it.So, again...who are you trying to convince?It seems like an argument to try to convince oneself of their own rightness without having to think about it too hard. Which, if true, blows your argument of it not being for personal benefit out of the water, no?

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"You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician wrong--to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists in the realm of thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires. You do not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration." -The Iron Heel by Jack London"Hazards exist that are not marked" - some bar in Chelsea

jaywill responds to me:

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I allow you every curtesy to say how you would spend your one life or your hypothetical 100. As for me, I said, after experiencing belief in Christ I would not waste one on a life devoid of Jesus.

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But in the context of the wager, which you mentioned, this doesn't work. The only reason to bring it up is to convince someone else of the error of their ways.

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Where is the lack of curtesy?

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Spelling flame (yeah, I know): Courtesy. With an "o." "Curtesy" is just a couple more typos from "curtsey," which is a type of obeisance, and "cutesy," a describer of something coy and silly.But the lack of courtesy is the wager, itself. It exists for one reason: To convince someone else that he's wrong. If you think you're life is fine, then that's great. Nobody really asked you, but good for you.

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I don't know if your particular exposure to Pascal's Wager like arguments involves hell fire.

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(*blink!*)You did not just say that, did you? While the proposition that Pascal put directly forward doesn't mention damnation, it also only covers a few of the options:If god exists and you believe, you win everything.
If god doesn't exist and you believe, then you haven't lost anything.
If god doesn't exist and you don't believe, then you haven't lost anything.Hmmm...what if god exists and you don't believe? Well, Pascal is putting forth the wager specifically to encourage Catholicism. What do you think he would be saying? In the rest of Pensées, he makes points of saying that he isn't talking about belief in god in general but rather Christianity, Catholicism in specific. To pretend that Pascal wasn't aware of this and that it doesn't color the interpretation of the wager is to play dumb.Please don't play dumb.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

Me. I am trying to convince anyone I can because I am a gospel preacher.But I wish I were more so. Still a gospel preacher can be polite and allow the atheist to say that he doesn't want anything to do with the gospel.Why, I even come here to post because I pray and hope some reading person will say to himself "Maybe, tonight I will read a few chapters in the Bible for myself to see what is there."I'm overjoyed at that. That is part of my reward. I am very enthusiastic about the Gospel of Jesus. I was not born that way. At one time I was a flaming skeptical opposer of the Bible. I was into Zen Buddhism for awhile.Sometimes I can hardly believe that I actually believe the gospel. But the indwelling Holy Spirit has something to do with that.Am I rambling on ? Oh, all those philosophical reasons can usually be found to have a weakness somewhere. Then apologists do the same thing athiests do. They go back and revise a new version of the argument.Skeptics do the same thing. When weaknesses in their arguments are exposed they go back to the drawing board and improve their position. Over the years you began to see the evolution of these various arguments into different stages.That's why if you are into philosophhical debate you really have to pause and listen to what the other guy is saying. You may assume that they are using the older argument when they are using the new revized and improved version.This is true on both sides. For example:Old Version of of a classic argument:
1.) Everything that exists has a cause
2.) The universe exists
3.) Therefore the universe had a causeNewer Version
1.) Everything that begins to exist has a cause
2.) The universe began to exist
3.) Therefore the universe had a causeAnd of course some one eventually may find some weakness in the latter version. People have been at this debating for a long long time. Maybe it is has some fallacies. To every philosophy there is an equally strong and opposite philosophy. I don't expect that any person can be convinced of something against his will." A person convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still." I haven't been able to find anything of more precious worth and value than the Person of Jesus Christ.It took me a long while but eventually I came to the point that what I really needed was not a matter, thing, vibration, system, a philosophy, doctrine or force, but a living Person. And that is what Jesus is today - a living Person.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

The evidence is always subjective. When gathered with other believers, claims may be made that the evidence is objective, but in reality it appears that it is simply people confirming subjective evidence with each other. Communing only with like minded people appears to validate a preponderance of evidence, but in actuality it is a selective bias. This is why I prefer debating/discussing with people who do not believe as i do...since it always challenges me---even if the feeling is uncomfortable. This is a view that many here at EvC have. I suppose as long as one is doing ones best, there is no need for a Creator unless the Creator can help you better achieve your destiny or goal in life.

jaywill,re: " A person convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still."Why isn't that a contradictory statement?

Because a person "convinced" against his will isn't really convinced. He's only a professing believer, not an active believer.

ringo,
re: "...a person 'convinced' against his will isn't really convinced."Does that mean that a woman who gets pregnant against her will isn't really pregnant?According to the dictionary, to be convinced is to be free of doubt and to feel certain about the truth of an issue. If a person is said to be convinced, it doesn't matter how they came to hold the conviction . Either they are convinced or they are not. In the case of the jaywill quote, the first part says that they are convinced.

Pregnancy is not a belief. That's why I put "convinced" in quotes. A person can claim to be convinced while not actually being free of doubt. People who profess a belief (or recant a belief) under duress are not expressing their true beliefs.

ringo,re: "That's why I put 'convinced' in quotes."Jaywill's quote didn't have quotation marks around convinced.

I put them there to clarify. jaywill and I seldom agree on anything but I think he'd agree with my explanation.

I'm pretty sure that's false.Let's say that I will that I am agnostic. I do not want evidence one way or another.But then God pays me a visit and presents me with proof of his existence. However, I suspect I've gone crazy or enter some other state of wilful denial, trying to retain my agnosticism.Against my will, however, I am convinced that God exists.How can you say that I am not really convinced by am only a 'professing believer'?I know, Pascal's wager is qualitatively or even categorically different. You could argue that my will was ultimately to accept the evidence, but sometimes there really isn't any sense of conscious choice. 'Seeing is believing' and all that. If someone tells me the football scores for a game I have on TiVo for tonight, I can really try and persuade myself they were trolling me, but it seems that isn't the reaction I and others tend to have. We are 'convinced' against 'our will' of the outcome of the game, and feel like it is almost pointless to watch it, knowing the end result as we do.But Pascal's wager is an argument from pragmatism, rather than an empirical situation. Indeed, that was just the general principle in clear terms.One interpretation of religious belief is that it is a lie others tell you so often you start to tell it to yourself so often that you just simply come to believe it. That is, religion as a natural phenomenon. Pascal's Wager could potentially weigh on the heart of a simpleton who engaged in violent criminal acts that acting along with other cultural reinforcers can result in a non-believer becoming a believer.This would be against his will from the perspective of his pre-PW self, but at the end he's probably using volition to believe. This was Pascal's view (sort of): that by acting as if one believed or in 'professing belief' one could become a believer.It's kind of a tactic to workaround your own will.

Have you ever used an argument based on Pascal's wager in an attempt to persuade a non-believer, or even a person who you felt was ready to believe? If so, what was the result?As a Christian, the argument appears to me to be complete nonsense and likely to be a complete turnoff. I know that I could not present it with a straight face.If in fact, Christians are not motivated by such arguments, and you seem to be saying that, then how can your goal be to win converts with such an argument? Would that person then become the first Christian ever who was motivated by the argument?

I don't think that's a case of being convinced against your will. I think it's a case of not knowing what your will is. How can you say you are convinced when you're trying not to be?

The whole point is your will. Your decision to believe. Some folks would rather willfully not believe because they are unconvinced that if God existed He cared. (Deaths in family, sicknesses, and unanswered prayers)The very act of asserting your will is in fact your decision. Its normal to be of two minds before the decision to embrace belief.Some folks are angry or hurt and even if God existed they would see no reason to acknowledge Him.