If the stakes of a belief are high, you should take arguments regarding that belief seriously. — Empedocles
If the stakes of a belief are high, you should take arguments regarding that belief seriously.
The stakes of belief in the existence of God are about as high as they could be (i.e. you could spend eternity in heaven or hell).
Therefore, we should take arguments for the existence of God seriously. (1,2 MP) — Empedocles
I think you're right. Maybe if I qualified premise 1 to say something like, "If the stakes of a belief are high and credible, then you should take arguments regarding that belief seriously" then it might work? I think it's pretty intuitive that stakes play an important role in how highly we prioritize something (e.g. I am more nervous for a piano recital than a practice session, I run faster if I'm being chased by a bear, I work harder when my boss is around, etc...), so I'm hesitant to throw that idea out. — Empedocles
"Even if the stakes are high, we have no way of knowing what will happen/what the consequences will be"
And I'm taking that to be an objection to my premise 1. I guess what I would say to that is it seems premature to conclude we have no way of knowing the consequences. It still seems to me that the stakes are high enough to warrant really exploring arguments for and against God's existence, and even if we've done our best and haven't discovered the answer, it seems we can't just conclude we're incapable of knowing it (we just haven't discovered it yet). When you say we have no idea what would lead to our ending up in heaven or hell, i can't really agree until I've explored all the ways I think I might be able to know what God values. Does that make sense? — Empedocles
Yes, making the threat credible would help, but that means that the claim no longer justifies itself — SophistiCat
I always thought the most powerful thing about Pascal's wager was as an argument against agnosticism.
His proposition that we are already embarked on the journey and we must play. The coin will stop spinning and we all must chose heads or tails, not playing is not an option. — Rank Amateur
If I qualified premise 1 to say something like, "If the stakes of a belief are high and credible, then you should take arguments regarding that belief seriously" then it might work? — Empedocles
That is the main selling point of the argument. But we have concluded, at least for your version, that the burden of providing a convincing argument for the existence of God cannot be avoided. — SophistiCat
I'm not sure if that makes as much sense written out as it does in my head, let me know if I should clarify any of it. — Empedocles
God of the Catholic religion (or at least something like it) - or atheism. But is this so? — SophistiCat
not quite correct - better said God ( of the Catholic religion) is, or is not. This is an undeniable true premise - it in-compasses every possibility. — Rank Amateur
That would be quite a useless and unnecessary premise, since it is a trivial tautology — SophistiCat
P: At some future time T one of two things will happen: either you will be rewarded with inconceivably great rewards R or punished with inconceivably great punishments U. — SophistiCat
The stakes of belief in the existence of God are about as high as they could be (i.e. you could spend eternity in heaven or hell). — Empedocles
Life is happening - and at some point it will end - and at the very very end of the day it will either end with a black hole (something natural) or something super- natural. In Pascal terms - the coin is spinning - not calling heads or tails is not an option. — Rank Amateur
You say that because of the stakes being so high, you ought to take P very seriously indeed. But because of its general form, P amounts not to one proposition, but to an infinitely large family of propositions, which can be obtained by varying C (we could also vary T, R and U, but for the purposes of practical decision-making that won't make much of a difference, provided that T is sufficiently far in the future). So what are you to do? How would you go around studying all of those propositions? — SophistiCat
Does my wager- which concludes only that one should study philosophy of religion, not believe in God- really have infinite live options? — Empedocles
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