Faith is not a gamble, it's a choice of the heart based on love, not phony logic of a Jansenist

Suppose you find a tribe that says you will have infinite pain if you don't follow their religion. Do you cease to be Christian and join their religion because the odds are greater? It makes no sense. We follow logic in life and love in religion. There is no room for gambles in religion if you want true religion. If you had proof God wants us to follow a gamble why not give it

Moreso, I think: religion seems to me more like early childhood (nursery, fairytales, kindergarden) and science like late adolescence (sex, cars, junior college) – the latter never completely outgrows the developmental vestiges (defects, biases) of the former. — 180 Proof

That's what I'd call hitting the nail on the head. Bravo!

Adults smugly claim that they outgrew Santa, but some never seem to be able to let go of God. What's the difference one might ask. Aren't they both imaginary (friends)? Neoteny/juvenilazation/Peter Pan syndrome in a way. That said, the way God's defined does reflect a certain degree of maturity that, for better or worse, is diluted by the infantile nature of the way the belief is clung to despite zero evidentiary support.

Not that this matters much, but Pascal's Wager contains nothing to argue if a god is real, but rather is there to discuss only if it is practical to believe in a god.

The only ending variables involved (according to Pascal) are eternal reward, eternal punishment or neither.

The only options Pascal allows are to believe or not to believe.

What seems odd here is:

To assume nothing is lost if you believe in a god and it ends up that god isn't real is a bit hasty on the part of Pascal, as to believe in a god does require some significant time and changes in one's life, so the question that also needs to be address is:

Are the necessary investments of time and the changes that one must endure (for the sake of belief) in one's life worth it if the god turns out not to exist, meaning if there is no god did one just waste the only life they had with this belief?

As I said, gambling is very much adult. There's a lot to lose (life is not a joke and neither is eternal torment) and the prize, irreristible (infinite bliss). Pascal was no fool. He knew that the question of God was/is/will probably remain undecidable. Ergo, the most sensible thing to do is to mathematize the problem which, as it turns out, is to view it with a probabilistic lens. For Pascal it was a clear as crystal that to bet on God was/is/will be the most rational choice to make.

False. Salvation is not a gamble. Where's your argument? Life is a gamble but not salvation. To gamble like that is to lose yourself and go to he'll. You have no argument and it was up to you to provide one

And since you can't prove there is a God, there is no infinite to contrast with the finite in the gamble

if there is no god did one just waste the only life they had with this belief? — Mayor of Simpleton

Pascal's opinion was the believing in God was, at most, a minor inconvenience! Thereby hangs a tale: Pascal was already a religious person and there would've been little change in the way he lived Pascal's wager or not!

you can't prove there is a God — Gregory

He knew that the question of God was/is/will probably remain undecidable. Ergo [...] — Agent Smith

If there is no proof of infinite pleasure or pain there is nothing to gamble on.

So then, the question would be is the life of Pascal the standard of measure for everyone's life or could it be him pleading a special case or something else?

Pascal btw refused to see doctors throughout his life for his sickly constitution because he thought he was meant to suffer. Says something about his psychology..

According to Pascal *whenever* someone cries "danger" you have to run. That's a sickness

So then, the question would be is the life of Pascal the standard of measure for everyone's life or could it be him pleading a special case or something else? — Mayor of Simpleton

Good point! However, what does religion ask of us? To be good, that's all. Are you saying, we'd rather be bad?

To my understanding a religion asks us to believe.

To be good according to a religion is to comply with a religion's definition of what is good.

Does any religion have a standard of measure for what is good for everyone all the time in all cases?

...a cause is outside the universe by the time the effect occurs.

You've met your grandmother, so you know she's real, yet she's outside this universe, being no longer in existence.

et al.

Sure, what no longer exists (causes, dead grandmas) is no longer in the universe. But does that mean it then moves to an existence outside the universe? A junkyard for spent causes? Or does it cease to exist anywhere? (And no, I do not have relationships - or interaction - with dead relatives. I have never seen a ghost. I did have relationships with them while they were IN the universe.)

These once-in-the-universe-but-now-no-longer-existing things are very different from things that somehow exist on the outside.

By the way, it was my assumption that God is pure speculation, not Agent Smith. How can it be otherwise? How can you tell when causes from the outside have generated effects on the inside? Its like trying to use quale to discern things-in-themselves. You can't do it. At best, you can only say of an unexplained event that you fail to know the cause. In simpler times, unexplained events were called miracles and attributed to gods, because people didn't know any better.

It seems to me that claiming knowledge of the outside is theology, not philosophy.

Pascal's opinion was the believing in God was, at most, a minor inconvenience! Thereby hangs a tale: Pascal was already a religious person and there would've been little change in the way he lived Pascal's wager or not!

I disagree. Assuming you do not want to experience eternal torment, the moment you consider Pascal's wager to be a valid argument, it becomes your primary reason for believing in God. Once the genie is out of the bottle, it can't be stuffed back in.

Pascal's wager immediately takes away your free will. If you want to avoid the lake of fire, you can't choose to believe in God, you have to!

I don't see the talk about unsublimated early childhood fairytales having anything to do with a philosophical analysis of religion and God. — Astrophel

Of course you don't because you're reading an aside out of context which I made in reply to another aside made in reply to earlier comments in the context of me addressing "Pascal's Wager" . It helps to pay attention, Astro, in order to avoid making irrelevant bird-droppings. Btw, my reply to the OP and "philosophical analysis" linked therein is here

:up:

Of course you don't because you're reading an aside out of context which I made in reply to another aside made in reply to earlier comments in the context of me addressing "Pascal's Wager" ↪Agent Smith. It helps to pay attention, Astro, in order to avoid making irrelevant bird-droppings. Btw, my reply to the OP and "philosophical analysis" linked therein is here ↪180 Proof — 180 Proof

It's a lovely rationalization, common amount those who don't know how to respond to an idea they never thought of. What better way to deflect than heap the shortcoming with all that is outside what is clearly placed before one. You are faced with a question, if I have to spell it out for you: on the matter of God and religion, have you not gone astray in reducing the argument to a stalled childhood fantasy?

Look and note that, and you there, calling foul. No mention was made at all to previous posting. All that was taken issue with was the idea you put into play. So play it, if you can.

Sure, what no longer exists (causes, dead grandmas) is no longer in the universe. But does that mean it then moves to an existence outside the universe? A junkyard for spent causes? Or does it cease to exist anywhere? (And no, I do not have relationships - or interaction - with dead relatives. I have never seen a ghost. I did have relationships with them while they were IN the universe.) — Real Gone Cat

We cannot deny these things, which were in the past but no longer are now, and which might be, in the future, from reality. Clearly they are in some sense real.

These once-in-the-universe-but-now-no-longer-existing things are very different from things that somehow exist on the outside. — Real Gone Cat

I don't see this difference. To me that's what outside the universe is, external to the confines of our temporal understanding, which produces our conception of what is real. I think you are asking for an unwarranted separation, for the purpose of placing God in a separate category. In reality, things in the past are just as "unreal" as the cause of the universe is, because we don't understand what being in the past is, nor do we understand what being the cause of the universe is.

How can you tell when causes from the outside have generated effects on the inside? Its like trying to use quale to discern things-in-themselves. — Real Gone Cat

Why not? Isn't this exactly what we do? We use our sensations, which occur inside of us, to find out about the things which are outside of us, the things we sense. We figure things out about the outside things by applying logic to our observations. That's how we got to know about molecules, and atoms, and stuff like that, which are not actually a part of our sensations. If we had the attitude that we couldn't know about these things because they are outside of our sensations, science wouldn't have gotten anywhere.

In simpler times, unexplained events were called miracles and attributed to gods, because people didn't know any better. — Real Gone Cat

It's when things are not well understood that people start to appeal to things like magic and miracles. Obviously the cause of the universe is not well understood. But we do have a name for it, God.

:eyes: :roll:

Thought so

religion's definition of what is good. — Mayor of Simpleton

That's another story. All we need to look at is the simple fact that religion requires us to be good. That's the meat and potatoes of all "faiths". Pascal's status of being a representative sample of one is validated on that score. We're being asked/told to be moral. What "moral" and "good" are vary with religion of course, but that's missing the point, oui?

Are yoy saying people are, on the whole, immoral. Only then would your statement "I disagree" make any sense at all.

As for free will, realizing this life vis-à-vis God is a gamble, a game of chance, is actually a ticket to freedom, oui?

despite zero evidentiary support. — Agent Smith

You should look at that again. I mean, take a methodical approach to this. You find that most arguments against the existence of God are made of straw. The substantive defense of God requires something other that a naïve description of what God is. Assuming God is an old man in a cloud or an infantile fantasy makes it easy to dismiss. But a philosophical approach is much sturdier that this.

You find that most arguments against the existence of God are made of straw. — Astrophel

In my experience, Astro, this is backwards: it's the fact that all extant arguments for the existence of "God" (i.e. theism is true) are "made of straw" which itself constitutes a sound argument for the nonexistence of "God" (i.e. theism is not true).

36 Arguments For The Existence of God: Appendix (a novel)

1. The Cosmological Argument
2. The Ontological Argument
3. The Argument from Design
A. The Classical Teleological Argument
B. The Argument from Irreducible Complexity
C. The Argument from the Paucity of Benign Mutations
D. The Argument from the Original Replicator
4. The Argument from the Big Bang
5. The Argument from the Fine-Tuning of Physical Constants
6. The Argument from the Beauty of Physical Laws
7. The Argument from Cosmic Coincidences
8. The Argument from Personal Coincidences
9. The Argument from Answered Prayers
10. The Argument from a Wonderful Life
11. The Argument from Miracles
12. The Argument from the Hard Problem of Consciousness
13. The Argument from the Improbable Self
14. The Argument from Survival After Death
15. The Argument from the Inconceivability of Personal Annihilation
16. The Argument from Moral Truth
17. The Argument from Altruism
18. The Argument from Free Will
19. The Argument from Personal Purpose
20. The Argument from the Intolerability of Insignificance
21. The Argument from the Consensus of Humanity
22. The Argument from the Consensus of Mystics
23. The Argument from Holy Books
24. The Argument from Perfect Justice
25. The Argument from Suffering
26. The Argument from the Survival of the Jews
27. The Argument from the Upward Curve of History
28. The Argument from Prodigious Genius
29. The Argument from Human Knowledge of Infinity
30. The Argument from Mathematical Reality
31. The Argument from Decision Theory (Pascal's Wager)
32. The Argument from Pragmatism (William James's Leap of Faith)
33. The Argument from the Unreasonableness of Reason
34. The Argument from Sublimity
35. The Argument from the Intelligibility of the Universe (Spinoza's God)
36. The Argument from the Abundance of Arguments — Rebecca Goldstein

:pray: :halo:

In my experience, Astro, this is backwards: it's the fact that all extant arguments for the existence of "God" (i.e. theism is true) are "made of straw" which itself constitutes a sound argument for the nonexistence of "God" (i.e. theism is not true). — 180 Proof

The question then is only this: Can you in a sustained dialog argue this position? Keep in mind that none of the above takes the matter to its core phenomenological basis. Only in a phenomenological reduction can God be properly explained. What this means is really quite simple: suspend the popular narratives and the Christian Platonism, all of which possess assailable metaphysics. Look rather to the world as it presents the essential conditions that are the material basis for God coming into culture at all.

Who cares that we can successfully argue that some Disney character doesn't exist? It is seriously philosophically naïve. The issue goes to ethical nihilism; it goes to epistemic analyses and the place of science in philosophy. There is a reason why Wittgenstein said. "What is Good is Divine too. That, strangely enough, sums up my ethics."

The argument for the existence of "God" is essentially a meta-value/metaethical argument.

Alright, let me see if I understand your position (correct me if I’m wrong) : there are many (an infinite number of) universes, each containing all that exists at one moment in time. So Dead Grandma exists in the universes in which she was alive, just not in the current universe, where she is dead. Universes are stacked up like pancakes.

I can kind of get on board with this, it’s a version of the multi-verse idea. A few questions, though :

How do we access the past? I mean, you claim I have a relationship with Dead Grandma. How? Through memory? Not only is memory faulty, but the memory of a thing is not the thing being remembered. Is it?

And where is God in all this? Even if I can access past universes through memory, that would not seem to be possible with God.

A somewhat unrelated question : How do you know that an effect is due to an outside cause? That’s a unique skill.

The question then is only this: Can you in a sustained dialog argue this position? — Astrophel

Certainly. Click on the link in my previous post and start that "dialogue" at any point or subtopic therein you have issues with or that, in your opinion, needs clarification. I'm not a phenomenologist (or Platonist-Aristotlean (essentialist) or dualist/idealist-of-any-flavor) so, if that's a deal-breaker for you, then good luck with that. The vacuity of every one of the "36 arguments" listed above, nonetheless, stands unrefuted.

(NB: I'm open to engaging you (or any member) in a formal debate defending my oft-stated theism is not true position. We can arrange this with the Mods on the dedicated subforum – just say when.)

a philosophical approach is much sturdier that this — Astrophel

Provide one!