... , so I don't think it's wise to put too fine a distinction on qualifiers.
Pascal's Wager misleads us to similar problems.
On the surface, the proposed dichotomy of "God either exists or He does not exist" appears to give each proposal equal probability, 50%. But it ignores the fact that "God" is only one of literally thousands of gods whom Man has created -- assuming an extremely conservative estimate of 10,000 gods, that would make the probability within the Wager for the existence of God to be 0.01%, which Phat defines as "Exceptionally unlikely". While it is exceptionally unlikely that
any one specific god exists, this dichotomy is skewed in favor of at least
one god existing, even though the existence of
Phat's god is still "exceptionally unlikely".
In addition, "Either you believe in God or you don't" also appears to give equal weight, 50%, which it is actually similarly skewed. Unfortunately for proponents of the Wager, almost all the gods have one or more theologies attached to them which you must choose from when you choose to believe in a particular god. In the case of the many forms of YHWH (which is what the Wager is talking about), there is a mind-boggling multitude of different theologies out of which there is one-and-only-one true theology which you must choose correctly -- choosing the wrong theology is the same as not believing in God. Let's make another conservative estimate of 1,000 theologies to choose from, which would make the probability of you choosing correctly 0.1%, which Phat defines as "exceptionally unlikely".
Even if you take Pascal's Wager seriously and wish to choose "believing in God", the odds are so "exceptionally" against you being able to do so that you cannot help but lose no matter how you choose. Any way you look at it you lose.
"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?"
(W.O.P.R., AKA "Joshua", in
WarGames)
One day a few decades ago at a creationist fossil shop at the mall (yes, that did indeed exist), I got into a discussion with a creationist which we moved outside the shop at the owner's request.
We had been discussing the fossils mainly led by me, so he asked to have his say, which I agreed to. Instead of any discussion of the evidence, he hit me with a car insurance analogy, which I have since called
After-Life Insurance, which was a re-wording of Pascal's Wager. Since I had recently read about Pascal's Wager, I was able to respond immediately by pointing out that you're having to pay exorbitant premiums for coverage that would only pay under the most restrictive of circumstances:
quote:
So I told my after-life insurance salesman that his after-life insurance was a rotten deal (unfortunately, I didn't think of that name for it until the next day, but that poor guy was already hurting too much). We had to pay an exorbitant price for a policy that would only pay in the most restricted and oddest of circumstances. By the car insurance analogy, it would only pay if you were hit by a green Edsel -- on the northbound side of the Santa Ana Freeway -- while it was exceeding the speed limit -- backing up -- at night -- with its lights off -- being driven by a one-armed Lithuanian midget.
There also used to be a "Religion Detox" site which included a Pascal's Wager analogy that was a newspaper article about the Nevada Gaming Commission having raided Pascal's Casino for having promised all its customers a sure bet while it instead took them all to the cleaners.
Post-Script:
This is a follow-up to the
WarGames reference above, just for fun.
There's a Netflix sci-fi series,
Travelers, in which people are sent back from the future to prevent the 21st Century catastrophes that doomed that future. Basically, they had a good record of who died and when and how that, combined with the tech to replace one mind with another, the mind of the traveler from the future would replace the mind of the nearly-departed, usually in time to prevent the death, whereupon they would replace that person in 21st Century society. Good show, three seasons.
The third season introduces a powerful AI, Ilsa, who serves as a communication conduit with the Director, the AI in the future running the Traveler Program. She is always attended to by her creator, computer scientist Ivon Teslia. When he would bring in a new human to meet Ilsa, she would ask them, "How about a nice game of chess?" Teslia would always look closely at the new human to see whether they recognized the movie reference. To his disappointment, nobody ever did.
Nerd is as nerd does.
Edited by dwise1, : AKA & Wikipedia link
Edited by dwise1, : Added paragraph starting with "Even if you take Pascal's Wager seriously ... "
Also a missing period in W.O.P.R.'s acronym
Also the new section at the end referring to my "Afterlife Insurance" web page about Pascal's Wager
Edited by dwise1, : Travelers
Edited by dwise1, : "for having to promised" to " for having promised"
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