Pascals Wager

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
One matters, the others don't. Without the least divine viewpoint,
there's no contemplation of or concentration on absolute truth.
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No no...I say the wrath of [insert name of another god] is that which matters if you're (almost certainly) wrong about Bible God. 😲

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Nailed it, Joseph. Hopefully, it'll register on the foreheads of the and posers and the glib.

(Nice to see you're back.)
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Appreciate that Bobby. Back only briefly though. Merry Christmas to you.

Originally posted by Agerg
😴

I see you put your intellect to sleep again.

Is it so difficult to admit to yourself that your logic is flawed? How do you expect to grow without failure?

Life is learned through the process of trial and error.

Originally posted by josephw
I see you put your intellect to sleep again.

Is it so difficult to admit to yourself that your logic is flawed? How do you expect to grow without failure?

Life is learned through the process of trial and error.

Cretins have no place talking about the sleeping habits of anothers' intellect

Merry Christmas and goodbye!

Originally posted by Agerg

No no...I say the wrath of [insert name of another god] is that which matters if you're (almost certainly) wrong about Bible God. 😲

Please give it a read, Ag... though it's not for the squeamish, unusually timid or faint of heart.

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Basics/every_idle_word.htm
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Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Please give it a read, Ag... though it's not for the squeamish, unusually timid or faint of heart.

[b]http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Basics/every_idle_word.htm
-[/b]

As per my response to your unsolicited private message, I have no interest in Christian proselytism - I will not read it.

Originally posted by Agerg
As per my response to your unsolicited private message, I have no interest in Christian proselytism - I will not read it.

Sadly, these words you've just spoken are fixed in permanent cement. One fine day you shall pay them a visit.

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Sadly, these words you've just spoken are fixed in permanent cement. One fine day you shall pay them a visit.

I won't! ;]

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Please give it a read, Ag... though it's not for the squeamish, unusually timid or faint of heart.

[b]http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Basics/every_idle_word.htm
-[/b]

I like it. Especially this...

"Ray Comfort once kindly wrote to me, attempting to convince me that our doctrinal differences are a mere matter of semantics (i.e., wording the same belief differently). I told him that we do not agree at all on the issue of salvation, because he believes that a person cannot be saved and deliberately continue in sin; but I do believe that. The difference is much more than mere semantics, it is night and day."

I learned a long time ago that I am saved by God's Grace, not by works. It is through the accomplished work of Jesus Christ, not my own works.
Ray Comfort does not seem to understand that he has a sinful nature, bent on sin. We resist that choice( to sin) with God's help. That's Grace...

Originally posted by josephw
[b]"So where did I go wrong?"

It doesn't matter WHERE you went wrong, only that you acknowledge that you did.

It's not a 50/50 proposition. Either God exists - 100%, or God doesn't exist - 100%.

One is either 100% right, or 100% wrong.[/b]

I have a bag of 100 marbles,
50 are black
50 are white

blindfolded I take a marble at random.

What are the chances it is white?
Many will say 50/50.
But NO

Thanks to Josephw we now know that the true answer is
(drum roll)
either it is 100% white or it is 100% not white,

Originally posted by Agerg
So where did I go wrong? 😕[/b]

Pascal's Wager doesn't really claim that there is a 50% chance that God exists. Rather, his argument is about decision-making. Wager for God and if he exists you gain everything while if he doesn't, you win/lose nothing. Wager against God and if he exists you lose everything while if he doesn't, you win/lose nothing. The best decision is obvious, and they call this situation a 'superdominance' of the first choice over the second. Here's a crappy table:

................................God exists.........God does not exist
_______________________________________________
......Wager for God:....Gain all.............Status quo
Wager against God:....Misery.............. Status quo


The strongest objection is The Problem of Many Gods. Pascal assumed that if there is a god, it must be the Christian God. 🙄

See Princeton's Pascal's Wager:
http://www.princeton.edu/~grosen/puc/phi203/Pascal.html

Originally posted by apathist
Pascal's Wager doesn't really claim that there is a 50% chance that God exists. Rather, his argument is about decision-making. Wager [b]for God and if he exists you gain everything while if he doesn't, you win/lose nothing. Wager against God and if he exists you lose everything while if he doesn't, you win/lose nothing. The best decision is obvio ee Princeton's Pascal's Wager:
http://www.princeton.edu/~grosen/puc/phi203/Pascal.html[/b]

Ok, I'm open to having my mind changed but I have always been of the position that implicit to the wager is an assumption that it is a fifty fifty bet on particular god vs no god; i.e.

"God is, or He is not"
A Game is being played... where heads or tails will turn up.

What I bolded is what gives rise to my own position on this matter (since it is referring to the capital G god); moreover, by assuming such a high probability of God, to the unwary, it looks as like the expectation of this wager is heavily (inifinitely?) stacked in the theists favour.

Not trying to be funny in this post but where am I wrong this time?



*edit* in editing this post to be more clear about what I'm saying I observed an error on my part - in looking at "where heads or tails will turn up" the mapping I was making was

heads up ~> God exists,
tails up ~> no god exists (little g!)

I agree now that 50/50 is not implicit because my mapping is incorrect; however you are correct that they rule out all the other possible gods (which has always remained heavy in by objection to this wager)

Originally posted by Agerg...
"God is, or He is not"
A Game is being played... where heads or tails will turn up.

What I bolded is what gives rise to my own position on this matter (since it is referring to the capital G god); moreover, by assuming such a high probability of God, to the unwary, it looks as like the expectation of this wager is heavily (inifinitely?) stacked in the theists favour.

Not trying to be funny in this post but where am I wrong this time?

I don't see anything wrong there. If we assume that God is the only possible god, then the wager looks good to me. Other issues come into play, though, and some are looked at in that article I cited.

An issue for is that I wouldn't grovel before people in real life just so I can keep my head. I might pretend to while looking for an escape, but I'm no slave. It appears that God wants slaves. I wouldn't fit in.

Your math in the OP was a fail, though. There's a general formula in probability theory that can be used, but this problem is easy to solve another way. I think you had three possible gods, right? The question is, what are the chances that there is any god?

That's equivalent to tossing a coin three times and asking what are the chances that at least one head occurs. Here is every possible outcome:

TTT, TTH, THT, THH, HTT, HTH, HHT, HHH
It is binary, 2^3=8

Seven of those eight possible outcomes result in at least one god. 7/8 = .875

So there is about an 88% chance there is a god. (Given three possible gods.)

Originally posted by Agerg
heads up ~> God exists,
tails up ~> no god exists (little g!)

For clarity. I assume capital 'G' God refers specifically to the Abrahamic diety. Small 'g' god refers to any god (including God).

Originally posted by apathist
I don't see anything wrong there. If we assume that God is the only possible god, then the wager looks good to me. Other issues come into play, though, and some are looked at in that article I cited.

An issue for is that I wouldn't grovel before people in real life just so I can keep my head. I might pretend to while looking for an escape, but I'm no sl 7/8 = .875

So there is about an 88% chance there is a god. (Given three possible gods.)

You may not have seen my edit, but yes...I agree that the maths in the OP was a fail. That said however,I was trying to fail! - to make my point to theists that it's a bad argument!
That point being that their representation of the sample space is wrong, and that the implicit probability measures they apply to God exists or not some god exists (the wording here matches my initial thinking which we can see was off) is such that taking the sum of these probabilities leads to a stupid value.

Further if I had reliable probabilities for the existence of some god or collection of gods out of the set of all gods I believe I could calculate the probability none of those gods exist (and I would proceed as per your coin flipping example).


As for your link I will look at it (I have seen the other issues but for me the main one that stinks is the implicit probability of Abrahamic God they assign, not necessarily as 50/50, is way way higher than they should be (else their argument would have little force)), however right now I'm trying to retrofit some code with a fix to one problem and solving all the problems this fix then propagates elsewhere (because they relied on the error) :/