Pascal's wager

The Internet if full of nasty comments from hateful people, and neither side of this debate has a monopoly on nastiness. Just because others do it is not a good reason for those on this forum to sink to the same depths.

Tom

 

Yeah, about your baseless claim. I will put up just the 20th century alone against all of recorded theist history and you atheist would come out ahead on the body count.

 

Who comes out ahead in the body count is the individual with the most power. Crazy dictators come in all types, but evil is evil. It doesn't matter if they couch it in religion or atheism; in fact it's not about either - it's about power.

Good people will be good, and bad people will be bad. You can change their labels and call them Methodists, Baptists, Muslims, or atheists, but it won't make much difference. If they are inclined toward evil, and have the opportunity, that's what they will do.

Human nature is much stronger than any of our human created labels.

Tom

 

Agreed. Except that I would add that all are inclined towards evil, it is just most are taught and practice self-control and respect.

 

I was actually talking about atheists and theists fighting AMONGST THEMSELVES (as that was what Chuck was railing about). For example, Christians killing other Christians in an argument over whether they are actual or metaphoric cannibals.

 

Ahhhhh, as opposed to atheist who are equal opportunity genocidal maniac's who kill indiscriminately no matter the reason or cause? My apologies. Thank you for raising and clarifying that point. :yo:

 

Daniel,

I have a problem with the Rev Fred Phelps' of the world as well. Perhaps you are aware one of his sons Nate was abused to the point he left the family the instant he turned 18 and eventually became a speaker at atheist gatherings....I fully understand why his father drove him in that direction. For that matter, similar circumstances drove Madelyn Murray O'Hair's son to Christianity, but I somewhat digress.

My issues with some of the more outspoken Christian politicians is not so much the lack of subtly, but their example and their consistency...is their private like exemplary? Is their pro-life stand balanced with workers not getting taken advantage of by corporations?

But I don't think there are that many here that are foot soldiers for Santorum or Palin - fire and brimstone rhetoric. That goes on outside PC, but since it does not go on at PC, you are behaving as your worst enemies by doing those rants. Different point of view, but exact same methods you are somehow comfortable with. And the type of rhetoric here and elsewhere like a Christopher Hitchens is perceived as a threat that helps Santorum or Palin.

 

Operative phrase "most of the time."

Sadly, the message is: "I won't be too bad on you as long as you are a good sport and let us win." Last spring things nearly escalated because after things settled down you chose to have one last zinger which provoked someone to post a bunch of threads...I intervened to keep it from becoming a major flame war.

I'll go into my reasons for post #333 pointing out God-bashing here and all over the internet shortly.

 

Sorry daniel I call BS on this trite, little, delusional snit. I've known many Jews and atheist and none have experienced what you've described above. It's just an excuse to condone your own bigotry which you've condemned in Palin and Santorum.

 

On post #333 when I posted there has been a lot of God-bashing on the net by disagreeable atheists - it was because the thread was deteriorating...not so much insults, but the lack of honest reasoning.

It's rare in an honest discussion that one side is 100% correct and the other is utterly wrong, but that's exactly what was going on in this thread....nearly every reply from the theist side was declared wrong if not stupid, and to make the intellectually honesty more suspect, done immediately. The people that are truly sure they are right rarely say they are always right and say it instantly.

Even on the chicken or egg question of "did the universe start with simple matter or a creator?" contempt was held on those believing it started with a creator....3rd parties would consider the arguments a coin-toss.

From inference:

- Anyone believing in a creator is stupid
- adherants.com estimates about 80% (more or less) of the World's population believes in God
- Therefore 80% of all humans are stupid!

Is that arrogance or what?

 

Out in the real world, someone I recently met that came down from Detroit (not the Bible Belt) wished me either a happy Easter or Passover....don't know, but suspect he is Jewish, and definitely appreciated his good will. Later that day, I shared that with a good friend, and we definitely have substantial theological differences.

I find it very interesting that in the real world and about 20 other forums I don't remotely end up in religion flamewars like PHOP.

 

Unlike most honest discussions, this one has a binary underpinning: do you believe in an omnipotent god that created the universe? Furthermore, this belief cannot be proven or tested by any scientific method.

Most honest discussions relate to something that exists on a continuum. For example, which is better, republican conservatism or democratic liberalism? In practice one can embrace the middle and be a moderate. We can also measure economic and social factors to weigh the merits of each philosophy. While not a hard science, it can be measured and tested.

One could make a similar argument about religious beliefs, but at the core it there is still the central binary issue: Are you willing to believe in something that cannot be tested or proved? Any logical statement based upon that binary decision can be instantly validated or dismissed, based on the listener's view of that binary decision. It doesn't require a lot of thoughtful reflection.

Given that, it's no wonder that religious threads devolve into "You're wrong! No, YOU'RE wrong! NO, YOU'RE WRONG!!!" No amount of logic or discussion can persuade, once the fundamental binary decision has been made.

Tom

 

I don't insist on logic without evidence, but when there is no evidence, logic is the only tool left for rational decision making. (If one just wants to just believe as others do, that's a belief not rational decision making.)

And I provided an example where one can logically draw conclusions without knowing the probabilities, and you refuse to actually answer what you consider the answers and why. You simply "believe" there can be no answer because and its not logical, but you don't even rationally discuss the matter. You continue bring up your beer volcano example, which is about which "religion" you want to choose but that is not the crux of pascal's wager, which is really about finite gain vs infinite gain.

I'm not trying to prove a religious construct, I'm addressing a question of payoff's in bets that involve infinite quantities. You seem to want to keep it about religions; i want to keep it in abstract quantities and logic.


You keep saying that without probabilities you cannot decide on a bet.
Here is a simpler variation of my earlier challenge:

You get to choose one of two boxes, the cost is 1 dollar.
a) Box A will pay 0. (i.e. you loose you dollar).
b) Box B will either pay nothing, or will pay 500 Million dollars. The probability of a non-zero payoff for box B is probability p.

Please explain how knowledge of p is necessary in making the decision.


To those that keep saying garbage-in garbage out, which since I have a Ph.D. in computer science, is something I totally understand, please remember that not all programs are transforming data from input into output and that computer programs really don't handel infinity at all.
You can get good data in and garbage out (both 0 and 1 and 2 are good data bu ask your computer in simple terms which is larger as x-> 0 the term 1/x or 2/x). If you don't ask correctly you get garbage out.

Now for finite unknowns C and D, consider taking lim x->0 of C/x and D and even though C and D are unknown (hence you might say garbage in) can you answer which term is larger? How about C/X and D/(X*X). These don't need to know C/D to be answered. While terms like 0/0 and inf/inf are indeterminate with the right manipulations you can avoid them and get good answers even with many unknown variables.

Garbage in referes to Bad data, not unknown quantities.


And to put this into context, I don't really care about your, or anyone else's religious leanings. I only wrote the poem because because as a Prof I get students asking me questions broader than my classes, and some of them asked me about Pascal's wager. I was working out some of my own issues and as I sometimes do when working on difficult subjects I did it as a poem. I also wanted to take the opportunity to broaden beyond the original pascal's gambit to consider the "only my religion" is right issue that many of the fundamentalists (including one of the students that started the discussion) abuse. I consider pushing one's religious beliefs on another wrong. But a discussion with those that want to discuss it is fine.

 

I and others are being argued against by those of the religion of non-belief with pre-conceived convictions, who often fancy they are always supported by fact - never assumptions.

Just like the political topics that are put in Freds House of Politics, a few are obsessed with beating the other side into submission that never, ever, ever stops. Strangely, it's not treated like those political threads, yet it has the same downsides.

 

Cool, another computer nerd.

So, just curious, what do you consider "pushing"?

 

There's a lot of angry people here.

 

So any discussion about the truth would be a "dishonest discussion" under your definition?

 

Given this group, that is probably correct.

I used the term "honest discussion" from Chuck's post, so it's not my term. But any discussion arising from belief is not about truth, it's about belief. Facts can be related to truth, but belief is just belief, and any logic predicated on belief is just circular reasoning.

Tom