Pascal’s Wager inverted: all atheists go to heaven?

The standard wager has the states being “Act as if God exists” and “Act as if God doesn’t exist”. This formulation is not open to your charge.

The secular version of Pascal’s wager is often very seductive, and I wrote a short piece on it here:
http://www.bizop.ca/blog2/books/the-road-from-f.html

The gambling analogy does not accurately reflect how Pascal’s wager is being interpreted here.

To fix the analogy, you would be placing a bet on *all possible outcomes*. Each bet would be proportional to how likely you think that number is going to win. If you have equal belief for all numbers, then you would place equal bets.

The payout here is infinity, and having a non-zero belief for all possible options (God/not-God) guarantees a win, and also guarantees to an infinite payout.

Your analogy has the undue restriction of placing only a single bet, which would be the equivilent of ruling out – completely – a possibility. While that option is implied here, it is out of the main scope of this exercise.

There are atheists who do rule out all god-concepts completely. In this case, only they are the ones truly making the wager here. (In which case the wager fails for numerous other reasons).

With regards to the interpretation of Pascal’s wager (belief vs. action), I will concede that the standard intepretation seems to indicate that it is “living as god exists” rather than simply “believing god exists”.

This is not particularly significant as Pascal’s wager is often used for the Christian God, who specifical eschews actions in favor of belief (faith). Thus, for the Christian, living as God exists entails nothing more than believing God exists (Jesus was his son, died for sins, etc) so the dichotomy is erased.

I only noted what Pascal’s wager is “often” used for. I did not say that it is limited to that. The wager itself does not specify a certain god, correct, however Pascal created the wager specifically with regards to Christian apologetics so it seems odd to use it in a manner contrary to this.

The notion of other gods (with their inherent exclusivity) is another reason the wager fails, though that is outside the scope of this game theory article.

Taking Pascal’s intentions in mind, his wager pertains to the Christian god and all that is required to “act as of God existed” is to simply believe. Thus erasing the dichotomy.

There is more to meaning than semantics. You must also consider context.

Pascal specifically constructed his wager as part of a collection of works specifically designed to support belief in Christianity. The notion that he intentionally created an argument that could be used equally well against non-Christian Gods is absurd.

Now, I should caveat that I fully believe that Pascal’s wager lends itself to generalization in this manner, using it for any specific god (Allah, Zeus, Thor) or simply “gods” as a general concept. In fact, this is one of the reasons why it fails so miserably.

But, I was clear when resolving this dichotomy between “belief” and “action” that I was talking under the context in which Pascal presented his wager: in support of Christianity – the Christian God.

If you still have an issue, it cannot, reasonably, be with whether or not Pascal was talking about the Christian God, but rather whether or not the Christian God requires more than just belief.

Everything I’ve read on the matter can be summed up as: acts are meaningless, faith is everything. That is, the only act that is required, is belief thus there is no difference, in this context between “act” and “belief”; they are one in the same.

The entire point of Pascal’s wager is to present belief in god as a dominant strategy and, thus, the only rational strategy to take.

Other presentations of the wager list the outcome of “God exists” & “Don’t believe” as eternal punishment – equivilent to negative infinity – which only highlights the dominant strategy of “Believe”.

In either case (“God exists” vs. “God doesn’t exist”), the strategy of “Believe” is equal to or better than “Don’t Believe”

This article attacks the wager from the angle of what it means to “believe”.

What the issue of multiple gods does is reveal that there isn’t actually a dominant strategy.

Instead of viewing the games as Atheism vs. Theism, view it as Jehovah vs. Allah.

In this case the possible outcomes are “Jehovah Exists” & “Allah Exists” and the possible strategies are “Believe Jehovah Exists” and “Believe Allah exists”

(Note: I understand that Jehovah and Allah are different interpretations of one Judeo-Christian god, However, at most only one of these interpretations can be correct; it is not an issue to discuss them as though they are different entities).

In this case, “Believe Jehovah Exists” yields infinite gain only if “Jehovah Exists” while “Believe Allah exists” yields infinite gain only if “Allah Exists”.

Neither of these strategies has the advantage of being dominant. Thus the entire point of Pascals wager evaporates. This issue becomes even more clear when you include ALL known god-concepts.

Now, one could say that, in regards to theism vs. atheism, theistic strategies still outweigh atheistic ones (since only theistic strategies allow for the possibility of infinite gain) but even this fails for a number of reasons:

1) You still have no way of choosing *which* theistic belief. Given the number and interpretations of god, the actual probabilities heavily imply that you will be picking the wrong one. Since failure is pretty much guaranteed, you might as well remain true to your own beliefs.

2) Pascal’s wager also operates under the premise that god is going to be fooled by (or won’t care) that you are simply believing to hedge your bets, rather than as a genuine display of faith. It is certainly quite possible that some specific god (perhaps one that has yet to be described accurately by humans) would rather reward things other than irrational belief (I say “irrational” because Pascal’s wager was invented specifically to address situations where rationality failed to yield a clear answer). Perhaps a god would rather you be true to reason and be an atheist, rather than abandon reason to become a theist.

In almost all of these instances (included in this post and in this article) the underlying problem of Pascal’s wager is that he oversimplified the problem. Thus the conclusion he derived is erroneous.

RE: Act vs. Belief

I don’t doubt that there are plenty of interpretations to support either side of the issue here but I think I’ll refrain from continuing to hijack Mr. Talwalkar’s blog for three reasons:

1. There is no conclusive, objective “correct” interpretation. (The argument would proceed ad infinitum/nauseum)

2. It is outside the scope of the game theory issues this article was designed to tackle.

3. In the same manner that an atheist does not necessarily completely exclude the possibility of the existence of a god, neither does an atheist necessarily act in a manner that is completely, 100% non-Christian-like.

Since the point here was to show that any non-zero belief in favor of God yields the full outcome, the same would apply to any non-zero compliance to typical “Christian” acts (Do unto others… for example). Thus the difference between act and belief yields no difference on the outcome of the application of game theory to Pascal’s wager.

“[A]aren’t you implicitly concluding, then, that belief systems don’t make any difference in the outcome so long as you help someone once?”

To generalize, it doesn’t make any difference so long as you have not excluded it completely.

Take the belief system at had (Christianity). It explicitly states that we humans are incapable of being the purely good beings required to achieve the reward. This was why it was necessary to set up an alternative. It just happens to be that this alternative requires only belief. Yes, it encourages certain acts, but only requires belief.

I agree with the second paragraph as well, and would think that – if there is an all powerful being out there – he is unlikely to be fooled by this crude ruse.

Brian said: “The extension of the wager to other gods or religions does not mean that it “fails miserably.” It’s simply part of the wager. If there are other religions that postulate eternal salvation, then the wager applies to them just as well. It’s just that there is only one right answer at the end of the day.

Basically, the wager says you’re no worse off believing in Jesus or Zeus as believing in materialism, or humanism, or whatever you please. Now it’s just a matter of who is right.”

No, the wager definitely does not apply to all other possible gods. The wager fails miserable because it works under the presumption that non-belief would either elicit punishment or a loss of reward.

We need only postulate the existence of a god that happens to reward disbelief and punish faith to make an inverted Pascal’s Wager, in which the dominant tactic is to disbelieve regardless of whether the disbelifophile god exists. Granted, it is a capricious presumption. However, I honestly fail to see how it is less so than Pascal’s original.

It’s obvious that only atheists go to heaven. God is quite able to make himself non-existant. As a result of this only people whom don’t believe in God are actually speaking the truth ; all those who do believe in God are limiting God’s power. This is just to show how Pascal’s wager turned on it’s head might be thought of in practice. Also you might try backing up your argument with a quote from the bible ‘In the last days there will be many christians whom when I asked them what they did say we preached your word and did miracles in your name. Evildoers.’

Hello,

why use the name Pascal when, as Jon pointed out,
it is *not* Pascal’s wager we are talking about.

Let’s call it – say – Mr. Banana wager, just to clarify matter.

Cheers,
C

another problem is that faith is not a practical issue. it’s not like buying insurance. or at least it shouldn’t be. in my opinion, true faith cannot be contrived.