Pascal's Wager Revisited

Originally posted by twhitehead
I totally disagree.

Can you at least clarify what sort of morals we are discussing here? There are two basic meanings for the word which often get confused. ( I don't think either meaning has an exhortatory nature ).

For my part I subscribe to the wellbeing meaning of morality.

And as human wellbeing is not contingent on any gods existence, how to
treat humans morally is also not contingent on any gods existence.

And I agree that morals most certainly have an exhortatory nature.
Morals are pretty much by definition telling you what you 'should' do
in any given situation.

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
[b]Pascal's Wager Revisited
[quote]Arguments for: 1) The argument from beauty (also the aesthetic argument) is an argument for the existence of a realm of immaterial Ideas or, most commonly, for the existence of God.

History of the Argument

The argument from beauty has two aspects. The first is connected with the independent existence ...[text shortened]... ody and an eternal soul] Who doesn't give a damn about reconciling fallen mankind unto Himself?"[/b]

When you copy paste these recaps of your OP which we all understand better than you anyway, it takes me 26 presses of my down arrow key before I can see the next post worthy of reading 😞

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Wouldn't the eternal existence of a sovereign God by definition preclude the existence of another sovereign God?

That's like asking whether x = 6 would preclude the possibility of x = 7 when asked what is the probability x = 6.

I.e. irrelevant 😕

Originally posted by JS357
It is that some theistic morality is stuck at the reward/punishment level of moral development,

I too see a worrying amount of that.

and some theistic morality amounts to doing whatever a stern master says without thinking about consequences for individuals or for humanity as a whole.
I recall one poster claiming that morality was all about power. He believed might makes right.

I propose that this can be avoided by detaching moral values from the existence of God.
But why must it be avoided. I think its more important to have a good reason than a good 'technique'. It seems to me that by simply saying you are detaching moral values from God, you aren't going to be convincing any theists.

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Originally posted in reply to twhitehead on page 5 by Grampy Bobby
Without Blaise Pascal and his wager, you and I wouldn't be having this conversation. Please remain objective. Thanks.
____________________________

Ask any focused/objective question on this exploratory topic you wish, twhitehead. If I'm qualified to answer it, I will.

So can I take it that you are not qualified to answer any of the questions I have already asked? Or did you prejudge them not focused/objective?
Do you realize that if other people did the same to you, you would get no replies whatsoever?

Why do you make it so difficult for anyone to have a reasonable conversation with you?

Originally posted by googlefudge
For my part I subscribe to the wellbeing meaning of morality.

I do too. I just wanted it to be clarified which we are talking about.

And as human wellbeing is not contingent on any gods existence, how to
treat humans morally is also not contingent on any gods existence.
That depends on whether or not you think their well being depends on something related to God. If you do, then quite obviously Gods existence is highly relevant. Many theists put more stock in the well being of their soul than the well being of their bodies.

And I agree that morals most certainly have an exhortatory nature.
I disagree. Well being based morality can be worked out without an 'ought'. The only 'ought' in the whole thing is the question of whether or not you wish to promote the well being of others. And even that isn't of an exhortatory nature, instead it must be decided on individually.

Morals are pretty much by definition telling you what you 'should' do
in any given situation.
No, they are not. They are telling you what to do to achieve a goal. If you do not wish to achieve that goal, you can be immoral. We only throw on 'should' because we want everyone else to be moral, but it is not a foundation of the system of morality.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I do too. I just wanted it to be clarified which we are talking about.

[b]And as human wellbeing is not contingent on any gods existence, how to
treat humans morally is also not contingent on any gods existence.
That depends on whether or not you think their well being depends on something related to God. If you do, then quite obviously Gods exi ...[text shortened]... because we want everyone else to be moral, but it is not a foundation of the system of morality.[/b]

GF: "Morals are pretty much by definition telling you what you 'should' do
in any given situation."
TW: "No, they are not. They are telling you what to do to achieve a goal."

Emotivism doesn't do this. "Emotivism is a meta-ethical view that claims that ethical sentences do not express propositions but emotional attitudes.[1][2] Hence, it is colloquially known as the hurrah/boo theory."

wikipedia

Originally posted by twhitehead
I too see a worrying amount of that.

[b]and some theistic morality amounts to doing whatever a stern master says without thinking about consequences for individuals or for humanity as a whole.
I recall one poster claiming that morality was all about power. He believed might makes right.

I propose that this can be avoided by detaching moral v ...[text shortened]... y saying you are detaching moral values from God, you aren't going to be convincing any theists.

"It seems to me that by simply saying you are detaching moral values from God, you aren't going to be convincing any theists."

I don't have that intention in this thread. My intention is to respond to the PW. Looking at Kohlberg's structure of moral development (or something like it; it's not cast in stone) I see that the weighing of reward and punishment, as in the PW, is perhaps natural and acceptable at an immature stage of moral development. And some people need it (or parents/society needs to use it) more, or longer than, others.

I think it is a thought experiment -- how would my morality be different, if there were no externally provided reward and punishment, nobody keeping track for later disposition? This isn't about how the world would be if everone was free of reward and punishment, this is just about me. How would my moral behavior be different? And why? And if the PW has any purchase on me, why is that?

Originally posted by JS357
As I just said to TW:

My comments are more an exhortation that a factual claim. The exhortatory nature of moral claims is part of moral/ethical theory. I am exhorting you to have a moral code that will not depend on belief or disbelief that God exists.

I think any God worthy of the name would want that.

I guess that is where we part company. I do believe doing right is the
proper thing to do; however, I believe human nature is flawed. It isn't
that we don't understand good and evil we do, but we tend to see things
in a flawed light where we are selfish. We each could go on judging
ourselves by ourselves, we have envy and selfish desires where we sow
disorder. We have it within us to justify ourselves while we are doing evil
to one while doing good to another and be good with that.

I believe we are bound by the God's law who created us and put us here.
Through Him we see love for what it is, and can understand what sin is. He
is a solid foundation where we have none elsewhere.

Originally posted by Agerg
When you copy paste these recaps of your OP which we all understand better than you anyway, it takes me 26 presses of my down arrow key before I can see the next post worthy of reading 😞

---> This, Agerg, is the OP:

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Pascal's Wager Revisited

Pascal's Wager (The wager uses the following logic (excerpts from Pensées, part III, §233):

1. God is, or God is not. Reason cannot decide between the two alternatives.

2. A Game is being played... where heads or tails will turn up.

3. You must wager (it is not optional).

4. Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.

5. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is. There is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite. And so our proposition is of infinite force, when there is the finite to stake in a game where there are equal risks of gain and of loss, and the infinite to gain.

6. But some cannot believe. They should then 'at least learn your inability to believe...' and 'Endeavour then to convince' themselves. -Blaise Pascal (1623 to 1662)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager#The_wager
________________________

What if there is a Sovereign God responsible for creation of the universe as well as the creation of human life [beings with both a temporal body and an eternal soul] Who doesn't give a damn about reconciling fallen mankind unto Himself?

---> And this is the latest of the "Arguments for" presented: 1) The argument from beauty..."

Pascal's Wager Revisited
Arguments for: 1) The argument from beauty (also the aesthetic argument) is an argument for the existence of a realm of immaterial Ideas or, most commonly, for the existence of God.

History of the Argument

The argument from beauty has two aspects. The first is connected with the independent existence of what philosophers term a 'universal', see Universal (metaphysics) and also Problem of universals. Plato argued that particular examples of, say a circle, all fall short of the perfect exemplar of a circle that exists outside the realm of the senses as an eternal Idea. Beauty for Plato is a particularly important type of universal. Perfect beauty exists only in the eternal Form of beauty, see Platonic epistemology. For Plato the argument for a timeless idea of beauty does not involve so much whether the gods exist (Plato was not a monotheist) but rather whether there is an immaterial realm independent and superior to the imperfect world of sense. Later Greek thinkers such as Plotinus (ca. 204/5–270 CE) expanded Plato’s argument to support the existence of a totally transcendent "One", containing no parts. Plotinus identified this "One" with the concept of 'Good' and the principle of 'Beauty'. Christianity adopted this Neo-Platonic conception and saw it as a strong argument for the existence of a supreme God. In the early fifth century, for example, Augustine of Hippo discusses the many beautiful things in nature and asks "Who made these beautiful changeable things, if not one who is beautiful and unchangeable?"[1] This second aspect is what most people today understand as the argument from beauty.

Richard Swinburne

A contemporary British philosopher of religion, Richard Swinburne, known for philosophical arguments about the existence of God, advocates a variation of the argument from beauty:

"God has reason to make a basically beautiful world, although also reason to leave some of the beauty or ugliness of the world within the power of creatures to determine; but he would seem to have overriding reason not to make a basically ugly world beyond the powers of creatures to improve. Hence, if there is a God there is more reason to expect a basically beautiful world than a basically ugly one. A priori, however, there is no particular reason for expecting a basically beautiful rather than a basically ugly world. In consequence, if the world is beautiful, that fact would be evidence for God's existence. For, in this case, if we let k be 'there is an orderly physical universe', e be 'there is a beautiful universe', and h be 'there is a God', P(e/h.k) will be greater than P(e/k)... Few, however, would deny that our universe (apart from its animal and human inhabitants, and aspects subject to their immediate control) has that beauty. Poets and painters and ordinary men down the centuries have long admired the beauty of the orderly procession of the heavenly bodies, the scattering of the galaxies through the heavens (in some ways random, in some ways orderly), and the rocks, sea, and wind interacting on earth, 'The spacious firmament on high, and all the blue ethereal sky', the water lapping against 'the old eternal rocks', and the plants of the jungle and of temperate climates, contrasting with the desert and the Arctic wastes. Who in his senses would deny that here is beauty in abundance? If we confine ourselves to the argument from the beauty of the inanimate and plant worlds, the argument surely works." [2]

Art as a Route To God

The most frequent invocation of the argument from beauty today involves the aesthetic experience one obtains from great literature, music or art. In the concert hall or museum one can easily feel carried away from the mundane. For many people this feeling of transcendence approaches the religious in intensity. It is a commonplace to regard concert halls and museums as the cathedrals of the modern age because they seem to translate beauty into meaning and transcendence.

Dostoevsky was a proponent of the transcendent nature of beauty. His enigmatic statement: "Beauty will save the world" is frequently cited.[3] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his Nobel Prize lecture reflected upon this phrase:

And so perhaps that old trinity of Truth and Good and Beauty is not just the formal outworn formula it used to seem to us during our heady, materialistic youth. If the crests of these three trees join together, as the investigators and explorers used to affirm, and if the too obvious, too straight branches of Truth and Good are crushed or amputated and cannot reach the light—yet perhaps the whimsical, unpredictable, unexpected branches of Beauty will make their way through and soar up to that very place and in this way perform the work of all three. And in that case it was not a slip of the tongue for Dostoyevsky to say that "Beauty will save the world" but a prophecy. After all, he was given the gift of seeing much, he was extraordinarily illumined. And consequently perhaps art, literature, can in actual fact help the world of today.[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_beauty (to be continued)

---> And this text provides the list of arguments to be discussed with the ones covered in Bold:

Posted in reply to FMF on page 5 and included here as a preview of for and against arguments still to be presented:

"1) That Blaise Pascal was seeker of absolute truth; 2) That if he was here today his investigative threads and posts wouldn't be viewed as the work product of a troll; 3) That he died at an incredibly young age [39] by 2015 actuarial standards; 4) That any and all "shortcomings" of his wager will become apparent as we explore the "Criticisms; Arguments for: Beauty, Christological, Consciousness, Cosmological (kalām· contingency), Degree, Desire, Experience, Fine-tuned universe, Love, Miracles, Morality, Ontological, Proper basis, Reason, Teleological (natural law watchmaker), Transcendental." As well as Arguments against: 747 gambit, Atheist's Wager, Evil, Free will, Hell, Inconsistent revelations, Nonbelief, Noncognitivism, Occam's razor, Omnipotence paradox, Poor design and Russell's teapot" if warranted by the level of objective interest.

The sole focus of this thread is the final question at the end of the original post which Pascal himself apparently never asked: "What if there is a Sovereign God responsible for creation of the universe as well as the creation of human life [beings with both a temporal body and an eternal soul] Who doesn't give a damn about reconciling fallen mankind unto Himself?"

Hope this recap reduces the number of "26 presses of my down arrow key before I can see the next post worthy of reading".

Originally posted by Agerg
That's like asking whether x = 6 would preclude the possibility of x = 7 when asked what is the probability x = 6.

I.e. irrelevant 😕

Fine. You're entitled to your own beliefs whether they agree or differ from mine. The thread attempts to explore the various criticisms and arguments of record for and against the validity of Pascal's Wager. Relax. Enjoy the friendly repartee.

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby to Agerg
Fine. You're entitled to your own beliefs whether they agree or differ from mine. The thread attempts to explore the various criticisms and arguments of record for and against the validity of Pascal's Wager. Relax. Enjoy the friendly repartee.

You have side-stepped Agerg's point.

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Hope this recap reduces the number of "26 presses of my down arrow key before I can see the next post worthy of reading".

No, you just doubled the number of presses. Did you really not understand what he said, or are you trolling again?

Please stop ruining the forums by constantly reposting the same content. If you absolutely need to refer back to already posted content, then give the thread id, page number and location of the post on the page. Do not be lazy and repost the whole thing at the expense of everyone else.

Originally posted by FMF
You have side-stepped Agerg's point.

The point was that there can be only one sovereign God. 😏

HalleluYah !!! Praise the LORD! Holy! Holy! Holy!

Originally posted by KellyJay
I guess that is where we part company. I do believe doing right is the
proper thing to do; however, I believe human nature is flawed. It isn't
that we don't understand good and evil we do, but we tend to see things
in a flawed light where we are selfish. We each could go on judging
ourselves by ourselves, we have envy and selfish desires where we sow
d ...[text shortened]... t it is, and can understand what sin is. He
is a solid foundation where we have none elsewhere.

I said, "My comments are more an exhortation that a factual claim. The exhortatory nature of moral claims is part of moral/ethical theory. I am exhorting you to have a moral code that will not depend on belief or disbelief that God exists.

I think any God worthy of the name would want that."

and you then said,

"I guess that is where we part company." You referred to selfishness being a flaw.

However I explicitly rejected, somewhere along the line, the "what's in it for me," reward punishment model of morality as an immature (but needed, for the immature) approach. So we seem to agree on selfishness, as a moral guide, being flawed. I just say that Pascal's Wager is itself flawed, as it is an appeal to selfish interests. Do you disagree?