Implied Odds Out The Wazoo
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Considering the holiday weekend, I think Mene Gene makes a pretty good argument here.
From a market-based perspective, believing in God would appear to make good economic sense. Believing in God comes with a substantial but not onerous cost (occasionally attending church, no worshiping false gods, keep the killing and stealing and adultery under control) and it has a big payoff in the end–a blissful eternal afterlife. Even if its a million-to-one that God exists, eternity is a long time. You’ve got implied odds out the wazoo.
I’ve seen David Sklansky discuss the subject of religion and it seems at times as if he attempts to pose questions to “the believers” as a way of setting them up to attack the logic of their faith but I think Gene may have hit on an argument that even the logical, mathematically-minded David Sklansky might have a difficult time with. 
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COMMENTS / 4 COMMENTS
dragonystic added these pithy words on Mar 25 05 at 3:12 pmThat’s not Mean Gene’s argument, that’s Pascal’s Wager.
scott cunningham added these pithy words on Mar 25 05 at 6:07 pmYes, given risk vs. reward, it does seem rational to believe in God. But, for christianity, the associated costs of following Christ are much larger than simply going to church and not murdering people. It requires “faith” which cannot be selected. That is something which seems to me to undermine Pascal’s wager somewhat. Faith, whle it does not require 100% confidence in the veracity of the resurrection of Christ (for instance) requires a certain level of sincereity, volition and hope. And I don’t see how that could flow out of calculus.
Mean Gene added these pithy words on Mar 26 05 at 7:03 pmBoth points taken. I didn’t think I was making some brilliant insight there, just placing it in a somewhat-pokerlike context. In trying to rationalize religious faith, deciding that you’re better off believing than not doesn’t get you very far when your faith is seriously tested.
On the other hand, when I hear someone say that believing in God is stupid, or that only stupid people could believe in an omniscient yet invisible deity, that rationalization comes back into play. Its an argument that can’t ever be fully resolved…unless God comes down and says, “OK, that’s it, everybody outta the pool!”.
Absinthe added these pithy words on Mar 29 05 at 10:52 pmIt doesn’t take a Sklansky to shoot down the implied-odds argument. The requirements may not be onerous but the selection is a crapshoot, since they require not only that God exist but that said God exists precisely as advertised. There’s really no reason to believe that any God is a benevolent, omnipotent softie other than that we would like it to be true; your “prize” for your belief could just as well be the flaying of your spiritual nerve endings for all eternity. Nor is there any reason to believe that any flavor of Christianity is preferable to any Islamic sect, animistic belief, Zoroastrianism, &c.
Me, I’m hoping some stem-cell discovery comes along that means I don’t ever have to find out whether or not there’s an afterlife.
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